Critical Reflection Alicia Sukkar
Critical Reflection Alicia Sukkar
Critical Reflection Alicia Sukkar
In Module one of the unit Contemporary Teacher Leadership our first task was to ‘outline strategies
to assist in analysing, evaluating and reflecting on our beliefs and practices.’ My response to this
task was largely spoken of my self and what I can do alone, and my own fault lies in the fact that I
did not think about what role a team can have to assist in my beliefs and practices. Contrary to my
own initial beliefs, Branson and Gross (2014, p. 107) discuss the necessity of collaboration and
working as a team to meet significant needs in Education and Leadership. Reflecting on the past
few weeks, I now largely attest my success and and achievements within this unit to the group of
people I have collaborated with on a regular basis. The more our team collaborated through formal
and informal professional learning experience, the more we were infused in capacity building
(Bonanno & Wall, 2014). This has a greater effect in that it ensured our development competencies
and capacity helped to improve learning outcomes and ultimately to prepare our students in schools
for the rapidly changing world.
The team I was allocated with were driven, hard-working and passionate. In our first few weeks,
there was nothing but encouragement and support coming from every member of our team. We
were focused and we had control of our learning in the unit and commitment to our professional
development as leaders. Our team reflected Frost and Durrant’s (2014) view on a shared vision by
using strategies that “resolve the tension between the personal vision building of individual teachers
and the priorities of the school as an organisation” (pg. 2) most notably this was evident during our
groups approach to developing the group proposal. Our team was successfully able to develop work
that was structured by the following three dimensions: 1. Managing change through collaboration;
2. Experimenting with practice; and 3. Gathering and using evidence (Frost and Durrant, 2014).
Through these dimensions, our team was able to work together and present a proposal, in addition
to this, on the larger scale our team also developed personal and interpersonal capacities that will
assist us in our leadership roles as teachers.
Our team held distributed leadership, where we all had our roles and designations to form the
functioning of our team. As thought in The Distributed Cognition Theory (Spillane, 2006; Spillane
et al., 2004) our team harnessed our individual experiences and pedagogical expertise to
communally engage in the development of our practice. Peter Senge’s (1994) five disciplines
assisted our group at looking at our project from a holistic point of view. Senge’s vision of a
“learning organisation as a group of people who are continually enhancing their capabilities to
create what they want to create”, has become a prime reflection of the people in my team, and the
achievements we have collectively made, through planning, organising, communication and
working together.
My team took on a forward, critical and creative thinking approach in the design and creation
process of our School intervention. Our methods of approach during this semester were reflective of
Pink’s (2005) views of success in the conceptual age. We collaborated harmoniously to focus on a
design for schools improvement; we were empathetic in out approach to link to students learning;
we saw the essence of story building within our different areas of expertise; and we experimented
with play through the creation of new ideas. The sum of our teams knowledge, attitudes,
capabilities, talents and beliefs created our cultural asset which positively “contribute to the
collective shared human experience” (Throsby, 1999, p. 2) and created a working environment
within our team that was dynamic in nature (Jenkins, 2010).
Perhaps my teams biggest challenge throughout the entire process was choosing a suitable time to
meet either in person or on zoom and other smaller issues such as, our different interests, mainly
because we did come from such different teaching expertise. However, our team was able to
overcome this challenges because they were “Adaptive Challenges” (Heifetz and Linsky, 2002), and
our solution was to adjust our organisation and discover new methods to communicate and to have a
clear goal. Amongst the various challenges, or roadblocks we faced along our journey, though they
were little, they still played a role in the moulding the functionality of our group. Our group took on
Dweck’s growth mindset (2006) where we did not expect success every time we met, instead we
knew that challenges were a natural element in working as a team.
In conclusion, my team and I have faced challenges and successes as we redefined and informed
practices about becoming a 21st century teacher. By referring to relevant literature, our group has
taken a path that focuses on achieving success while working as a team. Our team had a shared
vision, and used success strategies to present ourselves as a collaborative team. Our team distributed
our leadership and maintained a collective functioning to tackle tasks and challenges. We held a
forward, critical and creative thinking approach and finally, we adapted to challenges and achieved
all the goals we set out to complete.
References
Branson, C. M., & Gross, S. J. (2014). Handbook of ethical educational leadership. New York:
Routledge
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.
Frost, D., & Durrant, J. (2014). Teacher-led development work: Guidance and support. Oxfordshire,
UK: Routledge, 23-26.
Heifets, R.A., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of
Leading. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 14(3), 347-356.
Pink, D.H. (2005). A whole new mind: Moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New
York: Riverhead Books.
Senge, P. et. al. (1994) The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning
Organization
Spillane, J., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. (2004). Towards a theory of leadership practice: a
distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3–34.
Wall, J. & Bonanno, K. 2014, ‘Learning and literacy for the future: Building capacity. Part Two'’,
Scan, 33(4)