Artifact 1: Educational Inquiry
When thinking about educational inquiry, I mentally put myself in the place of doing deep-level questioning to either understand an overarching topic, or to find answers that I have been lacking. By being a master’s in education student focusing on educational change and leadership, one of the most popular ways of finding information is by educational inquiry.
This learning goal is important to my master’s program, as well as in my professional work, because it forces me to look deeper into complicated topics and situations in education. By doing educational inquiry, I have dissected educational topics and created my own way of processing the information.
The course artifact that I have chosen is a Literature Review, where I dove deeper into educational policy, and the many layers that comes with it. I started off this literature review by introducing a series of questions, based off of questions I independently curated to deepen my understanding. By having these questions, I was producing educational inquiry.
The learning goal of educational inquiry is divided into three components. Below, I highlight those three components, as well as explaining how they were implemented within the literature review artifact.
Investigate social, political, and economic consequences of theory, research, and practice through educational inquiry.
Throughout this artifact, I used my lining of questioning to guide my research. Once I chose a topic to focus on, I really did some independent deep critical thinking and thought about questions I was really focused on answering. These questions vary from “What is the current framework for educational policy?” to “How does international policy compare to national policy?”. Through this line of questioning, I was able to dive deeper into policies that are in place currently, and really see the downsides of various educational practices. By seeing the downsides, I was able to change the narrative and explain better ways to educate.
Apply critical literacy skills to reading educational research.
One of the biggest takeaways from this artifact, is the research I had done to answer the questions I created. When doing a literature review within the topic of education, it is important to be aware of the tone the research has (what perspective does the author have on the topic), and if I wanted a strong tone to guide research. For most of the research I did, I was looking for both good and bad educational policies to even the structure of the literature review. One of the biggest concepts for my artifact is comparing educational policy to educational change (and how connected the concepts are). By going about that concept, I had to navigate my research where negative educational policies were found, but also finding ways to change it and make it better (sometimes meaning research international policies).
Utilize educational research to guide personal, professional, or institutional practices.
By implanting my guiding questions, as well as doing both positive and negative research articles, I have found ways to implement new and improved practices both professionally, and eventually as my career grows, it will be institutionally. Throughout this literature review, I came across practices that could be introduced from the elementary level, all the way to the college level. One of the biggest practices that I have started to do professionally, but also want to introduce institutionally is student voice. This practice is where students have a say in certain policies, and school boards can get firsthand accounts of opinions on how policies will affect students.
This artifact has made a profound difference on my educational and career pathway, as I have learned to think deeper and more critically about topics within education. This artifact impacted how I will go about educational policy, and how to correctly implement educational change.