Developing Critical Practice in Education

Getting started in this online degree was very overwhelming at the early beginning. I should come clean that I had many difficulties in the early start of the program. However,theyhave been decreased gradually by the end of the first module.

One major skill I was lacking was how to choose credible resources to depend on in my research.

Getting through my course, I started to gain this skill. I felt like it was my first time to go through respected and well-reviewed resources. I started to know the meaning of credibility. It was such mazing advancement to reach this level of depending on trusted resources.

Communicating online with unseen colleagues was very puzzling to me as a learner. Thanks to the required shared activities, I began to function my communication skills effectively. By time, I got so familiar with giving and receiving any feedbacks from my colleagues and my instructor.

Managing my time was a very challenging skill.

Since it was my first time to study online, I experienced difficult times trying to settle a timing for my readings, shared activities, assignments and all my online searching. These challenges started to be settled when reaching the end of the first module.

In additions, my technical skills were very well improved after getting through the course. I really realized this improvement was because the frequent study and the very well organized portal of Roehampton University.

I remember when I was having a training program on Kano analysis, our trainer asked about the importance of considering the word strategic when talking about planning and thinking. We tried hard to reach an answer.

Finally, he declared when someone reacheshis vision, he would find that everything has begun to change. Therefore, we need this strategic look tomanage and reach this change.

As Professor Day stated (2013) in his video� teachers should know themselves as change agents. They should teach children many aspects of their life�. Teachers as practitioners need to have the desire to change communities and individuals as well. They should know what works or does not work for their students to give their students the tools by which they will

accept the different aspects of changes they will surely face when they grow up.

Trying to be this change agent, I strive to foster a positive environment in my school. Heading the educational supervision department in my school, I have tried first to draw and plan this role for my coordinators who will train their teachers to foster it. Changing their minds and directions was quite hard at the beginning, but when they got convinced, we started to harvest our efforts.

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it” (Henry Ford). Thinking is not an easy process for many people. Yet, everyone can train himself doing it if he wants to. It is vitally essential to your future that you mature the ability to be able to look at a situation or problem and reflect on all the angles. As a professional practitioner, I tried to figure out some of my skills that will help me achieve my goals. I think that I am a critical thinker; I can investigate evidences and judge them all. I can also test the assumptions, look at a situation, and weigh all possible solutions before coming up with a final answer.

As a critical thinker, I think I have the ability of identifying the difference between thought based rationality and that based on emotional reaction and personal prejudice. Understanding my own perspective will help me consider the viewpoint of others. This will help me take a decision-based practicality, rather than moods.

This also will result in seeking more information, reflecting back the original thought to be confident it is understood, and presenting positive feedback rather than negative criticism.

One important skill I have to master as a practitioner is using research skills efficiently to

inform my professional practice. It is may be because of lack of time needed to boost my capabilities in this area. I think studying in this master’s degree with Roehampton will empower my abilities and guide me to the right track I should follow.

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” (Victor Hugo) Juggling with many things to do in my master’s degree and putting myself under a real pressure were the key factors that mandated me to try to manage my time in order to try to get best results out of my study a long with my work and daily tasks.

Starting my course, I tried to settle certain time in my daytime to get through the readings and try to fulfil all my assignments and shared activities. I suffered a lot to be dedicated to my daily schedule and it as so difficult to go online to study. Moving ahead in the first module, I became familiar with to daily hours of studying; that was fine at the beginning.

Later on, I realized that increasing this portion of time is necessary, especially when having so many job requirement and duties in my work. I immediately increased my daily studying hours to reach three or even four hours at some cases o as to be able to go along with my courses requirements.

Following this strategy, I put my legs on some important thresholds to monitor my progress. I know I still need to prioritize my tasks and duties more efficiently and I will do my best to stick to my goals to achieve them.

Many scholars consider planning as a key success factor, especially if it is executed

skillfully. It is considered as a road map for the journey you want to go for. Planning is also :287). As educator, I have settled several goals in both the short and long term in order to expedite my continued development. These goals fall into several categories, but they all echo my desire for continued growth in my professional aptitudes.

