Inquiry and Reflection

Jenny Hughes

Reflective Synthesis

ID: 301242287

EDUC807 G011: The Foundations of Action Research

March 30th, 2016

During the fall, I read various scholarly articles to help develop a research plan, inquiry question, and to deepen my understanding of current self-regulation research which will allow myself as a teacher-researcher to connect and ground my findings in theory. During the initial stages of coding and analysis of my data, I experimented with Hatch’s Interpretive model of analysis to tease out the big ideas from my reflections, inquiry journal notes, and analytic memos.  I followed a similar strategy to help crystallize and synthesize the concepts that resonate with my teaching practice when re-reading my five reflective commentaries, as well as my three responses to others in the cohort.  I re-read each reflection, to get a sense of the whole, and paid extra attention to notice any patterns with concerns to who or what I chose to comment on.

The reflections that I chose to share mirror my journey as a practitioner-scholar, where I started with the theory and then turned inwards to connect to my experiences and values.  One of my key understandings, from the article The Soul of Education, is the importance of nourishing the spiritual development of teens and helping them address questions like why am I here, where can I ask for help, and does anyone love me? Emotion is the study of the spirit but somewhere along the way, researchers have changed that lens to study behaviour.  I suspect that this is the result of researchers feeling the cultural shift towards truth only being associated with the scientific method and in quantitative studies.

The new early years curriculum and the graduation track draft curriculum help confirm my hunch that students and educators alike felt the need to humanize our public education system.  I am optimistic that these changes to the BC curriculum will help dissolve some boundaries between feelings/emotions and school life.  Ross Greene’s article, Frequent Flyers, addressed “actionable information” and challenged my views about how our school based team runs meetings.  Many of our “frequent flyers” come from “that” neighbourhood, have “those” parents or “that” diagnostic label. It is easy to become overwhelmed with all of the reports, evaluations, behaviour placements, functional assessments and so on.  The big idea, that helped spark my inquiry into self regulation, is the notion that “these factors aren’t completely irrelevant, of course, but if you spend a lot of time in meetings talking about things about which you can do nothing, then staff members may come to the conclusion that they cannot help the student.” I am not making a statement that these discussions are pointless, but there is a need to focus the conversation so it is not centered around the things which we educators cannot change.  Brookfield talks to the value of democratic discussion as a means for revealing the diversity of opinions and reaching a critically informed understanding of complex issues.  Whether I am a part of a team discussion about a student or designing an inquiry I question widely accepted idea or beliefs, try to remain flexible enough to adjust my own views in light of well supported ideas, and give consideration to all voices concerned in the matter at hand.    

I commented on Lynda, Jo-anne, and Martin’s posts, and looking back I can see a pattern of who and what I chose to respond to on the Canvas discussion log.  Lynda is in my critical friend group, taking a supplementary course with me, and also looking into self-regulation for her inquiry.  Jo-anne works with adult learners in an alternative situation, and is involved in the Well Ahead Initiative in her respective school district.  Martin is also in my critical friend group, has shared that he was an at-risk student in his formative years, and works with a similar demographic in his classroom.  Brookfield talked about the term, engaged pluralism, and I can now see how it’s many facets are present in our Canvas reflective post assignment.  When reviewing and reflecting on the collection of posts I see: an openness to risks one’s ideas, the peaceful coexistence of multiple perspectives or interpretations, and the requirement to be responsive to the claims of others.  I found that when reading and commenting on other posts, I was encouraged to engage in discussion with people who might hold radically different perspectives than me.  This has helped me re-examine my own commitments and avoid complacency.  

Martin: That's a powerful video. Thanks for sharing -I hadn't heard of them. There is no emotional education built in to our system unless an individual teacher decides to teach it. I tell my Acting students (and their parents) that that this is likely the only emotional education they will get in school because so much of great plays are focused on social dysfunction. But I think it should be more integrated into our curriculum... it would benefit both students and teachers.

The above comment from Martin reconfirmed that if I hope to teach proficiency in “non-academic” things such as patience, social responsibility, flexibility, and adaptability then I must teach these skills explicitly with many opportunities for practice. I know that challenging students are not challenging all of the time, but rather they struggle when they are confronted with something that they lack the skills for.  It is never ideal for a student to lose their cool and look bad in front of their peer group.  I believe that if a student had self regulation skills, then he or she would use them.  I challenge that system wide interventions like detentions, suspensions, or losing privileges are archaic simply because they do not teach the student any skills that they lack.  I think that using fear and separation as tactics to “teach” children a lesson is actually yielding results that are less than desirable. This is the larger issue that is fueling my inquiry into looking at ways to infuse self-regulation and emotional education in our school system.