Reflective Practitioner's Portfolio
A compilation of work to serve as a self-customized tool-box and set of reminders for future practice. All work referenced - and the narrative accounts which tie them together - are create by me, Andy Smith, throughout my time in the Critical and Creative Thinking Program, a Master's Degree program offered by the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Critical Thinking
From the outset, the emphasis of Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) is on thinking. The required course, Critical Thinking, plants an initial flag at the outset around how this program thinks about thinking. Professor Milliman emphasized that we were not in a critical thinking skills course. Rather, our inquiry was the nature of critical thinking itself. We worked on this directly; by thinking theoretically, reading a variety of theories, engaging in dialogue, and even teaching seminars. The Critical Thinking Manifesto took the form of a sales pitch to the educational community at large around the benefits of critical thinking. In keeping with the course, the aim was not to provide a suite of skills that teachers might teach students, but rather an invitation for educators to consider critical thinking; it's place within their schools now and a vision of the benefits a more prominent role might provide to the community.
The course, and referenced paper helped me to some key concepts:
Dispositions: Critical Thinking helps one develop a disposition in their thinking toward beneficial thinking patterns. Creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, and emphatic reasoning are positive dispositions that can be fostered, especially in a community, by focusing on them through critical thinking. ]
Meta-Cognition: A very important tool in CCT, the Critical Thinking course was my introduction to using meta-cognition as a tool. In the case of critical thinking, this tool can be applied to analyze and evaluate thinking dispositions, habits, and patterns. In many ways, meta-cognition in the first step in realizing the benefits of dispositions.
Creative Thinking
Creative Thinking exposes for reflection more mental patterns worth evaluating as a major benefit of CCT. Referenced below is the course's final paper, which I reference because it includes the visuals developed through out the course. The specific prompt was to consider a creative thinking museum and what might populate it's contents. The visuals are a great encapsulation of my relationship with the course. A bias of mine, working in Education, is to consider new ideas as far as I might be able to teach them to someone else. However, the Creative Thinking course really drove home the importance of practice. Especially at the beginning, the course emphasized getting me to think creatively; it was refreshingly (and challengingly) non-theoretical. The course forced me to be a creative thinker before considering creative thinking on it's face.
Visuals: As someone who takes in information best by reading, writing, and discussing; creating visual representations as a representative tool was a challenge that activated my creative thinking. It caused me to thinking in a solutions oriented manner; creating an imagine, evaluating it, and updating it in a loop until a final image emerged.
SCAMPER: The SCAMPER concept, and related visual, are a key reminder that at it's heart, creative thinking is about just that, thinking. The product generated by that thinking may or may not solve the problem; but the product's effectiveness are aside from the process of thinking. Thus, creative thinking which results in a poor or ineffective product doesn't necessarily mean that more creative thinking can't be a part of the fix.
Foundations of Philosophical Thought
Foundation of Philosophical Thought was a very bifurcated experience. As addressed in the opening paragraphs of the metacognitive reflection; the course explored philosophical work that in areas like identity, the self, liberty, and even addressed issues like abortion and taxation. Though, that's not what the course was about. The process was to engage with readings in the topics, then use class for dialogue around them, then engaged in a reflective dialogue about our collective thinking.
Conscious Consumption: An aspect of critical thinking that was straightened by this course was a consciousness around what I trust as sources of information. Perhaps the backdrop of the 2016 Presidential election played into this, but I actually think that thinking about philosophical thought made me a more conscious consumer of news and information because it gets deeper than what one might typically think of in this area. More than checking a news source's reputability and sourcing; this course got me to really consider how the the underlying thinking of the writer was being manifested in the news story, article, etc. For example, it helped me consider than perhaps even my trusted news sources shouldn't deserve my trust in all areas. That just because I have trusted a specific writer in the past, doesn't mean I can't (or shouldn't) reevaluate their thinking in the future.
Dialogue Processes
The final project of this course is included in this portfolio because it's a manifestation of practicing CCT process in the world. The project, which ended up being quite ambitious, centered on inviting my colleagues to participate in a Dialogue Workshop led and developed by me. Then, for the final paper, I interviewed each participant and wrote the final paper based in large part on notable quotes from their interviews.
Flow: The work brought the concept of flow into my working mind. The concept became a working part of my thinking in many other CCT courses, and actually became a central part of the thinking that led to my synthesis. Generally, in this course, the reminder is simply dialogue can be powerful enough that flow emerges.
Four Field Theory: The framework stuck with me. The final project in the class features lesson plans for the workshop that I led based on the theory. Generally, the tool itself is very useful in being in conversation in many contexts. Even more generally, the tool also helped impart a mindset to me that these kinds of tools can be starting points for thinking, and are really meant not as sacrosanct, but rather as lens into thinking.
Improving the Quality of Conversation Among School Administrators
Advanced Cognitive Psychology
Looking at the psychology that underpins issues in CCT was very useful. Of course, fundamental to the CCT program (by requirement, and experience) the course exposed some concepts that would underlay much of my thinking and inquiry going forward. In many ways, an appreciation that my own thinking has a measurable, biological basis; and that reality has some important implications, was key to the CCT program.