The first category of goals is related to my academic growth as a professional educator. In the short term, my goal is to complete my master’s degree in Educational Leadership Program through Roehampton University. This goal will be accomplished within two and half years and will spot a noteworthy achievement in my academic development. In the long term, my academic goals include further training in Leadership and Project Management within the next ten years. These academic goals reflect my personal desire to increase my understanding of my role in leading the educational process in my region and the best ways to qualify my teachers by integrating the things I have learned into my every day practices as an educator.

coach in the school district. This coaching program will help bring the members of the staff together as a cooperative learning community and build a unique profile for every teacher. This will help address every single teacher with his individual plan that fits his career and personality. I hope that this goal will be completed within the next year. In the long term, my goals involve launching a training center that will serve as the light house of the professional development for the whole region.

Achieving this goal will allow me to become more involved in my professional organization as a learning community, as well as giving me an opportunity to share what I have learned through my own teaching and professional development experiences. This presentation goal will be accomplished within tenyears.

Finally, having all these goals in mind, I know myself as much as I can all the time (Williams& Hussar,2011).

Thoroughly connected to my academic goals is the research skill. This temporary goal will allow me to develop better my studying in my master’s degree and in my career as a whole.

Like my academic goals, this research goal will help me increase knowledge about my major and master it effectively. I always need to be aware of what is up to date in my pitch. It will also, allow me to develop the most effective methods for managing and monitoring my teachers’ learning and vocational growth.

Getting into this master’s degree with Roehampton University and especially when elaborating on unit two, I realized that I need to enhance and boost my research skills. Reaching this point from my study, I can say that I am in the right pathway. I started to evaluate and verify my resources and make sure to cite them.

Studying online was very questioned by me. The very well organized structure of the program has turned this opinion upside down. I was forced, by time, to follow this structure and organize my daily schedule.

The final category of my professional development goals concerns my continued involvement in learning communities both with in and out the school district. I have a goal for the short term. It is to develop an instructional coaching program for the whole teachers in my school and to become the first instructional

As a practitioner, I believe I should always have some role models to follow their footprints and make use of their experience.

One of those models is unquestionably Aristotle. I have chosen Aristotle to start with for the reason that in my opinion he is the scholar who has started the critical thinking

process without giving it that name. He is the first to criticize everything from pure logic to ethics, politics, literature, even science. I likes his way of examining every little piece of information and never accept it for granted. I think as educator, I should always follow Aristotle’s attitude of investigating the instructional procedures and never giving up if not achieving my objectives.

Mastery Learning was generated by Benjamin Bloom. This theory has helped teachers a lot to organize their instructional practices and strategies. According to the theory, students are not to study new leaning unit until they master the current one. Bloom hypothesized that a classroom with a mastery learning focus as opposed to the traditional form of instruction would reduce the achievement gaps between varying groups of students (Guskey 2007). Bloom has a notable effort in classifying the educational objectives.

His Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) concept is considered a balancing tool between the easy and unattainable objectives. I like the way Lev Vygotsky has developed this method especially when considering the fact of seeking assistance from more experienced people in order to achieve certain goals. It is the teamwork skills that so many scholars call for it these days. I think this concept can work with students if teachers realized the benefits of balancing the objectives they teach their students.

The reciprocal relationship between development and learning It may be obvious from the early looking into the two terms that there is a cause an effect relationship; development as a cause and learning as an effect. Yet, in my opinion, I think that there is a reciprocal relationship between the two terms. In other words, “Advances in development frequently lead to learning, and conversely, learning almost necessarily fuels development (Hoare, C.2011)

How the brain influences development and learning As our bodies develop in different rates, so do our brains. Educators should realize that having many students in the same class with the same age does not mean that those students have the same intellectual abilities.

Mismatching between brain development and educational expectations may lead to undesired results. It is so crucial for educators to understand the relationship between neurological development and learning.

Success will not come surprisingly; I know that all what I have learned in my current job as a director of educational supervision department. Preplanning the instructional plan is a priority. This plan should scaffold the students’ abilities to reach out the instructional goals. Differentiated instruction according to their intellectual capabilities is also prerequisite.

