Thursday, March 24, 2011

Prezi: Individual and group training and learning

Chart 1 Result Comment

Regarding the leadership that reinforces learning, one of us scores extremely high, while all the other ones are in the bottom quartile. It is obviously that most of us see the leadership to be fairly poor and there can be much to be improved. It is evidently that most of us are in organizations whose leadership is rather remote, and we have little participation in the leadership role and cannot understand the actions of the leaders.

Regarding the learning process, the one scores with high in the previous component is also high, lying within the first quartile, whereas all the others are still below the median, with one exceptionally low. Again, most of them view the learning process not as favourable as it could have been, and there could be much improvement in this area.

Regarding the learning environment, the range of response is much closer. Four of the five responses within with 2nd and 3rd quartile, and only one is found low in the bottom quartile. Comparatively, the learning environment is better compared to the learning process. It could be because the learning process itself is dynamic and requires a lot more external conditions for it to be effective, whereas the learning environment can be more of a physical nature and with less easily interfered.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Reflection on Teacher Professional Development in Hong Kong

Staff development in schools should be in line with the school goals, which should not be restricted to the acquisition of skills and knowledge, but also professional attitudes, beliefs, values and morality. Apart from formal training courses, which include courses leading to academic and professional qualifications, short courses, workshops and seminars etc., other means of teacher professional development, like teacher appraisal, mentoring, classroom observation and sharing are also generally accepted and considered as effective ways contributing to teacher professional development.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in Hong Kong as a whole emphasizes on job-related training and seems to have paid less attention to professional, educational and moral development of teachers. The objectives usually focus more on organizational goals, less on personal and individual needs of teachers. Although teacher development should be in line with school goals, it is not necessary restricted to the acquisition of skill and knowledge. It is recommended that a more balanced approach with both personal and organization goals to be met, and both technical and non-technical skills, knowledge and value should be covered. Over-emphasizing organizational goals but ignoring teachers’ professional and personal needs may lead to less enthusiastic, passive and not innovative of teachers. The professional attitudes, values and moral standards, in addition to teaching skills, are all prerequisites of a good teacher. The success of a school not only depends on the teaching and administrative performance of teachers, but also teachers’ loyalty, commitment and identification with the school goals and mission. The establishment of a collaborative culture and good morale among all staff in schools are of vital importance to achieve the school goals and missions.

On the other hand, the courses led and provided by outsiders like advisors or university lecturers are also likely to be too theoretical and too general and may not meet the needs of the school. As such, a planned and balanced approach, in which there is more teacher involvement in planning staff development should be advocated. Moreover, apart from technical training, professional attitudes are also required for teaching professionalism. The all-round and multi-track continuous developmental approach is considered better cater the organization and individual needs.

To better cater the needs of teachers, more school-based teacher development programmes and activities should be planned and conducted. The most commonly conducted CPD activities are workshops and talks, day camps or outings, visits to schools in Mainland China or other countries. Other programmes like mentoring, lesson observation and study, collaborative teaching, lesson planning and preparation and parallel lessons should also be promoted.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Scenario Planning in our Organisations

Most of our group mate are working in secondary schools and it is a trend that the schools need to enroll more and more NCS students especially from Pakistan.
The scenario is talking about how to incorporate students to normal teaching environment as there is native Chinese speaking students.
Scenario 1:
What if the cultural differences between the NCS students and local students?

Scenario 2:

Schools need to allocate extra resources such as translating notices, handouts and etc.

Scenario 3:

Learning Difficulties: To elaborate that their mother language is not Chinese and it is quite hard to aware whether they have any kind of learning difficulties.

Work done by all group members: Lok, Dilys, Kyle, Cherrie, Timothy

Prezi: Scenario Planning

Prezi: Story Telling

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Analysis of the data gathered from the returns of our groupmates on the Combined Learning Organization Survey in the area of Concrete Learning Process

Regarding the Concrete Learning Processes and Practices in the Combined Learning Organization Survey, there are divided into 5 areas:
(1) Experimentation,
(2) Information collection,
(3) Analysis,
(4) Education and Training, and
(5) Information Transfer.

It is obviously that Kyle and my organization have relatively low result in all five areas and Dilys’s organization is the highest.

With comparing the Summarize Table which we made to compare the History, Culture, planning and staff in our own organization. I find that Kyle and my organization’s culture are similar, we both not much collaboration between departments unless an external forces by headquarters or something happened to be solved. I think this kind of culture is the main reason that tends to our low results in all five areas. Since staffs have not much chance to interact with others department, we may not see the whole views about the organization and how can we find a better way to improve the work flow or try new experiment on learning and practices? And it also tends to lack of information transfer, problem cannot be foresee.
And the information collection part is important but better not only from “external truths”, but through the approaches that have emerged from the experiences of people who have lived and breathed the complex realities and multiple perspectives that aid organizations face on a daily basis.

In my opinion, a successful organization should responsive to past errors and able to transform itself continually. So the processes and practices of learning in an organization should always be review and analysis to find a better way to motivate staff for learning. A good principle is needed to provide the context for local reinvention, inspired by experiment and analysis. And should understanding the dynamics of change and promoting a collective learning framework which staffs can constantly express their respective interests and reach consensus.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Analysis of the data gathered from the returns of our groupmates on the Combined Learning Organization Survey in the area of supportive environment

I am going to analyse the data gathered from the returns of our groupmates on the Combined Learning Organization Survey in the area of supportive environment. Our group is comprised of five members. Apart from myself, being an educational administrator in the Education Bureau, all other group members are teachers in local schools. There are 4 areas of concern regarding the supportive learning environment in the Combined Learning Organization Survey, namely -
(1) psychological safety,
(2) appreciation of differences,
(3) openness to new ideas, and
(4) time for reflection.

