When my capstone journey began, I was focused on what we could do as a school to help our students get back on track with their inquiry and deep thinking. I saw evidence that both students and teachers were relying on more traditional methods because of the restrictions brought on by the pandemic. It took some time for our team to see that this was taking our learning in the wrong direction. I was excited by the way our teachers began to embrace creative ways to bring back collaboration, student discourse, and new tools for representing learning. As we began to think and talk about agency as the focus of our work and my action research project it became clear that we needed to go deeper with our strategies for helping students become more independent as learners.
As I look at our agency work through the lens of the TPACK framework, our team was able to identify our strengths and needs. The content was coming from our IB units of inquiry and we planned with the pedagogical expertise we’ve developed especially in inquiry based strategies to engage students in asking questions, experimenting, exploring, researching etc. The challenge was to expand our technological pedagogical knowledge to find new ways of using technology as a vehicle to support agentic actions and behaviors. Through the innovative learning program, I was able to share tools that we could use to encourage students to share thinking and collaborate with their peers. I found tools that aided our team’s professional learning that promoted agency strategies. My personal growth also reflects the combination of contexts in the TPACK framework as I’ve experimented and met challenges throughout the program.
As I look at our agency work through the lens of the TPACK framework, our team was able to identify our strengths and needs. The content was coming from our IB units of inquiry and we planned with the pedagogical expertise we’ve developed especially in inquiry based strategies to engage students in asking questions, experimenting, exploring, researching etc. The challenge was to expand our technological pedagogical knowledge to find new ways of using technology as a vehicle to support agentic actions and behaviors. Through the innovative learning program, I was able to share tools that we could use to encourage students to share thinking and collaborate with their peers. I found tools that aided our team’s professional learning that promoted agency strategies. My personal growth also reflects the combination of contexts in the TPACK framework as I’ve experimented and met challenges throughout the program.