Navigating Intersections

Learning and Teaching in Catholic Schools 2014-15

Getting started …. Some brief introductions

One person from each school introduces themselves and the team. The person shares 4 things that are important for the group to know about their school.

Exploring an artefact of learning from your school context

Some reflections • No overarching common purpose, common understanding; we give students choices but not necessarily voice;

‘its time’ • Aligning RE and inquiry- we are overthinking ways to incorporate faith, we need to take steps back and consider

simpler ideas; teachers give unintentional messages to students through our displays, e.g. language we use• Assessment and ipads- how do students make linkages to their own religion; how do they use ipads to actively

seek out; hoping for students to link religion • Wondered: how do we make out intentions explicit in everything we do? • Humanities: linking notions of Catholicism to humanities through themes; using themes as an entry/beginning

point for broader discussion then narrow the focus e.g. relationships and spirituality. Beginning with questions and issues of concern for students. Seeing RE and learning in terms of intercontextuality, or ‘navigating intersections

• Mindmaps: linking ch of KWL to inquiries. Challenge: how do we skill teachers to make the links in units of faith/life, to ask the big questions.

• Crucial element: dialoguing with teachers to skill them to embed a faith/life inquiry with students; making links to other areas is becoming more fluid among teachers; challenge: after the initial energy we get stuck as we move through the planning. How do we continue the dialogue all the way through planning learning

• Student web page concerning health issues & written pieces of student learning: challenge- time; there is still a sense that curriculum areas are discreet but how we develop something more organic? How do we change perceptions of staff and students to considering curriculum as more organic? Not parachuting God into all curriculum bit exploring Catholic identity through the whole curriculum?

Exploring an artefact of learning from the context of the system

1) The renewal of learning and teaching in the Catholic system2) What we learn about learners from the ECSI data

Navigating Intersections: Rationale for School Inquiry

• A critical issue for the Catholic system is how students engage in a critical dialogue with the tradition and their world

• This project seeks to learn how students explore and enact what it means to learn dialogically/hermeneutically across all curriculum areas.

Christ’s Entry into Brussels

International Speakers Series 2013Dr Didier Pollefeyt

“The question for Catholic education is, ‘will it be able to welcome Christ when he appears in our midst? Can we create a context where we can welcome the coming of Christ into our school life; are we sensitive enough to see Christ in all the places where this happens?’ Sometimes we think that it is only in the liturgy and in religious education where this occurs and that it is the job of the priest and the religious education teacher to build the Catholic identity of the school.

continued

International Speakers Series 2013Dr Didier Pollefeyt

However, it is the whole school that should be the place where Christ is received, also in chemistry and mathematics and in gymnastics.The whole course, the whole system of the school should be so developed that it is able to recognise, to read the signs when Christ is coming in the chaos of a post-modern Western culture.”So I pose the following questions for your consideration: What are the challenges that confront educators today? In light of the data, what might learning and teaching in our

contemporary culture look like if it is to enable meaningful and liberating lives?

Foundation to Year Twelve

A perspective across all thirteen years of schooling will enable all learners (student and teacher) to consider the ‘where from’ and the ‘where to’ dimension of schooling.Each of the following graphs sits within this view of Catholic education across all thirteen years of schooling.

An illustration of patterns of religious belief in schools, based on 2013 Victorian data

Belief

Unbelief

Years F – 6 7-12

Religious belief is in decline, contrasted with unbelief or disbelief which is on the rise.How might learners engage with the mystery of God?

An illustration of student opinion about engagement with dialogue based on 2013 Victorian data

Preference for dialogue

Rejection of dialogue

Years F – 6 7-12

Through dialogue, each person deepens their own appreciation of their life and has an opportunity to engage with others.How might a Catholic pedagogy engage students in dialogue?

An illustration of student opinion about the kind of Catholic school desired, based on 2013 Victorian data

Preference for explicit Catholic identity

Rejection of a specific Catholic identity

Years F – 6 7-12

An explicit Catholic identity is increasingly rejected with a secular viewpoint gaining dominance across the years of schooling.How might the curriculum offered challenge students to search, question, inquire and imagine?

An illustration of student opinion about values education based on 2013 Victorian data

Recognition of that which is explicitly Catholic

Preference for Values Education

Years F – 6 7-12

Throughout the years of schooling, a preference for values education remains very high.What in our practice might enable a critical dialogue with the Catholic tradition?

• How do you sit with all of this in the context of your own Catholic school community?

