Community Engagement Plan

Community Engagement Plan:

Stakeholders:	New Windsor 28 Teachers New Windsor Principals New Windsor Board of Trustees New Windsor Learners New Windsor Staff Future focus: Ako Hiko Cluster and their principals, board of trustees, learners.
Design/Method:	Informed consent to be sent to participants via email and paper ( for those not comfortable with technology). Initial questionnaire and informal observation about their opinions on collaboration - in their opinion what is collaboration and what stops collaboration? Quantitative: Use Dweck’s (1999) questionnaire and conduct it with the participants using google forms during a Professional Development sessions.   The participants will be answering from a range of strongly disagree to strongly agree. People have a certain amount of intelligence, you can’t change it. Your intelligence is something about you that you can’t change much. You can learn new things, but you really can’t change your intelligence.   When you fail…. etc. Collaborative learning activity: Conduct a design thinking activity eg. How would a 21st century skill class look like?  Set up iPads to record interactions (with permission) and set up note-takers to record interactions. Qualitative: Set up interviews to evaluate the success of their collaboration.   eg. Was your collaboration successful? Why or why not? What did you think of the ideas given by people in your group? Did you want to collaborate? Why or why not?            Emphasise on being honest with their answers.
Evaluation:	Reflection blog documenting our journey from start to end. Analysis: Results will be compared - teacher’s mindset to their opinions of collaboration, teacher’s mindset to collaborative activity,  teacher’s mindset to interview question Look at the presence of other mindsets Presentation: Results will be presented in a report to the Board of Trustees, teachers during their professional development and report to Ako Hiko cluster.
Resources:	Google Apps For Education for google forms, blogger, communication, spreadsheet Teacher time  - Classroom Release Professional Development sessions iPad for recording Time

Research Links

Introduction to our Research

" Alone we can do little; together we can do so much". - Helen Keller

The latest buzz word is collaboration. Schools need to collaborate. Teachers need to collaborate. The community needs to collaborate. We need to collaborate. Collaboration is the key to the future.

However, we wondered what makes collaboration successful? What stops collaboration? We have had many situations where collaboration has failed. We recently read Carol Dweck's mindsets and we wondered what role does it play in collaboration. We decided this was a great topic to look into. We believed that a fixed mindset will lead to collaboration failing. People won't collaborate because they are afraid to look "dumb", their ideas were not good enough, they wanted to test themselves against everyone else before they share and they were afraid to show their weakness.

 BUT.

These were guesses. We needed solid evidence.

This journal aims to document our research and hear feedback from our community. What role does mindset play in collaboration? Is a fixed mindset detrimental to collaborative learning?

We will be holding a hui soon to inform you about our research and hear your thoughts.