Metareflective Essay - Final

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Amanda Henry

Metareflective Essay 1

Metareflective Essay

According to the Mission, Vision, and Values of the Education Doctoral Program (2010)

a scholar “will be stewards of the discipline, individuals entrusted with preserving, creating, and

applying knowledge in education and with communicating education knowledge to others.”

Further expanding on the EDP’s vision are the core values, which include content expertise,

discipline inquiry, and scholarly disposition. I acknowledge and accept these statements to be

true and necessary to the development of a scholar. These values, in my opinion, encompass me

as an individual, the faculty, the courses and assignments, my cohort, and the scholarly

community as a whole. They have all been an integral and critical component and support my

growth professionally and personally.

Reflecting on the personal side of my development one thing that was necessary for my

development as a learner, an emerging researcher, and scholar was to find a method to make

meaning from the information overload that I was experiencing. The readings, discussions, and

assignments felt as if they were in a completely different language, especially when it came to

digesting the various paradigms and philosophies. I knew that I needed to be interactive with the

readings and to do as many hands-on things in order to solidify and ground my new-found

knowledge in a manner that was constructive and transformative for me to emerge as a doctoral

candidate. I took notes of the major key points and wrote down personal connections via

personal or professional experiences that helped me to conceptualize what was being said. This

enabled me to revisit key points, do further research, or ask questions on items that I was not

clear on or continued to struggle with.

My interactive process for notes and activities allowed me to build my content expertise

and scholarly disposition. One activity that exemplified this was the Wiki page that I created for
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Philosophy of Education. It was here that I was able to synthesize my personal understanding of

the major philosophical paradigms. I tried to include my personal views and understanding of

each of these and as a constructivist, I feel that I learned immensely by giving the facts and basic

information about each paradigm. Putting the paradigms in an educational context was also very

helpful for me as a teacher because I was able to see how each has played a part in the

educational setting. This is an interactive and living document that allows me to have easy access

to the material as needed and I can modify, adapt, and change as I continue to evolve. It is also a

demonstration of my development of my scholarly development as I took responsibility in being

actively engaged in my own personal life-long learning.

Since the start of my doctoral program, my professional life has evolved from being a

teacher to a full-time MTSS coach. This professional transition has been indicative of the various

courses in the Institutional Analysis track that stretches me intellectually as a student, a teacher,

and leader of MTSS. I have gained a new perspective and have broadened my lens and scope in a

way I did not know was possible. They have added tremendously to my skillset as a teacher,

student, and professional. I can truly look back and see the scholarly growth that I have made

throughout my EDP program and I am eager to see the ways in which I will continue to grow

throughout the next phase of the program.

Being a part of the EDP is being a part of a scholarly community, which as I indicated

earlier encompasses more than just myself. My cohort members, the various courses and

assignments, and the faculty have been cornerstone pieces to the community and my scholarly

development. Included below are a few key pieces that exemplify this.

EDUC 723 – Assessment Techniques


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Learning Outcomes – This assignment used historical, philosophical, and/or policy perspectives

to identify and operationally define learning outcomes suitable for assessment. This activity was

incredibly helpful and beneficial both for this class and for a course I was developing at my

school. This activity facilitated critical discussions of what we ultimately wanted the students to

accomplish in the MTSS structure study hall and how we were going to accomplish it. While I

have had numerous opportunities to design and create learning outcomes as a teacher, this

activity enabled me to apply my knowledge and skills on a more advanced level. Based on

feedback and suggestions from my professor and colleagues, I created a more in-depth product.

While this made them lengthy, they are more explicit and clear. However, I did scale back the

length and the level of readability on the course syllabus, as the targeted students for the course

are struggling readers. Having created a thorough document made it easy and manageable to do

so and provided a great reference for the teachers.

Assessment Rubric – this was to be developed and used to assess one of the learning outcomes

previously identified. As a teacher, I use rubrics frequently as I find them as a great way to set up

my expectations and outcomes for the students on a given topic or assignment. The research and

books confirmed my rational and purpose, and also reaffirmed my philosophy of a student-

centered environment. Like the learning outcomes, I struggled to bring the assignment specificity

and clarity; particularly in creating the ‘exemplary’ category of the rubric. After feedback and

additional reading, I modified the exemplary category to reflect this level, with an understanding

that it is more challenging for students to attain this level without going above and beyond what

is expected. This was an essential piece to the rubric and the process that I had been missing.

Final Assessment Plan – This is a developed assessment plan that aims to promote the

improvement of learning within a particular setting. Reflection, reflection, reflection has become
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a reality for myself, for my teachers, for my students, and for the learning process. I cannot

emphasize enough how critical reflection has been for me throughout this course, and in creating

a new course. It is through this process that I have been able to communicate and continually

adapt, modify, and enhance the course at my school.

EDUC 725 Assessment Techniques

Class Presentation - We had to select a dataset from our area of interest, identify a meaningful

research question, and conduct appropriate statistical analysis. I was taking this course at the

same time as EDUC 723 and chose to continue my focus on the new MTSS course being

implemented in Sheyenne High School. From this presentation I was able to be a practitioner of

statistics, and although I hate to admit it, (I associated myself with being a qualitative researcher

more so up to this point) I really liked it. It fit with what I was trying to do for my MTSS Study

Hall and my teachers appreciated seeing progress of how the course impacts student success.

EDUC 773 Qualitative Research Methods

Class Presentation –This course required a presentation of a deepened understanding of a topic

related to qualitative inquiry. For this assignment, I submitted my topic presentation on the

Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM). The class provided me with the perfect opportunity

to ‘get my feet wet’ with the material before I participated in my independent study in the

summer 2013 semester, in which the focus was to put the CBAM model into practice.

I struggled in the beginning to wrap my head around the concept of a theory informing

practice. It was not until I was finalizing my presentation that things started to fall into place. A

major component of helping me through my frustration was talking with the whole group and it

was from these discussions that I was able to develop a research plan to help facilitate movement

of my project. I was able to gather valuable resources from websites, articles, books, and videos,
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which enabled me to gain a deepened understanding of the framework. From there, I was able to

apply my knowledge out and walk through the theory being applied to research. I was also able

to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the framework and of the research itself.

EDUC 779 Survey Research

Survey Project – I had to conceptualize and conduct an instrument development research study in

an articulated field of study. This course is one of those ‘ah-hah’ courses for myself as a learner,

student, and leader in my school. I definitely want to continue to develop my technical writing

skills, and to build on my conceptual framework of how to develop and draft frameworks for

future research. This course has pushed me in the workforce world as I was able to collaborate

with my colleagues to develop an instrument that was tailored to fit our needs. It enabled me to

show my leadership skills in administering the survey and reporting out on the survey, leading to

conversations and starting a plan of action to continually build a positive and open climate.

Developing a meaningful survey is more that creating a survey-monkey with questions; it

requires time, research, collaboration, revisions, time, dedication, and TIME in order to create

something that has purpose and to measure what it is supposed to.

The Education Doctoral Program has been and continues to be instrumental to building

and developing my skill set and confidence as scholar personally and professionally. All that I

learned throughout the coursework, including the various assignments, interactions with my

cohort, colleagues and faculty members has been one of the most beneficial and rewarding

opportunities. This program has been a blessing at such a pivotal time in my personal and

professional life. It continues and will continue to have a long-lasting impact myself in

unimaginable ways.

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