Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

COURSE DETAILS:

Simon Fraser University
Faculty of Education

Education 811-5: Field Work
Education 883-5: Comprehensive Examination

Summer 2021

Instructor: Dr. Stephen Smith                   Email:  stephen_smith@sfu.ca

EDUC 811 classes will take place on-line (Zoom) on Tuesdays from May 18th to July 6th between 4:30–7:20 pm.
There will be writing workshops scheduled during the week of July 5th to 9th.
The due date of the written comprehensive papers is July 12^th.
EDUC 883 and the oral presentations will take place between July 21st and 28th (full days).

Course Description
The purpose of this course is to help you articulate the personal value and professional significance of the topic of inquiry you are investigating in the Masters of Educational Practice. We shall emphasize your approach to this topic as being“ practice-based” and, in so doing, stress the “lived meanings” that, for all practical purposes, can be gleaned from your experiences. In other words, it is the very proclivity to be practical that we want to emphasize in this inquiry, not in any mundane sense of simply getting on with business, but as a self-aware sensibility and mindful-of-others sensitivity guiding one’s practice and influencing the practices of others.

We will refer specifically to practices-of-the-self and practices of the self-with-others as two necessary moments of teacher identity. The Ministry of Education adoption of "personalized learning" is in keeping with this identity formation provided we, ourselves, take "personalized learning" to heart. Thus to restrict one's focus to a unidimensional "life-long (professional) learning" at the expense of "life-wide (personalized) learning" would be inherently short-sighted. A broad practical vision requires also tapping into what we do when not engaged specifically in professional practices. These practices-of-the-self, which will invariably involve others, may be precisely the ones that best inform our professional practices.

The pedagogical applicability of practices-of-the-self and of the self-with-others can be explored within a thoughtfully appreciative “community of practice.” We will, amongst ourselves, continue to foster not just the “rational community” of educational thinkers but also a “pathic community” of educational practitioners who can feel for one another and follow one another in making tangible, palpable sense of our respective practice-based inquiries.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Learning Goals

• develop a phenomenologically-informed writing practice within a pathic community of fellow teachers;
• cultivate somatic and critical reflexivity in writing up one’s topic of practice-based inquiry;
• appreciate how life-wide practices-of-the-self and of the self-with-others inform life-long practices of teaching;
• deepen pedagogical ways of know doing, being and knowing as teachers and practice-based inquirers;
• envision next steps as practitioner-scholars, teacher-leaders and change makers

Programmatic Capacities  

• Deepen and extend a disposition of inquiry, ethical practice, critical and creative reflection and responsiveness to learners as well as communities
• Develop their own inquiry practice through the investigation of multiple educational theories, philosophies, paradigms, and methodologies
• Inform and articulate their scholarly understanding of various world views and orientations in relation to their educational perspectives
• Develop a relational disposition, a humility, and an ability to listen deeply to others
• Critically and creatively engage in learning communities to situate, further develop, and align their inquiry practice within personally relevant and related paradigms
• Develop the disposition of a teacher-leader and enable an active voice and presence within and beyond the classroom
• Theorize their practice and contribute to professional conversations, both written and oral