Blogpost#7 what’s the ‘right’ pace for teacher preparation program

Fast pace might not the good fit for pre-service teacher education program; as the fast-pace mode is contagious. Upon graduation, new teachers have similar knowledge of the bare essentials of pedagogy and minimal teaching experience without the time to explore, and reflect on, their new professional roles in depth. This implicitly justified the reality that school life for students are super-saturated (to proceed from on expectation to another as fast as possible, to absorb and demonstrate specified knowledge through classroom instructions, assessments and evaluations), and that schools from K1-12 level to university level are mass-production assembly lines, from which graduated students have similar knowledge of the more-than-bare essentials of facts in a variety of subject areas, and minimal experience in KNOWLEDGE USE without the time to have deeper exploration and reflection on the facts. Since the experience in teacher education as a student is among the important components of the knowledge base of a teacher-candidate, if there was little time for teachers-to-be to open the mind unburdened by preconception, to think beyond the domain of technical interest and the delivery of curriculum, and to look beyond their familiar conception of the teaching and learning as an individual with 初心 (shoxin, trans., the beginner’s mind), it might be safe to say that the slow pace would probably not exist in the education philosophy of teacher-educators.

Blogpost#6 personal identity building

Identity could be regarded as a continuous re-shaping of the self-based upon identification desire, and any subsequent symbolic representations. This is my personal thoughts on identity. At the very end of the MEd program, I could help but thinking about the on-going process of having my identity built and having my voice heard as a multicultural and multilingual visible-minorities students. It is true that, whenever I publicly represent myself through diverse social activities, ranging from speech, in-class presentations, oral speaking, online posting either for course credits or for personal social needs, as a subject in the existing third space around me, I personally change by the very action of representations. Under many in-class circumstances happened in University of Ottawa that I did not hold excellent statements and propositions upon the topics being discussed, yet I still had the will, desire and agency to speak, to have my voice shared. One impressive of them did happen in recent days, when there was a whole-class sharing on personal perspectives on the inclusion of the multilingual and multicultural resources from students. I did not notice such a deep attachment to my home and original culture and to my mother tongue (Cantonese) as well as first language (Mandarin) until I ended my little speech; not until then did I reinforce the proportion of nationalism to China. My personal experience in strengthening students voice proves that, learning doesn’t happen when students are unable to express their ideas, emotions, confusion, ignorance, and prejudices. In fact, only when people can speak their minds does education have a change to happen. I believe that inside school, students not only learn subjects content knowledge but also learn about themselves, and self-identities are the results of the latter practice.

Blogpost#5 From here to where.

Considering the predictive power, and corresponding new insights, that a research study will provide is a more meaningful measure of its rigor and value than what particular research design it uses. Currently, this stimulating idea came into me. This way of evaluating and judging the value of a given research based on whether one can use the results to predict the possibilities of the occurrence of something is quite new to me, as my preconceived opinion on the value of a research narrowly lies in whether some high-level, complicated or cutting-edge or profound methods and approach have been used during the course of research, from the designing section to the data collecting and interpretations. It changed my knowledge upon how to assess an article, enabling me to ask myself questions while reading, for instance, Does the article provide me with enough information to duplicate the research?, What meaningful measurable outcomes could be predicted?, What is the significance and contribution (new insights)to the given field? and so on. Summing up, this stimulating perspective has broaden my mind during the reading and criticizing an article into a more holistic way, I do not feel that I am new to a discipline and do not have enough knowledge to make judgments of other’s work, especially when the work is of some well-known author and when it comes to evaluating the article’s contribution.

Blogpost#4 research and citing

Many times I have to think about, how to treat all those reference lists of so many readings to be covered while I am doing journal entries. It is highly possible that every citation included by an author hardly carries equal weight, as the motives of which differ and so does the validity; thus it is highly essential to take differential treatment upon the citations of a given article. The normal way I have been taking to make journal entries when dealing with citation (and reference list) is marking down the citation that is thought provoking, novel or that could be used as support of argument for my writing, and that is all. It is not easy not to unwittingly miss the citation out of motives of providing further reading for readers when there are citations around, especially when some of which are not that valid and essential and the motives of which are not that clear to me as I had not enough knowledge of the motivation of citing behavior. The idea of treating citation differentially as the motives differ would probably inspired me to analyze the reason(s) and motive(s) behind each citation I would come across for the next article to be studied.

Blogpost#3 research ethics

Research reflexivity has been mentioned from considerable times during my study in Med in uOttawa. The true examination of ethics is whether the research would suffer when the informants suffer as the researcher has done something to them; Researchers might possibly and unconsciously create circumstances where informants suffer harm. This idea of reflexivity in research entails the ethics of “Do to others as you would have them do, or Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, both of which highlight the necessity of quest and self-reflection upon possible and/or unconscious hegemonic control to informants. Researches should never be merely serving the researchers. Ethics of research may change over time, yet the respect and protections upon informants should not be devaluing or dismissal and it is not enough to feel confessional after collecting the data; Even under the informed consent, nuanced difference in the design of the research is worthy to be kept in mind. The possibility of having informants to feel harm warrants the existence of ethics training course/program.

Blogpost#2: New literacy and digital

Digital is the language that adolescents use in digital spaces. It is safe to assume that literacy proficiency in digital spaces is the ability in manipulating language so that it efficiently conveys an intended message and effectively represents the voice of the speaker requires both creativity and mastery of language for communicative purposes. It is hard to imagine an effective literacy instruction method if teachers cannot fist acknowledge, reflect upon and critique the wisdom that lies in digital of students. It is not sufficient to merely considering a shift in thinking about digital from taking is as a deficiency against Standard English to recognizing its power in adolescent community.