Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CTL - Reflection
CTL - Reflection
CTL - Reflection
person’s role in the completion of the assessment (Luthra and Dahiya, 2015). Effective
communication ensures the success of the assessment. In the following critical reflection, I
will examine the strengths and weakness of our team and discuss changes that could be made
to aid in future collaboration and increase effective communication; in order to improve the
end product.
The groups primary goal throughout the teamwork tasks was to produce a well thought
through assessment and more importantly to develop effective teacher leaders fit to cater
for the 21 century needs. Teamwork tasks included weekly zoom meetings with Denise where
we as a team had to present out understanding of that week’s content. To achieve good
results, we as a team decided to meet on the Sunday night and discuss our findings before.
However, we as a team we struggled with meet up before the zoom meetings as we all had
prior commitments. After we all voiced our concerns, we decided that we needed to put our
energy on this team and find a way to achieve together. As a team, we delved deep into the
notion of teacher efficacy, through the implementation of the Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR).
This notion assisted us in the designing strategies to achieve our project, in line with the
An important aspect to note, is that effective collaboration did not occur immediately,
leadership (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987). In other words, the distribution of leadership amongst
the team members relied on one strong voice, rather than an equal partnership between the
team members. This meant that, in this hierarchical approach certain team members required
compliance, instead of being a working participant within the group. Being a working
participant involves changing up the roles and taking the initiative to begin certain
conversations. However, the lack of effective collaboration made it impossible to share ideas
fluently. Nevertheless, once the team took the path noted in the theory of Lee, Hallinger and
Walker (2012), we distributed the leadership equally amongst the team in a collaborative
supportive culture of sharing, critiquing and reflecting on different ideas, we harnessed our
individual strengths and expertise. We were each then able to bring our experiences, to shape
the overall purpose of creating our project to increase meaningful learning for all students.
being Fullan (2001) which argues that a component of teacher leadership is to work
collaborative to enact change within the school or system. Another a study by Rasberry and
Mahajan (2008) highlighted that well-supported and effective teachers promote a coherent
system which cultivates leaderships to inspire results amongst the school, policy and practice.
As a team, we found the best way to utilise our strengths to produce the end product was to
divide the sections amongst us. I was given the data collection and protocol section; this was
due to my strong science background in data collection and statistics. However, to ensure
that everyone on the team is in loop with the progression of the research, we created a
GoogleDoc. This not only gave insight into the progress, but it made everyone accountable
for their section. Using the GoogleDoc along with our zoom meetings was crucial and
therefore, we were able to increase our communications which ensured we produce an end
product, with a high level of understanding amongst all the team members. A change that
could be made to aid in future collaboration could include, not only relying on technology as
exposed to larger discussions times allowing for more thoughts, ideas and opinions to flow,
allowing us to focus on the smaller details; therefore, improving our overall project.
As a team we found that the experiential strand of meaningful learning was important at
highlighting effective teacher leadership. One of the group members went to Kingswood High
School who mentioned that the school began to emphasise the importance of implementing
the QTR. We then as a group decided that, that’s a path we should take and explore further.
As a group we found that it was important to understand the terms meaningful learning
before we could develop a project that would produce results. Through discussions we as a
group defined meaningful learning, as learning that involves students grasping concepts
through real-world connections. In a study by Michael (2001) our definition was further
a way that allows you to do something with it, resulting in knowledge that is stored in a way
that allows it to be accessed from many different starting points.” (para. 18). The group
interpreted that definition as giving the students the opportunity to gain an understanding
through multiple means of representations, and thus connecting concepts in many ways than
one. Therefore, after research we as a team concluded that if we create a project that
One way to improve teachers’ implementation of content, is through the QTR model, the QTR
model “has been shown to make a positive difference to the quality of teaching, teacher
morale and school culture” (Gore, 2018, p. 39). This was important to note as this quote
guided our project, we wanted to better the learning of the students, and in order to achieve
that we must focus on the development our teachers. Furthermore, the QTR places the
emphasises on the quality of teaching, rather than the quality of teachers, which is
teachers for the 21st century who are focusing on improving pedagogy, recognising what
In conclusion, our project will give recognition to the importance of the QTR and give teachers
the skills required to implement the QTR model correctly, to have the most impact. We are
therefore, showing the teachers of its great power in relation to extending their own
professional knowledge and their capacity to refine their own teaching practice, to ultimately
Reference List
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gore, J. (2018). Making a difference through Quality Teacher Rounds: Evidence from a
sustained program of research. Paper presented at the annual Research Conference
of the Australian Council for Educational Research Conference, Sydney, Australia
Lee, M., Hallinger, P., & Walker, A. (2012). A Distributed Perspective on Instructional
Leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools. Educational Administration
Quarterly, 48(4), 664-698. doi: 10.1177/0013161X11436271
Luthra, A., & Dahiya, R. (2015). Effective leadership is all about communicating
effectively: Connecting leadership and communication. International Journal of
Management & Business studies, 5(3), 43-48.
Rasberry, M. A., & Mahajan, G. (2008). From isolation to collaboration. Promoting teacher
leadership through PLCs. Retrieved from
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED503637.pdf