Collaborative inquiry in a secondary school: Part 1
Channel: Grow Waitaha
Date: 2017-08-08

Liz McDowell, Assistant Head of Social Sciences and eLearning coordinator at Christchurch Girls High, describes a collaborative teaching as inquiry in a secondary school; to support student wellbeing and agency.

TRANSCRIPT:

Our teaching inquiry came about as a result of some of the data that we’ve been collecting from students and staff. It is looking at how we can improve student wellbeing through increasing personalised learning and greater student agency with digital devices. Our learners here at Christchurch Girls’ High School have had, I guess, over a number of years excellent student achievement data. However, what we’ve been noticing recently is this is in contrast to wellbeing data that we’re collecting. Some of the students in the senior school and also in the junior school are reporting heightened levels of stress, anxiety and have often indicated that that’s to do with workload and the feeling of assessment overload. The data has been collected over a couple of years and still being collected this year, through some surveys, specifically focusing on wellbeing. Also incorporating into that, the types of questions that are asking them about how they like to learn, and how they would like to present what they’ve learnt. 

The three of us that are working on this inquiry together, we’re looking at splitting or separating the inquiry focus into three main areas. I am looking at increasing voice and choice for my junior students in the Social Sciences area. We’re still a little I guess constrained at the moment because we need to be able to provide date across an entire cohort and so my class can’t really be seen to be deviating wildly from the actual course structure at the moment. So within the confines of my course, I’m looking at the principles of project based learning through passions. So, encouraging my year nines to identify what it is they are passionate about and what gets them excited about learning. I modelled this myself and then we directed those choices and passions into identifying a person or a place or an event in New Zealand that had significance to New Zealanders. 

In our inquiry and because it’s a collaborative spiral of inquiry, the three of us will need to get together at various stages while we’re on different paths, if you like, we’re still under the main umbrella. I guess working with Grow Waitaha and the secondary incubator, and having the opportunity to meet not just with ourselves but also with the other schools that are involved, that provides us with opportunities to refine what we’re doing, check in with each other. In terms of impact on students I feel like I’m only just starting to see I guess increased enthusiasm for learning in Social Studies, but I guess it’s too early to tell. At this school, our inquiry cycle is from the beginning of term two until term two the following year, so we’re just in the early throes of that. 

We would like to be able to share the results of our inquiry which we have hope of course that will be successful in that our hunch is indeed proven correct. We’d like to be able to share that with the wider staff and look to perhaps drive some change at the end of this year in whether that’s a cross curricular year nine, year ten programme whether it’s project based learning, something along those lines because I guess if we can see value in doing these because it enhances the wellbeing of our students then it’s a worthy reason for change.