• Critically analyse the importance of leadership and collaboration in teaching practice through the application of methodologically and ethically sound teaching inquiry research in teaching specialist area
• Critically evaluate the application of teaching as inquiry research in relation to equity and social justice including the importance of dissemination of research findings to key stakeholders

15.0 Research Report

In this research report you will critically evaluate your findings from conducting your teaching as inquiry project approved following your research proposal that addresses leadership, collaboration and equity through education in your specialist area. Critically analyse the relevance, findings, benefits and impact. Consider equity through education, collaboration and leadership in your context. You need to demonstrate a critical understanding of ethical issues, relevant teaching inquiry, combined with a clearly articulated plan to address, mitigate and manage these. A range of academic resources must be used and adequately cited and referenced.

15.0 Summative Assessment

Marker's Notes: Kia ora Jessica. By designing and implementing professional development wananga to improve teacher’s confidence to deliver elements of the digital technologies curriculum, the findings of your project provide many useful insights. Undertaking this project which has allowed you to lead outside of your classroom, and widen the impact of sharing your knowledge of digital technologies to other teachers is commendable. Your passion of changing how professional learning is undertaken, using the need for teachers to expand their knowledge and understanding of the digital curriculum is clearly evident through your report. The distinction that you make between improving access to devices, and improving how knowledge is created and shared to improve social justice shows a strong level of critical thinking that stems right back to the design of your project. A lot of research related to technology and socio-economic status often focuses on access to digital devices and other technological infrastructure (e.g. an internet connection), but by broadening the scope of social justice and technology to incorporate the need to improve knowledge to be shared with students in lower income communities, your project takes a unique look at social justice.

To strengthen the argument that you made so poignantly at the beginning of your report, it could have been great to see more critical reflection of the impact of your project on social justice - I understand that the long term impacts of the extended, iterative, adaptive, practice based approach that you used is unknown, but returning to connections of social justice toward the conclusion of your report would have strengthened the argument. This could be something to consider for your symposium presentation.

You have presented great reflections of your leadership during the project, and it is great to see your awareness of the changing approaches to leadership that you demonstrated as the project progressed. By the nature of the title of your project, collaboration was an inherent element, particularly in how the participating teachers developed their knowledge of computational thinking and how they could change their practice. The impact of collaboration on the outcomes for teachers is therefore clear. Was collaboration part of your project in any other ways, for example, through the design and development of the activities implemented in the wananga? In this sense, the ways in which collaboration was part of the research design and implementation, rather than the initiative implemented, could have been discussed in the report. Given the focus on collaboration, I would have expected to see more in depth and critical reflection on this element. Collaboration could also be something to consider discussing in your symposium presentation. Linking to this, whilst clearly discussed, the findings from the data collected could have been discussed more critically.

You have limited data, and it provides useful insights into improving teachers confidence in various areas, however, at times the writing can feel descriptive, and could have been strengthened. For example, further links back to literature and other research you discussed in the literature review. There was some very good review that could have been discussed in light of your findings. The findings appear to have been disseminated within your school, and the intention of widening the scope of the project to involve more teachers (amended for scale) is promising. Engagement with the Ministry of Education is also great to see - the potential for this project is huge, and it is great to see that feedback has impacted on how the project will be refined moving forward.

Your report is well written, although there is no conclusion - this leaves the reader wondering how all the different threads of the project come together. A strong conclusion would have ideally returned to key themes of social justice, leadership, collaboration, professional learning and the digital technologies curriculum - there was space in your word count for you to do this. Overall, an excellent piece of work Jessica and we look forward to seeing where the project goes into the future.

16.0 Research Symposium

This presentation requires you to present a critical evaluation of your teaching as inquiry research project to further disseminate research findings to key stakeholders.

16.0 Summative Assessment

Coming soon.

Marker's Notes: Kia ora Jess, thank you for sharing your presentation at the symposium. It was clear that you put a great deal of work into your project and it was also excellent to see you acknowledge the person growth you experienced in your own leadership. An area that could have been improved slightly was with regards to setting the context, there were a couple of statements that were a touch assumptive and needed further evidence to support how you made these judgements. The rest of the presentation included some excellent critical reflection and you were clear in your use of slides and headings to consistently link back to social justice, collaboration and leadership. This seems like an excellent start to something which could become a really big project and we really look forward to seeing your leadership develop in this area.