Professional Reflective Practice - Essay Example

Education PART ONE Question One The act of academician and other practitioners in the teaching profession presenting their action research have proved to have some benefits in terms of professional reflective practice in a number of ways. According to the author, when performing an action research, the particular practitioner can bridge the gap between research and application in his profession. This process will allow other educators to have a look at your work, and they can as well help you improve in those areas that you might have flopped in your workings. Also, it the practitioner finds him/herself in a position to access the available opportunity in gaining additional into the research process and other topics that are under investigation. This action can lead to education empowerment between different individuals, especially encouraging and giving heart to those who didn’t have a heart in taking this action. Whenever a practitioner undertakes this, he/she will help others who might fear to do the same, they will come in, creating a pool of ideas, empowering their profession in the long run. It has also led to the emergence of the Action Research Community (ARC), where those with teaching jobs come together and share some of their ideas. In ARC, the education professionals present come up with ideas on how to improve some of the aspects of the educational process such as classroom instructional practice. The process of academician presenting their action research has empowered educator at all levels, especially those who take part and make proceedings on the same. They get their selves in a position to make decisions as a result developing skills and capabilities, and gain concentration towards developing their professional needs. This is because they learn a lot of knowledge and therefore effectively increase in their practice, by affecting them positively hence focusing on their professional needs. Question Two There are a number of alternative techniques, not discussed in the chapter that I can use for sharing the findings of my research. Nearly all this techniques are simply the adaptations of the other forms of professional communications, which have made use of the technology. I use of YOU-TUBE as a social site, where I will update all my new and current action research and my findings and other professionals in the same field can see. I will also come up with a website and create some links where all the other practitioners in the same line of profession, globally, can meet and share the newly identified ideas. Others will include facebooking and making use of tweeter bundles where we will be tweeting the findings our action research and every member will get in a position to see them and comment. Question Three I conducted a web search for other types of outlets for sharing findings from action research studies in the field of mathematics education, specifically for calculus and statistics. I looked for some of the tedious mathematical problems for integration and differential functions, especially those that were posted in some of the mathematical problem sets found online. I used some of the ideas raised by the major mathematical scholars like Crammer and Jacobean and share my research on how to reach the solution, through the web. Immediately, other mathematical professionals commented on the same and provided me with some of the beat formulas that I can use in finding solutions for those differential and integral problems. Question Four I subscribed to one of the electronic mailing identified in the chapter; I contributed to some of the online discussions for a number of days. The particular website that I subscribed to belonged to Highland Park High School, in Highland Park, Illinois, where I learned that there were some individuals who are always on the internet. Within a span of five minutes, millions of thousands of ideas and contribution as well were flowing through this particular website. I came to learn that those ideas that I had and felt that they were wrong and invalid; they were sensible to some points and led to a lot of reactions from other professionals. Some of the comments that I made, concerning the contributions that I made were very positive and encouraging in nature. I learned that indeed there are a lot of practitioners who may want to build their profession alongside others who come up with ideas. They join forces and decide to reason together and formulate something that is more valid, undertake some hypothesis and test and evaluation of it as well as establishing their validity. Question Five The Ontario Action Researcher http://oar.nipisingu.ca/index.htm is the electronic journal, among the one listed in the chapter, where I reviewed the process of getting an article published from. They have a specified e-mail address where I sent an e-mail message to the specified e-mail address in the given electronic mail list. I included nothing in the mail in the subject line and didn’t include any signature as well, I gave out my last name, followed by my first name. I later selected by the name of the electronic mail list and subscribed, finally I was made a member, and, therefore, could give out some of my articles for publishing. PART TWO The article, Using Action Research to Solve Instructional Challenges in Inclusive Elementary School settings Salisbury et al., has come out clearly in addressing the matters of special education. A number of students in the class, at all the levels, are prone to disability problems that need to get addressed in well-defined manners in collaborative partnership(s). According to Salisbury et al., the best way that can get used in addressing issues of disability among students is Action Research (AR). Action Research is a method that identifies the knowledge of the students and recognizes them as well supporting them and coming up with solutions for all the challenges. AR designs solutions that can improve the students’ situation for all the challenges that arise within the school and classroom settings, having some well-defined steps if making it effective (Salisbury et al., 1997).AR emphasizes the need of collaborative