Tag: professional development

Growing Positive Team Culture

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending a course run by a colleague of mine entitled “Growing Positive Culture” which focused on the psychology of professional relationships. In this workshop we were introduced to several different schemas for analysing interpersonal dynamics, and through the various theories we were reminded that the behaviours we observe in others are only the visible tip of the iceberg, experiences, attitudes and emotions making up the submerged bulk which we cannot see.

The first part of the session was devoted to getting to know oneself, a collection of images were provided with our task being to identify which emotion and reactions they generated for us individually. We then were asked to “Spend $1”, with a list of values and attributes that we chose from, stating how much of the dollar we were prepared to spend on each one. I chose to spend half of my total amount on health, followed by intelligence, happiness, confidence and achievement.

We then looked into the work of Alison Mooney, circling words that resonated with us before folding the page into quarters and totting up the number of words circled in each quarter to give us a personality type: Peaceful, Powerful, Playful or Precise. I have done similar activities in previous courses I have attended, and although I see a lot of the same traits every time I have taken a test, I find the results differ somewhat each time depending on my mood/energy level/social situation. For instance, last year when taking a similar assessment on a leadership course in Hackney I came out split between a creative type and a ‘Type A’, or ‘Driver’ personality. This time I came out evenly split between the ‘Peaceful’ and ‘Precise’ personality types, almost a polar opposite to 15 months ago!

The discussion after this centered around how you can work alongside these various types, and the ways in which you can “Fill their tank”, or build trust between you. For instance, giving a Playful personality type scope to be creative and energetic in their work, and working to the deadlines a Powerful type would ask for.

The second part of the workshop was about knowing your team. We looked in greater depth at building trust, using The Five Trust Buckets and the metaphor of one’s bucket being filled when someone else does trustworthy things and emptied when promises are broken. One person may enter a new relationship with a full trust bucket already, while another may come with an empty vessel which needs to be filled before any relationship can be established.

Megan Tschannen-Moran’s Trust Buckets are Benevolence, Honesty, Competence, Reliability and Openness, which we discussed as a group and ranked in terms of our own priorities. We then moved into how to package feedback, and how this can be different when packaged in an honest way versus a benevolent way. A team culture needs to be robust enough that honest feedback can be given and received, but also respectful, so try to create a team culture that takes out repercussions after feedback. An example of using a benevolent slant could be “please take two minutes to reflect” instead of “you have two minutes to reflect”.

We also looked at the 5 States of Mind, or 5 Energy Sources, Consciousness (Being Aware of Yourself), Craftmanship (Being Aware of your Pedagogical Content Knowledge), Efficacy (Being Aware of your Capabilities), Flexibility (Being Aware of your Situation and Perspective) and Interdependence (Being Aware of your Need for Others).

The next part of the workshop was around coaching, believing that as a coach your job is to uplift the other and help them through the challenges. A good point I picked up was the need to ask questions regarding what is going on for both people in the challenging situation. Come back to the question: What is the one benefit you hope to get out of this?

We also learnt about the 7 Norms of Collaboration: Pausing, Paraphrasing, Posing Questions, Providing Data, Putting Ideas on the Table, Paying Attention to Yourself and Others, and Presuming Positive Intent.

Lastly, we focussed on knowing our culture, changing the style of the feedback, not the content to reflect the person you are giving it to, and being open to taking feedback as a gift. If you feel as though someone is feeling threatened and attacking you, ask them “what do you see that I could do differently?” as this may help diffuse the situation as they see it as an opportunity to take back control and contribute to the conversation, giving them buy-in to the situation. The 4 Ways of Adult Knowing were discussed, with the stages of this based on being rule-based, other-focussed, reflective and interconnecting.

This has been a very long post even though I have cut a lot out from my notes and reflections made while in the workshop. I hope to include some links to the theories and paradigms I have learnt about at a later date so that I can use this in the future.

Play Based Learning

Today I attended a PD session on Play Based Learning held at Ormiston Primary School in Flat Bush. We discussed the theory and research behind Play Based Learning. Here are my notes from the session:

In Play Based Learning there are 3 main educators: the Children, The Learning Environment and finally the teacher.

What is the role of the child during PBL? Independently selecting resources- this can be a very hard task for some as many rely on the adults in their life to do this for them. Talking and sharing with their peers allows for rich learning to take place amongst students. The teacher can also take the place as a student in these interactions, allowing the pupil to become the authority in games and play based investigations.

The role of the Learning Environment: How could I use this area to stretch thinking and learning? Use of open ended resources and following the interests of your learners to help dictate your resources. An open-ended resource is a thing that does not have a fixed-purpose design, e.g. a toy dinosaur can only be seen as a dinosaur, however a stone or a shell could be a phone, a car etc. Use of outdoor learning environments, water play, and use of incidental items such as large cardboard boxes from school deliveries provide different opportunities for learning.

The role of the Teacher in PBL: Facilitate, observe children’s play, listen to questions and share stories, record, reflect, respond, play alongside, gather an idea of their interests. At Ormiston, three teachers meet together and plan their sessions, what questions are going to be asked, how to set up etc. During the lessons they take notes and photographs to document the student’s learning and as a record of assessment. They begin each session with 5-10 min discussion about learners’ ideas, use photos or video of the students’ own work, and add depth to their learning by setting up a new provocation each day.

Teachers in PBL gather for a reflection everyday after the sessions. They ask what learning did we see, how were resources used, do we need to enhance those resources? How can we stretch them into the Zone of Proximal Development?