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.

(Gustave Flaubert). I intend to help my learners get to know and appreciate the importance of time management. Learners are highly required to organize their timing to get the ultimate benefit of their studying. They should review and prioritize their goals periodically. Learners will not enhance their educational journey unless they are able to control their time and effectively.

I intend to get to know the style of every learner I work with in order to address him/her with his unique needs inside and outside the classroom. I think that differentiated instruction help teachers and students define as long as reach out their needs and required skills for career and life expertise. Doing so requires gathering information about student’s readiness, interests, and learning styles.

I intend to build a review process of my biases and stereotypes in order to get the aptitude of respecting my learners’ needs. This is highly required for efficient and nurturing environment. Learners will not be motivated or even urged to participate in the learning process unless they feel that they are esteemed and highly appreciated in spite of their cultural and ethnic differences.

my community to lead it for better research based education. We tried to reach every children in the city and we succeeded.

I intend to not only use technology for displaying my instructional aids inside classrooms but also integrate it to help my learners use it efficiently for searching for their targeted learning objectives. As educator, I should realize that information is no longer exists in books only, learners can get as much information as they would like from different online and digital resources. What does really make sounds is mastering the needed skills of the 21st century; using technology is one of these skills.

thank all my colleagues who have worked with

As a final hope, I intend to foster a community of a lifelong learning process. My learners should get to know that learning and development are not an ended process, especially in this time when large of information are widely doubled every few minutes.

a driving force that pushes the school in the

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where you thoughts take you” (James Allen). As I stand here tonight, my achievements go in front of my eyes and try to encourage me to be so proud of them all. My inner voice says that yes you have done it. You were so amazing when you got your philosophy degree of education.

I tried to be so strategic when planning for some goals. It worked and I was so successful when I founded and managed my international school. Yes, I succeeded in building and fostering a lifelong learning community in my school. I tried to be the social change agent in

I have been exposed to so many opportunities for improvements in my vocational and personal life; cooperating with my colleagues, we were able to pass all these difficulties. In this occasion, I’d like to seize the opportunity and me for over 10 years. You were the backbone of the school. I know you were always describing me with “results oriented man. However, you were the key factor of my success story. Advice was freely given, a helping hand was all the time extended and constructive criticism and suggestions were offered.

I think I have many challenges and opportunities awaitingme, I decided to join the Board of Trustees of the school. I think this will help me continue my message of life. I will stay right direction of social change that guarantees excellence and distinction for our school.

“Educational research is cyclical process of steps that typically begins with identifying a research problem or issue of study. It then involves reviewing the literature, specifying a purpose for the study, collecting and analyzing data, and forming an interpretation of information. This process culminates a report, disseminated to audiences, that is evaluated and used in the educational community” (Creswell 2002).

Since researching and analyzing data critically are highly necessitated skills for a practitioner, I have been inspired to select some resources that will help boost my career as an educator. I tried to slim my research in the teaching methodologies to be more focused

and stuck to my major as a teacher. I will try to recap and reflect on each source as follow: The journal of effective teaching(1996) is a peer reviewed semiannual online journal.

JET deals only with novelties in teaching experience and best practices related to classroom management. One of the most impressive manuscripts, which really guaranteed my realism in PBL theory, is “The Effect of Project-Based Activities on Intermediate EFL Students' Reading Comprehension Ability” (Shiraz and Larsari, 2014). The author has improved through his research that using PBL in teaching the intermediate schools students would raise their competency in reading comprehension skill. I was overwhelmed by the manner he adopted the research in his school. It was simple and led to clear results of the importance of the Project Based Learning theory.

EFL/ESL Teaching Techniques :( 2012) devotes its efforts to teachers of English as a second language. Being majored in English, I was attached to this journal very strikingly.

“Numerically Assessing Young ESL/EFL Learners Without Tests” (A. James,2010) has suggested several ways of considering the social skills and attitudes of the students toward the taught material and how to turn these nonnumeric inputs into numbers and figures to be presented to the stakeholders and analyzed for further improvements.

- GENERAL EDUCATION JOURNALS (1880) is a subordinate of the Questia Trusted Online Research website. It was established in 1880 to function as a quarterly journal serving the field of educational innovations along with preparing teachers for their professions. Unavailability of funding resources imposes some charges for the publication in this journal. It has started its

first handling of the educational issues since 1993 until now with numerous amount of beneficial editions.

- One internet site that should b appreciated by teachers as long as students is TeacherVision®. It saves a lot of time for teachers in different fields with so many printables, lesson plans, graphic organizers and theme, etc. It provides searching engine that delivers so many topics for teachers to benefit from. TeacherVision gains its influence from trusted educational associations and the world's best children's publishers, including the Council for Exceptional Children, Educators for Social Responsibility, Houghton Mifflin Company, the National Association for Music Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc., and the vast resources available within the Pearson family.

- The Companion Website for Effective Teaching Methods: Research-Based Practice is a comprehensive website that offers well organized resources enable teachers to gain their mastery skills in the pedagogical methods of teaching depending on graduated stages.

This amazing website prepares and empowers teachers with 12 in depth chapters.

- Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching is a subsidiary of Iowa State University website. The website as a whole is fantastic and serves the educational community with a variety of resources. Yet, one division in this website is my favorite. The Teaching subtitle is one major part of this website for every teacher and educator. It is divided into five sections that cover the instructional cycle as in one piece.

First part is Effective Educational Practices; it deals with wide information that are useful to students’ learning. Teachers learn how to apply instructional techniques and differentiate their

teaching according to their students’ levels and learning types through the Course Planning part. Classroom Practice is a third part that enables teachers to conduct new classes and manage large classes easily. One important part is Documenting Your Teaching; it offers many methods of formative and summative assessment with no neglecting of the peer feedback. The final part of Teaching Division is the Online Learning Hub. A lot of supplementary resources that support the professional development are there.

- About how “Educators explore nontraditional methods of teaching and receive positive results”, Diane Curtis has suggested new techniques of integrating technology in teaching in here article: “Brain-Based Research Prompts Innovative Teaching Techniques in the Classroom”. She has suggested Key Largo School as a model school that integrated technology effectively in teaching. Depending on some brain researches showed a great deal of positive influence of technology on teaching, Key Largo School has provided their students with different kinds of networked technology devices. Using the computer and some internet videos, a kindergarten teacher was able to understand how the flower opens with no suffering in searching for any dull teaching aids that do not work with those small kids. Other higher graders were entitled to practice Brain Gym exercises through performing some movements with their fingers to sustain concentration and observation skills actively.

- Trying to draw the teachers’ attention to the importance of altered techniques in managing their classrooms effectively, Robert Ledbury in his article” The Importance of Eye Contact in the Classroom” (R. Ledbury, I. White and S. Darn )has highlighted the using of nonverbal communication as a need. He assured the eye

contact as a powerful tool for conveying any needed messages to and from teachers and students.

Succeeding in forming their personalities, teachers should highly estimate the influence of the look. The Look may have variant interpretations; it could, according to the situation, mean stay calm please', through ‘try to be more focused to ‘it’s enough. According to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), the clever eye contact is considered as a key success indicator for the good presenter; this is the why there are so many training programs on the effective use of body language and eye contact with the difference in patterns of people.

- “Personality similarity between teachers and their students influences teacher judgement of student achievement”( Tobias Rauscha*, Constance Karingb, Tobias Dörflerc&CordulaArtelta) is an empirical study that has been applied on 409 dyads of German teachers and their students in order to examine the relationship between the common personal characteristics of the teachers and their students and if that has an impact on the teachers’ judgment on their students achievement or not. Results show positive relationship between the similar teachers with their students while judging their achievement. While the classroom is a place where the teacher interact with his students according to the similarity and dissimilarity in terms of personal traits and attitudes. The study show that similarity leads to a more accurate estimation of the students’ achievement, because as a human it is easier to accept another persons’ viewpoint if that person is more similar to you than a less similar one.

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