partnership other that an individual approach to solving a problem and it further outline some of the advantages that teamwork tends to have on different plans. AR describes the major components of a collaborative framework and direct practitioners on how they can how they can promote the inclusion of students with all the levels of disabilities in a general education classroom. Two school districts in New York; Johnson City Central School District and Fox Chapel Area School District, who get involved in a Collaborative Innovations Project funded one of the AR projects. Teachers from the two schools get involved in this project and came up with well defined and underlined strategies on how they were going to conduct the whole project. Through the measures stated, they were able to collect the relevant information needed and conduct ethnographic field notes and interviews with all the identified students with disabilities (Salisbury et al., 1997). They conducted their studies both on the classroom contexts and within the school, collected their data, tabulated them and done some analysis on their interpretation. They classified their studies into two, through the active participation of students and where they focused on an individual student, and the other one was making a classroom more inclusive. For the first one, after identifying the disability needs of the student, the parents of the student were called for a meeting in school with the teachers. In this case, collaborative partnership is usually formed, and each member of the team get assigned some of the roles and duties that he/she will be playing. This particular approach has always proved to be more effective in assisting the students with disabilities, but the show has proved to have some strength in other fields or units of study (Salisbury et al., 1997). From the book; we have seen this working both for all the methodologies concentrating to a particular student and those that concentrate on a group of students. Personally I think that, a well-established AR with well-defined roles will always find itself in a position to solve nearly all the observable academic challenges within the students. The research found out that a well laid and defined AR is in a position to address some of the disability problems among the students. That was after a number of students who get identified as the disability problems got a lot of support and improved in some of their identified problems. I, therefore, believe that team work with well-functioning members and a well-strategized AR can help the collaborative partnership achieve their set goals, aims, and objectives. PART THREE Douglas Cheney has come out clearly in his article; Using Action Research as a Collaborative Process to Enhance Educators’ and Families’ Knowledge and Skills for Youth With Emotional or Behavioral Disorders. It is true that for the last two decades, the education industry has faced a number of challenges that can only get resolved by the use of collaborative partnerships. There has been a rise of transcidisplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams that seek to curb some of the rising challenges both in specialized and regular education systems. These groups have shown some positive and gradual improvements in some of the evident disabilities among the different students. A number of assistances need to be kept in place so as to get in strategic position to face and solve some of the rising and recurring disabilities and problems in the education sector. There is a need to provide some supports to the general education classrooms that will help in reducing referrals to special education. This will also help the general and special educators in their processes of implementing Individualized Education Plan (IEP), and aid teacher in including students with disabilities in their classrooms. The assistance should keep in place forums that specialists and educators could come together in forming interventions other than relying on the form those programs originating from other external consultants. In a collaborative partnership, all the members need to have well-defined goals, objectives, as well as the aims of the team so that each one of them works smarter towards their achievement. Each and every member has to contribute ideas when it comes to policy formulation and generalizations, as well as decision making on matters pertaining the functions of the team. Frequent consultations need to get conducted whenever one wants to make a step, and the partnership should have a mutual agreement whenever giving the final verdict. I agree with the author’s argument that whenever a collaborative teamwork is formed to assist a student, the class teacher together with the family must be part of the membership. In this case, the family plays the role of monitoring the student while at home as the class teacher do the same while at school. The class teacher makes daily follow up on the improvement and progress made by the student in the different programs he/she is receiving support. The process of implementing APR in seeking solutions for student’ social, emotional and academic problems demand a lot of resources so as to realize the set objectives. One of the required resources is time; in this case a lot of time is needed for meetings conducted among teachers and parents who are called upon to participate in assisting their students. The success of an APR process can get supported by a school-wide vision in educating all students as a community of learners and tracing the professional development needed in accomplishing this vision. The most important aspect of the APR process involves students and parents as collaborative team members since they can experience broadening of their perspectives and information they receive. The APR process provides valid and useful methods for the cooperative members enabling them to tackle and analyze the emotional and behavioral disability problems among the students. Reference Salisbury, C.L et al. (1997). Using Action Research to Solve Instructional Challenges in Inclusive Elementary School Settings: Education Treatment of Children. Chicago, IL: The Riverside Publishing Company. Read More