Assignment:
Each student is expected to individually write a final self-reflection paper. The purpose of the 6 to 8 page double-spaced self-reflection paper is to focus on your own learning and development throughout the course. Describe the aspects of the course/practicum that were most instrumental to your learning and that helped you link theory and practice. Use the following guiding questions, though you may also want to focus on other aspects of your experience in class and in your interactions with young people. In addition, revisit your first posts in our class; how has your thinking changed? How might you answer the questions that were posed differently, if at all?
1. In what ways has this class changed, challenged, or confirmed ideas you had about learning? About the role of culture in learning? About the role of learning in curriculum?
- How has your understanding of how people learn changed over the course of this class?
- Consider our discussions of culture in which culture is not equated with ethnic or racial description. How has this notion of culture (e.g., funds of knowledge) shaped your understanding of learning in schools? How, if at all, has it influenced how you think about your past experiences of schooling?
- Think about the readings and our discussions on play. How have the readings contributed to your understanding of these concepts and the way you engage with children at site or in general? For the way you think about learning or cultural practices?
2. How have ethnography and the ethnographic skills (field notes and other research) you have developed helped you capture your own learning experiences, as well as the experiences of children? You may want to look over your interviews and discuss the ways your descriptions and discussions about the children, their community, and about the notion of difference, for example, might have shifted across the semester.
3. How have the readings and class discussions of learning and literacy shaped your understanding of the issues facing teachers and students in schools (and/or even in higher education)? How have they shaped your understanding of your own role in these issues?
4. What gets in the way of learning? How does one overcome it? What would you have done differently?
5. Where does curriculum come from? What kinds of curricular dilemmas emerged as you tried to advance learning the way we have explored it in class?
6. Feel free to include any other ways this course may have influenced you as a student, educator, and human being.