• Because of the challenges so evident in this data, we believe that we need to understand more deeply, how students, as learners, engage in a critical dialogue with the tradition and their world and how they explore and enact what it means to learn dialogically/hermeneutically across all curriculum areas.

• We have a hunch …

We have a hunch…

• Our hunch is that the learning hermeneutically indicators, will enable this project, with which you are critical inquirers, to find a way to make sense of what learning and teaching in Catholic schools, across all areas of the curriculum might look like.

• Our hunch is that all student learners in our schools, through a critical dialogue with the Catholic tradition, may become more fully, the person that they are meant to be.

Learning

hermeneutically

…

CEOM Catholic Learning and Teaching context

Horizon of Hope

Change… human self-understanding changes with time and so also human consciousness deepens…we grow in the understanding of the truth…the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding…The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong…The thinking of the church must recover genius and better understand how human beings understand themselves today, in order to develop and deepen the church’s teaching.

Pope Francis on Deepening Catholic Teaching by Encouraging Human Self-Understanding, August 31, 2013

Bold

Pope Francis 2013

“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads…”

A Sacred Landscape -

Horizon of Hope

the purpose of a Catholic school

A Catholic school cannot be a factory for the learning of various skills and competencies designed to fill the echelons of business and industry. Nor is it for “clients” and “consumers” in a competitive marketplace that values academic achievement. Education is not a commodity, even if Catholic schools equip their graduates with enviable skills. Rather, the Catholic school sets out to be a school for the human person and of human persons

(Miller,2006,p.24)

Possibilities for Learning and Teaching

What are the possibilities of these horizons: Hope; Courage; Liberation; Dignity; Freedom; Solidarity; Integrity; Responsibility; Transformation; and Truth, for our Learning and Teaching?

We liked …• Notion of searching that goes through the doc, e.g. Boeve quote• Not a closed approach to learning; learning as open-ended, no

fixed answers; about the quest, the search• Recognition of No great master narrative• Reference to death and resurrection• Any curriculum leader could read this• Welcomes opportunity for individuals to bring their experience• Understanding self before we give back• Encompasses inclusivity, all-embracing• Emphasis on ‘hope’, a new way forward, that’s what were here

for

Processing what we have heard about the system context

CONNECT: How are the ideas and information presented CONNECTED to what you already knew?

EXTEND: What new ideas did you get that EXTENDED or pushed your thinking in new directions?

CHALLENGE: What is still CHALLENGING or confusing for you to get your mind around? What questions, wonderings or puzzles do you now have?

Capturing the thinking in the group …• Purpose – clarifying what we do and why. RE needs to be explicit – bring it in to the dialogue• Diversity – within our catholic community – this can challenge families and their traditions• Connection- through similar journey. Realising we need to work with staff, however also need to work with student (dual

focus) – direct classroom/student application• How do we keep track of this – so many possibiliities• Connections – being explicit with students• Extending this – beyond all curriculum areas• Challenge – is the key to all this the teachers – aspiring teachers, how do we foster this – to see the layers of meaning• Ideals are present in our documents, but how do we make them at the forefront of our work, how do we educate staff….

Change perspectives….developing our underlying culture….developing an awareness beyond (…including curriculum)• Wondering – how do we develop the understanding that this is about relationships…..with God …..with others……..the key

ideas can be understood – within a values context – need the theological underpinnings –• How do we engage the families with this way of learning/working ……..• Dialogue – how are we incorporating this in our classrooms – moving from the adult understandings/processes (including

this) but appropriate for students• Are we giving students time to engage in dialogue, to question – what does this look like in diverse contexts?• Starting with the staff – will they feel comfortable? Or focus on a core group of teachers and students – developing student

voice, hearing from the students, stories of success• Catholic Identity and personal narrative – requires diverse experiences – to develop • What is the intrinsic nature of catholic identity – We need to understand/deal with the reality – need to focus on the

relational – relationship with God -

Why this project….. Our Contemporary Context……• The formation of the learner occurs within an evolving globalised world characterised by rapid

technological and social change. This is a world where diversity of view and expression of cultural and faith identity is present and influential in shaping our understanding of ourselves and our communities.

Our Catholic Context…..• A critical issue for the Catholic system is how students are engaged in a critical dialogue with

the tradition and their world. This project seeks to learn how students explore and enact what it means to learn dialogically/hermeneutically across all curriculum areas.

