The Australian Curriculum is providing teachers and teacher librarians with many new challenges, including the need to continually improve personal knowledge and understanding of digital tools and digital environments. Indeed, if we are expected to contribute to an educative experience that prepares our students to function efficiently and effectively in 21st century society, then we ourselves need to accept a level of responsibility to develop our own skills and knowledge in relation to digital tools and digital environments. These tools and environments are likely to feature extensively in workplaces and in society in general for a long time to come.

Putting aside the complexities and politics of a teaching career, being a teacher provides a wonderful challenge for those in the profession to embrace and adapt to constant change. Certainly, it sometimes feels like the change is never ending and it can really induce a lot of stress! But ever the optimist, it is something I secretly love about being a teacher. Danielson (2007) describes teaching as a “flat profession”, whereby as we gain experience, our responsibilities are essentially the same as a new teacher. I don’t necessarily agree with this. Sure, there are similarities in being able to deliver exciting learning opportunities to students regardless of the stage of your career, or being passionate about your subject and content. However, I think that as we gain experience, it’s not a “flatline” but (hopefully) on an upward trajectory in terms of the richness of what we can provide! Our challenges and responsibilities change quite a lot. The responsibilities of a new teacher are to learn how to juggle life as a teacher, how to manage a class of students after being dumped headfirst into your own classroom with limited practical experiences, how to try a few different things just to see if they work and be OK if they fail, and be motivated to improve them to make them better, even if they do come off well. Experienced teachers have different responsibilities – they’re often no longer experiencing the aforementioned challenges, but rather a whole set of new ones.

A huge personal challenge for me is the rate at which technology, and in particular digital tools and environments, are changing. It is really difficult to keep up with all of the fantastic opportunities that the digital world presents, which in turn makes it feel like an enormous challenge! A great example of my ignorance in this field relates to coding. I find it extremely intimidating, I have never done it and I wouldn’t even know where to start. However, I acknowledge and accept that coding is likely a working/learning skill required to function in 21st century society. On completion of this masters, I will hold a leadership role in a school as a teacher librarian. Part of my role is to embrace such challenges, and acknowledge the importance of digital upskilling for the benefit student learning, and ultimately, a rich and useful education. Furthermore, I’ll probably have to inspire others to embrace them too!

Leaders in schools, including but not limited to senior executive members, teacher librarians and teachers, have a responsibility to accept the challenges presented by rapid and dynamic technological change. This includes everyone accepting a personal and professional responsibility to learn about digital tools and environments. I envisage a world where professional learning communities made up of teachers across all experience levels and all domains can commit to improving outcomes in digital skills (in the case of coding, these would include digital literacy, design thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, etc.) for students by collaborating effectively via structured professional learning (PL) and collaborative planning and teaching practices. Collaboration in PL can lead to the kind of accountability, support and engagement required to actually implement the PL into the classroom setting (Cole, 2012). I am also as ambitious to think that in a secondary setting, and potentially even in upper primary settings, students could be contributors of skills/knowledge to professional learning in coding, alongside other experts in the field.

Leadership is about many things, but I think great leadership includes a strong element of foresight and anticipating what will be needed in the future. The state of our country at the moment is a wonderfully depressing example of leadership that has failed to employ foresight or anticipated what might happen next (and if it does, what are we going to do). To state the obvious examples, our response at both state and federal levels to the pandemic, our involvement and response to the events in Afghanistan, our response to the bushfires and to climate change in general…it’s quite frankly embarrassing. Instead, we are stuck being constantly reactive and backpedalling.

Digital tools and environments are certainly not new, and they are still ever-changing, but rather than be on the back foot, it is up to us to see the writing on the wall. The present and the future of education is certainly going to include these tools and environments, so it’s up to all of the leaders in schools to embrace them, and attempt to anticipate their use in the future. Collaboratively, we can be held accountable for each other to focus on providing authentic learning for the future.

 

References

Cole, P. (2012). Linking effective professional learning with effective teaching practice.
https://ptrconsulting.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/linking_effective_professional_learning_with_effective_teaching_practice_-_cole.pdf

Danielson, C. (2007). The many faces of leadership. Educational Leadership, 65(1), 14-19. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept07/vol65/num01/The-Many-Faces-of-Leadership.aspx