Mental Fixation: The simple idea the mind is actually inclined toward fixation and that even just awareness of this can help lessen it's negative effects. It reminds me that my brain operates by making connections between concepts and filling ideas into mental constructs that make them easy to recall, access, store, etc. That good thinking, sometimes, is as simple as subverting these connections and putting an already known idea or concept into a new context.
Incubation: The reminder here is simply that expending effort is not necessarily the only path to better thinking, creativity, etc.. (As an aside, I think that this is a particular bias of contemporary American society). Generally, that sometimes letting an idea "marinate", or sitting with idea without necessarily "working" on it, can be a good way to actually make progress.
A Cognitive Case for the Creative Thinking Focused Classroom
Action Research
Generally, Action Research helped me to really wrap my head around focusing not just on research, but focusing on myself in the process of researching. I comment on that further in the section on Processes of Research and Engagement. Action Research left me with some very tangible tools.
Buddy Partner: A handful of the CCT courses I took relied on the Buddy Partner concept, but it was really featured, for me, in Action Research. I think of it as the idea that a lot can be gained by connecting with someone whose in a similar process to you, even if the content of that process is different. Most of my work focuses on my field, Education, and the Buddy Partner I had in this course was really not in this world. Yet, she was a major influencer of the final product I generated for the course. This is a construct that I'll look to emulate in my life moving forward.
KQAF: The KQAF process is generally representative of a tool that'll move forward with me beyond CCT. That's simply that sometimes forcing yourself to get very specific, early on in the process can be very helpful. This process was very structured, and honestly, challenging. It forced me to commit to perspectives and ideas before I felt ready. In hindsight, the process was most beneficial because it created a sense of urgency perhaps before it was really there. By committing to specific actions, and then putting accountabilities in place for them, it really kick started a process that was helpful, and will be a part of my post-CCT life.
Processes of Research and Engagement
The course was a big step toward fleshing out how I'd bring my CCT coursework to a close. The final product of the class, the long paper, will now serve as an interesting timestamp of in the development of my synthesis. As is a part of the idea of the course, my work evolved significantly from that course to my final capstone project. Submitted here is the Self-Assessent for the course, which primarily focuses on the paper.
Process of Research: A misconception that I had prior to the course was around the idea of research. I thought of myself as a strong researcher because of my background in, what turns out to be, some pretty traditional research methodologies; finding and reading articles, evaluating and tracking sources, writing a traditional paper. The Self-Assessment deltas portray just how much the course challenged me to be in process with the research, the degree to which it invited me in to the process. My mindset changed from showcasing how I could research a topic, to how I could research a topic in relation to myself.
Time Management: Item II.5 asked about the emotional relationship between the researcher and the research. I commented there on time management. This is an important technical aspect of the CCT program experience, for me. Over the years of CCT, I transformed from an unmarried person living in an apartment 10 minutes away from campus, to a married person, with a one-year-old child, living in (and maintaining) a house, 1.5 hours from campus. There are many adjustments the related to the way that I make time to take myself seriously as is a major concept in CCT. I have found tools; like planning out schedules in advance, listening to materials when possible, working in the early morning, etc.
Synthesis of Practice and Theory
The synthesis process was a joyful one for me. I'm very proud of the final product, and truly do see it as a platform from which I am launched into future work and inquiry. There are many reminders and tools that emerged from the process.
Voice: As I further invited myself into the research work, I had to find a different voice to use while writing. When reading the book Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, I came upon a voice that I though might work for me. So, I brought elements of that voice to my synthesis free-writing and really found a version of it that I felt could work for me in the synthesis. I recall sitting down for a long writing session with the goal of really writing at length in this voice, with no intention of actually using what I wrote. I started writing, and recall it flowing out easily in this lighter, more reflective voice, and what I wrote actually ended up becoming the basis of the first 5 pages of my synthesis. Thinking about voice, and finding one that will work well for the project, was a key part of creating my synthesis and is among the 2 - 3 most valuable tools I feel I'm walking away from the program with.
Practice: A theme represented in my submitted self-reflection is that I do sometimes fail to be good practitioner of my working processes. A hole in my synthesis is that I am not convincingly able to talk in specific terms about my own areas of growth in meaning and purpose as they related to the suggestions I make in the paper. The Dialogue Process course, or maybe Action Research, represent areas where I did this the best; truly learning, trying out my learning, reflecting on it, and reforming my ideas based on it. I'll take away the idea that I need to be better about finding ways to participate with my working processes, using myself as researcher and subject where I can.
GOSP: This is a useful tool for thinking about sharing ideas with others. An evolution in my writing that occurred between the Processes of Research and Engagement course and the Synthesis of Theory and Practice course is my ability to utilize all aspects of GOSP. Professor Taylor's feedback on the final paper I submitted for Process of Research and Engagement really sat with me, and led to this growth. As detailed in the reflection document, he rewrote my introduction in a much clearer and more direct way, as in "Orient". When I read what he wrote, the power of GOSP became clearer to me because those 10 rewritten sentences truly took me through the full GOSP process. I felt engaged, clear on what the point of the paper would be, I understood the steps that the writer was going to take me through, and I felt clear on their position. All-in-all, I felt eager to dive into the rest of the paper. GOSP and the voice idea that I mentioned above really transformed my writing style for the better over the course of the synthesis process. This will be a key part of my post-CCT work.