Informed by research from our own settings…..• Our inquiry is informed by research and evidence from the Catholic Identity Project and the

through the renewal process of the Teaching and Learning Framework, 'Learning Centred Schools: A Sacred Landscape'.

Through collaborative and inquiry-focused ways of working…..• The project builds on the knowledge and capacities of teachers and leaders to develop further

a culture of professional inquiry across the system that enhances learning in a Catholic context.

Goals

• The project continues to develop knowledge and understandings around designing for learning across the curriculum within the framework of learning hermeneutically.

• The project seeks to understand the nature of learning hermeneutically as revealed through student learning.

• The project continues to support leaders in their research and provide opportunities for contributing new knowledge and learning to the system

Focus of Inquiry

• How are students supported to engage in a religious interpretation of their world through curriculum design and pedagogy?

• How do teachers and leaders work and learn together to enable students to do this?

Why this way of learning in a Catholic system?

Dialogue: In the dialogue each person discovers their own perspective, and deepens their own perceptions of their life and their world. This process of discovery builds community and nurtures identity. (Haers, 2004)

Inquiry: “The purpose of the Christian tradition is not to simply repeat the truth, but to go in search of it.” Boeve

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads. Pope Francis, 2013

Connected: Human beings are, in their most intimate nature, relational beings, who can neither live nor develop their potential without being in relationship with others #39 Educating to Intercultural Dialogue in Catholic Schools

• In teaching the various academic disciplines, teachers share and promote a methodological viewpoint in which the various braches of knowledge are dynamically correlated, in a wisdom perspective. The epistemological framework of every branch of knowledge has its own identity, both in content and methodology. However, this framework does not relate merely to “internal” questions, touching upon the correct realization of each discipline. Each discipline is not an island inhabited by a form of knowledge that is distinct and ring-fenced; rather, it is in a dynamic relationship with all other forms of knowledge, each of which expresses something about the human person and touches upon some truth. Educating to Intercultural Dialogue #67

What are we hoping to see along the way?

The extent to which students reveal a deep understanding of their own identity- who they are, what they believe, what influences their identity and how they understand others and the world.

How - Through engaging in a collaborative inquiry: within schools, across schools in partnership with CEOM

How will we know if we are progressing our learning and the learning of students?

• Use of an Action Learning Cycle to promote action in response to learning• Ongoing reflection, documentation and the analysis of evidence via the blog• Through the development of a ‘product’ of learning by each school team that can be shared more

broadly throughout the system.

Ways of working in your context: leading learning

Photo chat

Lunch

Navigating Intersections ???????

Consider the metaphor ..If this image is a metaphor for living in today’s world, what does it

suggest about learning in a Catholic school?What are the limitations of this metaphor?

When someone is ready, they offer a comment, question or reflection to the group to start the process. Others build on or offer another perspective in light of what they have read.

Try to be comfortable with silence and think time.

Engage in free flowing dialogue:

Some ways you can contribute to the dialogue:• Playing with ideas – possibility thinking• Affirming and building upon others’ ideas• Follow the ideas as far as you can – give in to the ‘ebb and flow’

in different directions• Making links between others’ ideas• Considering multiple perspectives or various viewpoints.• Offering questions and paraphrasing as well as your own

thinking• Offering an alternative way of looking at things.

In contrast to …

Theological reflection

• Seeing new layers of meaning in our work • Dialoguing with others• Enabling all learners, Catholic as well as other

believers, to discover meaning in their lives in dialogue with the Christian story

• Respectfully engaging with the Catholic tradition, in dialogue with other traditions

What does it mean to learn and to lead in a Catholic school in today’s world?

Purpose: to create some space to dialogue about what it means to learn and to lead a Catholic school in today’s world, informed by the theology and theories underpinning the Enhancing Catholic School Identity project.

The Parting of the Red Sea,Marc Chagall

•What do you see?

•What do you think about what you see?

•What does it make you wonder about learning and leading in a Catholic school today?

Exodus 14: 15

In preparation for day 2

• What is your desire for student learning? What is missing? What are your hunches? (drawing on your work from today and any further discussion)

• What question for inquiry might focus your research in your context?

• What else do you need to know to help you discern your question for inquiry?

• How might you find out? (if this is a question worth exploring and this is a hunch that is shared?)

• How might you test out your hunch? With whom? Who do you need to talk to?

• What does your ECSIP data reveal about your learners (if you have it) ?

Reflections on these questions may be added to the blog: