Teacher heads overseas on scholarship

Janet McCarroll will be in the US until the end of the month on a Fulbright scholarship she won for e-learning, which has been implemented at St Mary's Catholic School since 2009. Photo / George Novak

Janet McCarroll is heading to the United States today after wining a Fulbright scholarship for e-learning at her school.

E-learning allows students to assess their own work and learn online.

The St Mary's Catholic School deputy principal is to attend a conference, "Leadership and Evolving Vision", at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and meet other school leaders.

She will then speak about student self-reporting at the Building Learning Communities Conference 2014 in Boston and meet other school leaders in New York.

Mrs McCarroll said they trialled the e-learning programme at St Mary's Catholic School in 2009 and implemented it the following year. The programme allowed children to assess their learning level and decide what they wanted to focus on next, she said. Students learned most effectively when they developed the ability to stand back from their ideas, engage and think about them objectively.

"The online environment gives us an opportunity where we can capture the feedback between the teacher and the student," Mrs McCarroll said.

The methods used by the school were built on the findings of Professor John Hattie's work.

"Where he recognised feedback was the most powerful intervention in student learning outcomes, his latest research recognises that the most powerful feedback is from the student to the teacher, so he refined his view. We have thought to further this strategy at St Mary's," she said.

"The teacher is providing an opportunity for the student to be thoughtful, reflective and make their thinking visible, allowing the teacher to be responsive to the children's learning needs."

Fulbright Award

*Fulbright New Zealand offers a range of exchange awards for New Zealanders and Americans wanting to study, research, teach or present their work in each other's country.
*Fulbright New Zealand was established by bilateral treaty in 1948 to administer the Fulbright exchange programme in New Zealand.