Mindlab Assignment 1

 30% Reflective entry 1: Analyse the issues of society, culture and professional environments in relation to your practice 

Seeing year 8 students leaving to college with low level of achievement in relate to Maths, Reading and Writing breaks my heart. These students have been playing catch up in learning since their formal education began at the age of 5 years old.  Often, I don’t want to imagine what happened at college for these learners . Majority of them are from working class families or children of migrant parents.  

There were times we point finger to teachers but that does not solve the problem. The problem is bigger than us.  Who should we blame? To get to the problem, we often stepped backward. 

These students are the ones labelled as failure in education because they have not got to the curriculum level expected of them. Some of them go to college and become too overwhelmed with everything and dropped out without achieving level 1 NCEA. 

In this situation, the Bureaucratic nature of education, is quite evident, the view of intelligence as unchangeable, as measurable and as a scarce resource (Brown, P., & Lauder, H. (1991). These group of minority learners can not measure up to align their knowledge with what is expected of them. They are not intelligence enough to fit the mould and the expectation of the education system.  The expectation of the curriculum is to create a pedagogy conforming to the hierarchical structure of a bureaucracy  in which the pace and content of learning is determined by decisions made by a political and administrative process in which the room for manoeuvre of both teachers and students is severely constrained (Brown, P., & Lauder, H. (1991).  These learners are falling behind of this expectation due to the rigid structure of the curriculum. They are labelled as failure but is it really their fault and their parents or is it a societal problem? The educational inequalities continues in today’s formal educational system, that is hierarchically structured and chronologically graded . 

To level the playing field, I tried to have extra time, to work with these learners. I made the do extra work with the hope they can catch up. I shared the data so they can see where they are at and where the expectations for them in relation to the curriculum. 

On the other hand, the free choice and market orientated education system, will also fail these learners.  The disparities  caused by choice  unintentionally contributed to further educational inequalities, while performance gains are only marginal . Those who can make the choices are people who have the resources to enter schools that caters for their needs.

However, in the era of globalisation and technological capabilities, these learners should not be left behind. Creating  online learning such as class sites and using google platform for learners to access learning, anywhere, anytime, any place can be a solution. It could be a way to ensure that  ‘all boats rise on the same tide’ (Parsons, D. (2017).  On the other, this learning platform has its own challenges. Learners need to have the self-discipline and motivation to take their learning on themselves. Considering, the role of parents and families, in supporting the young learners, there is a need to reach out to families to enable them to provide support for their young learners/children.

Using the affordance of technology to access teaching and learning, does not fully alleviate the problem of equity in learning for learners from low socioeconomic. This is because parents does not fully aware of the technical skills their children have and often left them to do it themselves. 

With the experience of Covid- 19 and learning from home, learners were evidently showing their environment which is not necessarily supportive of their need to be successful in education. I was privileged to be in their house virtually to have a feel and experience the struggle that these learners have. But for them it is not a struggle. That is their normal life.