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Sarita's story
School-based professional development in technology
This material was produced by the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ)
under contract to the Ministry of Education in 2000 and 2001. It was written
to assist teachers and schools in their delivery of the technology/ hangarau
curriculum statements. The project was jointly coordinated by personnel
from the Technology Education New Zealand (TENZ)
and National Association of Māori Mathematicians, Scientists and Technologists
(NAMMSAT) networks. Monitoring and evaluation of the material was carried
out by a national project advisory group.
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Personal
profile
Sarita has been teaching for seven years. She is currently teaching
in a year 1 and 2 class in a decile 3, urban school. The school has
a roll of just over 300 pupils and caters for children from Year 1 to
6. Sarita has a background of specialist teaching in art and Māori education
and admits to a particular passion for literacy. She is a member of
the Reading Association committee and is a trained Reading Recovery
teacher. Sarita is also actively involved in the art resource teachers
network.
This is an account of Sarita's professional development in technology
over the course of a year. It outlines what took place and incorporates
a reflection on the process one year on.
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Sarita was selected to be the lead teacher for her school's involvement
in a Ministry of Education funded professional development contract
in technology education. The Centre for Educational Development at Massey
University College of Education was the provider of this professional
development package. The package included one-day workshops, to learn
about technology in the New Zealand Curriculum and its implementation
into the classroom, and weekend 'Technological Area' workshops, to help
give teachers a more in-depth knowledge of the different technological
areas. School visits were also offered by the facilitators providing
the package.
Sarita's school had not been teaching from the technology document before
this development. Teachers had not attempted any full technology units,
but had trialled a few 'Technology Challenge' type activities. There
was no school policy in place for technology and most teachers had a
preconceived idea that technology education had something to do with
computers. Sarita herself admitted to very little in the way of knowledge
of this curriculum area but she did have a natural interest in technology.
Aims
The aim of the school in taking part in the professional development
was to:
- have a school policy for technology education in place;
- develop an understanding of the technology document and its implementation;
and
- develop units of work, teach and assess technology education.
Sarita had a personal aim for taking part in the professional development:
- Develop knowledge of technology education as a classroom teacher
and to be able to contribute to the school and provide informed leadership
in this curriculum area.
Structure
This table outlines the structure of the professional development offered
by Massey University in which Sarita and her school took part.
Format
|
Subject
|
Time
|
Who
was involved from the school
|
Workshop 1
|
Introduction of contract
|
0.5 day
|
Sarita and the principal
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Workshop 2
|
Technological practice
|
1 day
|
Sarita
|
Workshop 3
|
The technology document
|
1 day
|
Sarita
|
Workshop 4
|
Planning and assessment
|
1 day
|
Sarita
|
Workshop 5
|
Long-term planning, policies, recording
and reporting
|
1 day
|
Sarita
|
Staff meeting 1
|
Planning units with syndicates.
|
1 day
|
Whole school
|
Staff meeting 2
|
Unit evaluation and health and safety
issues
|
1.5 hours
|
Whole school
|
Class support
|
Visiting classrooms, observing technology
education being taught.
|
1 day
|
Whole school
|
Staff
meeting 3
|
Writing the school policy on technology
education |
0.5 day
|
Sarita
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After each workshop that Sarita attended, she would take the content back
to her staff. She led another 3-4 staff meetings a term on top of the
outline above. Sarita found she had to slow the pace and break down what
was presented in the workshops into easily managed segments for the rest
of the staff. She did find that near the end of the year the technology
professional development suffered with the onslaught of report writing
and other school pressures.
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Sarita decided to embark on a little extra development in the technology
area and enrolled in a Massey University 300 level paper, "Technology
Education in the Classroom". Part of the credit for this paper involved
attendance at the contract workshops and one of the technological areas
workshops. Sarita attended a technological area workshop on the electronics
and control resource "Electroflash", as her school recognised this as
an area the staff lacked knowledge in. This paper effectively linked Sarita's
school and personal development and she makes the comment that:
It got you into the nitty gritty of the technological areas and
the nature of technology. It gave me a deeper, more formalised
knowledge of technological practice but also made links to cognition
theories. Things like scaffolding and learning styles – the
things you learn when you're training to become a teacher and
forget about so easily. I was also able to do some action research
in my room on whether or not children realise the purpose of technological
activities, it was a great opportunity to complete a paper that
had practical links to my classroom.
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Sarita made sure the board of trustees were informed of the technology
professional development through a power point presentation at one of
their regular meetings. She was able to update them on areas of the technology
document, implementation requirements, health and safety issues and the
need to invest in new equipment. Sarita used parts of this presentation
to inform the wider community through the school newsletter.
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The first unit Sarita and her staff taught was one that the facilitators
of the professional development contract had developed and focused on
extensively in one of the whole-day workshops. Sarita took it back to
the staff and together they filled out the gaps and adapted it to suit
all levels within the school.
The second unit was planned in syndicate groups. A facilitator from the
contract planned with the syndicates, who more or less had "free
choice" of topic and Technological area.
The last task was to write the school's technology policy. Sarita had a
format to follow and worked with the contract facilitator to produce a short
and concise document. It was important that it was consistent with the format
of other curriculum areas and was unique for that school so that staff felt
some ownership over the policy.
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Throughout the year Sarita was involved with the local Technology Education
New Zealand (TENZ) network. This also added to her professional development
as she was exposed to teachers from other schools and levels, and people
from the community who were showing technology in practice in their work
places. Through these regular network activities Sarita realised that:
Primary school teachers do technological activities everyday but
we have very little understanding of technology in the 'real world'.
We miss so many teachable moments and cannot make the most out
of curriculum integration. This is the very strength of the technology
document, teachers would benefit so much by increasing their knowledge
of the technological areas … it would validate the technology
document. This has shown me a huge gap in the professional development
of teachers – for example we need to know that when we are
making paper mache Easter eggs, the technological process is one
of lamination. We teach a lot of things without knowing why.
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