I can find that there is a phenomenon that Cherrie's organization gains the lowest scores in all four areas among the organizations of all our group members. Another observation is that the scores of my organization rank the first, while the scores of the organizations of Timothy and Kyle rank the second and the third respectively, in three of the above areas, which include (2) appreciation of differences, (3) openness to new ideas, and (4) time for reflection. However, the score of the organizations of Timothy and Kyle rank the first and second respectively in the aspect of (1) psychological safety, and my organization just ranks the third in this area. The scores of Lok's organization rank the fourth in the areas of (1) psychological safety, and (4) time for reflection. As ranking of Lok's organization in the areas of (2) appreciation of differences and (3) openness to new ideas cannot be shown in the summary chart (perhaps due to some unexpected factors), this analysis will not go into details on Lok's organization because of missing data.

There is another phenomenon that the scores of cherrie's organization in all of the four areas fall into the fourth quartile. On the other hand, only the scores in the area of time for reflection gained by the organizations of Timothy, Kyle and me are in the top quartile. For psychological safety, only Timothy's organization is in the second quartile, while the organization of Kyle is in the third quartile and my organization is between the third and fourth quartile. For appreciation of differences, only the organizations of Timothy and me are in the second quartile, while both the organizations of Kyle and Cherrie fall into the fourth quartiles. For openness to new ideas, the score of my organization, though the highest within our group, is only in the third quartile, while the organizations of other group members fall into the fourth quartile.

From the above observations, I find that there is a lack of supportive learning environment as a whole, in all of the above areas, in Cherrie's organization. Apart from time for reflection, which can be considered as good enough for the organizations of three of us, the learning environment of the organizations in our group in the other areas are ranging from above average to below average. Even though the learning environment of my organization seems to be most supportive, comparing with that of my groupmates, it is in the third percentile, i.e. below average, in the areas of psychological safety and openness to new ideas.

In my opinion, the above phenomenon may highly attribute to the general culture of educational organizations in Hong Kong. More specifically, teachers tend to work quite independently, with relatively high sense of professional adequacy and individualism, but not open-minded enough to accept new ideas. They may also have the psychological barrier in sharing their knowledge. Though the data in this survey may be too limited in scope to generalize anything and cannot represent the whole picture of the learning environment of educational organizations in Hong Kong, it can provide us with some indicators for reflection. It is worthwhile to carry out further investigation into the learning culture and environment of educational organizations in Hong Kong.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Reflection on Lok's story

Thanks to Lok for sharing his unpleasant experience and feeling regarding the practice of electronic check-in every day not only for students, but also teachers. As a long-serving staff of the Education Bureau, I have not come across the same kind of experience so far. It doesn’t mean that I am not required to be punctual but our staff are expected to be self-disciplined. This self-disciplined system seems to work quite well though I realize that some people may abuse the practice. Overall speaking, the issue is minor and tolerable as a whole in my organization. The governing regulations and established office practice, together with the staff management mechanism and appraisal system, may have also played an important role.

Nevertheless, I know that some other offices require part of their their staff, mostly junior-grade staff, to sign in and mark the arrival time on a record book or file. This practice may improve the punctuality of some staff to a certain extent, but there are some loopholes and drawback. The manual system needs some kind of manual monitoring on the spot if accuracy is to be ensured. Omission and then requesting for re-entry, marking an earlier time than the actual one and other disputes are also possible. Accusing the seniors of being late themselves is another source of conflict. It is important for the seniors and supervisors to be puntual themselves and become a role model and mentor for other staff. Providing them with helpful and friendly advice from time to time and clearly telling them their expectations will definitely help. Prior to providing them the advice, building up good staff relationship seems to be a pre-requisite for a success, and the advice should always be positive and non-judgmental. Otherwise, people tend to be more defensive which affects the effectiveness of our advice and guidance to them. Back to the basic, the organization culture should be nurtured and punctuality is just a undisputed natural practice.

I am neutral to the electronic checking-in system and the main consideration is the objective to be achieved by implementing the system. If a check-in system is to be put in place, an electronic one is definitely the more powerful system. Apart from the accuracy and thus the monitoring power, the data collected can further be used for different kinds of analysis, by group as well as by individual. With a powerful system in place, the protection of personal data is another concern. The school can easily list the students and even staff breaching the rules but the feeling of those being listed should be considered and balanced. In fact, whatever the objective is, the leader of an organization should always be concerned about the feeling of the staff. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people, as human being, tend to be more motivated and perform better if they work happily, with positive reinforcement like recognition. Whereas, the unpleasant experience and feeling for teachers in Lok’s school are considered negative feedback for teachers, and I cannot find any positive reinforcement for them. Perhaps, appreciating those who are always punctual is a better way. Moreover, timetables of a school are well planned and set, I trust that it should be rare for a teacher being unpunctual as it may lead to a class being unattended, thus requiring a sudden redeployment of another teacher to take care of the class.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

my story!

The staff in our organization needed to sign in and out everyday, by just writing down the time on the attendance book. Sure, you can expect that nobody would claim themselves they were late. However, the situation changed after an electronic check-in system had been installed in our work place.
The senior level of the staff claimed that the electronic check-in system is to reduce the administrative work time. However, the systems will simply and direct treat you as “lateness” after 1 minute of the official turn-up time! Moreover, The clerk posted out the record of the attendance of the staff on the notice board and the number of times of lateness are clearly shown as well.
It actually brought a trouble among staff that, the staff were stressful as their attendance record were published and the staff had a feeling that there were an offence to the professionalism. The staff were then now saying “did you check in yet?” instead of “good morning”.
It also brought a strange phenomenon that the staff rather report they had forgotten to bring the ID card instead of checking in late.

Work done by all group members: Lok, Dilys, Kyle, Cherrie, Timothy