Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

The examination is graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

COURSE DETAILS:

 

Instructors: Dr. Sean Blenkinsop sblenkin@sfu.ca, with Dr. Mark Fettes, for EDUC 888, Comprehensive Papers and Oral Presentations, mtfettes@sfu.ca

Course Description 811:
The goal of this course is to support practitioner-inquirers in explicating, synthesizing, deepening, and sharing their key learnings, with a focus on their ongoing inquiries, over the course of our Master’s program. Through reading, dialogue, writing, and other forms of inquiry, including Land-based pedagogical practices, we will revisit, extend and expand the themes of our learning, and reflect on the development of our personal and professional capacities. With the goal of deepening our understanding of our work as educators, we will examine our learning journeys as informed by our field studies and our scholarly communities.  

In effect, we are asking ourselves:

• what have I learned through the program, and from conducting my inquiry, about myself, my setting, and my practice?
• what key ideas, encounters, concepts, relationships, theories, places, thinkers, approaches, and philosophies have had an impact on me?
• how have these ideas, encounters, concepts, relationships, theories, places, thinkers, approaches, and philosophies influenced, confirmed, challenged, and/or transformed my thinking, my practice, and even my being as teacher and human?
• how do I now situate myself in the community of scholarship, and in my community of practice?
• how will I now take these ideas into my practice and into my various communities?
• how do I want to share, represent, offer, and demonstrate what I have learned, and do this with integrity?
• And … where do I go from here?

A furthering note:
This is an intriguing course to teach. This course is a gathering course where you each are drawing together this huge range of ideas, discoveries, encounters, and experiences towards the creation, and offering out, of two Comprehensive Exam components, the written project and the oral presentation (see below!).  And so, as the instructor, I know that much of the focus for this course has to be individualized -- turning back, reflecting upon, gathering up, preparing for, winnowing through, and then offering out -- but at the same time, there is so much more to explore and think about which is often best done in a group. So, I am proposing that we think of this course as having two arcs … the first, the major arc, focuses on each of you reflecting, gathering, writing, creating, and preparing for your comprehensives and the second, the minor arc, is about engaging with interesting content that I offer as we travel through the semester together. 

Description of EDUC 888 … (the “comprehensives” … called an exam though not an exam):
This culminating project, which serves as the final assessment in this Masters of Education Program, provides an opportunity for articulating, sharing, and deepening our understanding of our practice as educators, based on our coursework, and field studies. We will share our experiences, insights and transformations with colleagues and instructors, and bear witness to the journeys of others.

The comprehensive examinations involve two parts: one written and one oral.

Our (Mark Fettes will be joining us) proposal for this cohort, given its online nature, is to create a series of 4 scholarly panels to be held on April 13^th and 14^th. Panels will be created thematically, to the best of our ability, and each of the four or five panelists will be asked to share, in whatever form they choose, key highlights, rich crystallizations, deepened learnings, important takeaways. These short, 7-10 minute offerings need not be direct repetitions of the written submission. The hope is that once the panelists have finished we can open the space for a rich discussion amongst panelists, faculty, and others who are present.  In order to assist this process not only will the examiners read each paper but each panelist will also be asked to read and prepare some thoughts, responses to at least two of their colleagues’ submitted works.  Thus, there will be multiple readers for each written submission. Each reader will review their colleagues’ papers  and prepare potential questions, responses, noticed connections to ask and share during the final panel presentations. The hope is that this will enrich and enliven the conversation while also supporting each presenter to clarify, extend, better understand, or develop their own work and its relationship to this larger panelistic whole. The comprehensive presentations are typically a riveting, intense, professional (sometimes deeply personal) scholarly experience that engages our minds, bodies, and souls.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: