Manifestaciones del principio de oportunidad

Lyn (pseudonym) is a Pakeha New Zealand teacher who completed her primary and secondary schooling in New Zealand.

Background, education, and teaching experience

At the time of research, Lyn had no experience either learning or teaching outside of New Zealand. She had spent 4 years teaching at school B following her graduation from teacher’s college in New Zealand.

School B is a decile 10, full primary school in a large suburb that caters for students from Years 1 to 8. The school has a high socio-economic status, with students coming from an affluent community. At the time of the research, the school roll was 733, and with students from 30 different nationalities. The school’s strategic plan was developed in consultation with members of the school community. The school focuses on encouraging all children “to be the best they can be” (LI).

The school’s achievement in reading, writing and numeracy was “at or above national levels” (LI) and students who were performing below expectations were supported. The students were considered active participants in their own learning as they were expected to “lead the three-way conferencing with their parents and teachers, and share their goals” (LI). Teaching practice was “set a certain way” by the school to ensure that teachers promoted students to “self-evaluate their class work and [become] skilled in providing peer feedback” in their classrooms (LI).

The school also offered “buddy classes” (LI) where senior and junior classes shared activities and learning. In these classes, each junior student was paired with a senior student, and they met once a day for reading or other kinds of activities planned by the school. Besides this, students were divided into classes of Year 1/2, Year 3/4, Year 5/6, and Year 7/8.

As Lyn noted, teachers worked in syndicates to structure their lessons, so she felt collegially supported when she first came to the school as a provisionally registered teacher (PRT) five years ago, but also that the “other teachers there [at the school] had a

“professionally stimulating reading materials” available for all teachers, and those resources “were similar to the ones she had used at the university” (LI). All the classrooms in the school were “well-resourced with reading materials” (LI).

Additionally, according to Lyn, the standards and practices set by the school provided a benchmark for beginner teachers setting out in their careers. This had helped Lyn, as she put it, “blend in and work with the other teachers” (LI). Lyn felt that her school was supportive, partly because staff engaged in “open discussions” with each other (LI). Student achievement was often discussed during meetings, and teachers would often “share good examples” (LI). Teachers “planned, discussed, and shared ideas about the types of transactional writings they would be doing over the next term” (LI). Teachers would then “set common instructional goals, teach their classrooms and administer assessment to determine the students’ level” which helped them group their students (LI).

Furthermore, at Lyn’s school, teachers observed each other according to need, based on the school’s own “appraisal system” (LI). This observation provided opportunities for teachers to discuss ideas and gain feedback on their teaching practice. It also enabled the teachers to “talk about the different levels of achievement and get better understanding by bouncing ideas off each other” (LI).

Professional learning and development

The Board of Trustees made provision for whole-school professional development to support the school’s annual goals of “high quality of teaching … sustained across the school” (LI). Consequently, school B provided professional development for teachers at the school level. Teachers “don’t have to go out for the professional development; the school brings it [the professional development] to them” (LI). The choice of professional development was “according to what they [school and board of trustees] think the teachers and students need” (LI).

Teachers at Lyn’s school had “had a lot of professional development in other areas but not in writing” (LI). Lyn recalled professional development focussed “on how to set up the books, giving children feedback with exemplars and ideas on the way children learn and understand” (LI). The professional learning was continued in their syndicate as teachers would then “meet several times and collaborate on their teaching strategies” (LI). This helped syndicate members identify “areas for improvement” and set goals for future teaching with literacy leaders that provided the PD from outside (LI).

Lyn’s classroom

On the first day at Lyn’s school, the principal took me to Lyn’s class and introduced me to both Lyn and her students. Lyn’s classroom was divided into a group discussion area on the mat, a sofa for students who needed to think and work on their own, a reading corner, and desks where students sat in their ability groups. There were current learning materials and many colourful art displays on the walls. Students’ photos, artwork and science experiments were among the materials on display. Lyn was a teacher with a sense of humour that often had her students laughing as she joked with them.

Lyn’s class consisted of year 3 and year 4 students “divided into three groups according to their reading and writing ability” (LI). The students in her class were all at the same level - “level 2 of the curriculum” based on their asTTLe assessment from the previous year (LI). Lyn showed me her class roll during our icebreaking session, where I met her to collect the informed consent forms. There were a total of 29 students in her classroom. Her classroom consisted of twenty New Zealand European/Pakeha students, four Indian students (one born in America, one in the Maldives, one in New Zealand and one in India), one Japanese student, two Thai students (one from Saudi Arabia and one from Thailand), one Cambodian and one British student.

At the beginning of the year, students from Lyn’s school were assessed using the New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars for English for Writing and then grouped “according to their abilities” (LI). The school specifically assessed the written exemplars across five bands to process indicators at end of the previous year and again the beginning of the Year. Thus students were expected to progress in their knowledge and skills as writers and through “classroom observations and their performance [the teacher] moves them to another group” (LI). In Lyn’s class, students were able to progress and move from their groups to a higher performing group if they performed.

Lyn’s Understanding of Feedback

Lyn believed feedback was “information that is communicated to a child both orally, written or through conversation” (LE). The information encompassed interactions that “confirms what the child is doing well and states their next steps of learning” (LE). Lyn thought the role of feedback was to “[provide] direction for students to act on when brought to their attention (LI). Lyn believed that written feedback was significant only when they were able to “read their feedback comments and act on it” (LI).

According to Lyn, providing feedback as “written points” in books to remind students of a teacher/student conversation was an important “reminder” (LI) of a feedback discussion. This would assist students in acting upon feedback, which Lyn saw as the most important part of a formative feedback process. She asserted that her beliefs regarding good feedback strategies had been influenced by “lectures and at University and through being provisional registered teacher here [at school B]. Her beliefs about what constituted effective formative feedback practices were further consolidated “through tutor teacher guidance and observations” (LI). As a result, Lyn’s beliefs about effective feedback practice influenced her classroom feedback strategies.

Her quality and quantity of feedback was based on “students’ ability in writing and improving their performance” (LI). Therefore, she believed in helping students work in their ability group to enhance performance in writing:

Within writing, I have a small group that are sort of at slightly below expectation I guess you could say and so we are working together in improving but they are not necessarily L2 learners (LI).

Lyn intended her formative feedback acts to stimulate students’ thinking and interest in writing, and preferred to offer “prompts and questions rather than telling students” (LI). She believed that in this process, “a bit of scaffolding, probing,” and seeing the results of “different types of feedback [had] shaped the way” she provided effective feedback (LI). One important factor she believed made feedback effective was providing it as soon as she noticed the need. She reported instantaneous oral feedback was often her preferred form of feedback, which she saw as effective in the writing process because it would prevent students from “losing focus on the task” (LI).