The activity for taking stock for 2016 will simulate what you might do personally to guide yourself into ongoing personal and professional development in the area of educational research, organizational change, or personal change in ways that build on this course. (As well as practicing a tool you might use in the future, you will produce something that will assist my personal and professional development as a teacher of Action Research.)
Half the class will prepare a historical scan and the other half a strategic personal plan--you choose which you want to do. Afterwards, we will have a short review of the experiment (probably plus-delta).
The twist is that in both cases you will be doing this
on my behalf informed by the text by
Rubin about the teaching in this course and the background I bring to it. (You have permission to be playful since you cannot know all the background behind the biography or my work and life while teaching Action research.)
Historical scan
For the
historical scan, extract about 30-40 items from the biographical part of Rubin and place them at the appropriate level on a three-stranded timeline from 1960 to the present--
1. Personal event or experience that made educational change and/or action research significant to me,
2. Intermediate-level event or activity related in some ways to educational change and/or action research;
3. Wider-world event or change that led to or influenced my personal & intermediate-level experiences.
(In the terms of Tuecke [2000], 1 is "local"; 2 is "regional"; and 3 is "global.")
Each item should, preferably, be 3-5 WORDS IN BLOCK LETTERS (as would fit on a small post-it). (Alternatively, on your computer, you can make virtual Post-its that you can move around.)
Once you have a three-stranded timeline, consider one by one the following questions:
- When were there transitions?
- If this were a book, what name would you give for the “chapters” between the transitions?
- ...name for the whole “book”?
- What have you learned about ongoing personal and professional development in the area of educational research, organizational change, or personal change in ways that build on this course?
- How shall you translate the learning to future situations?
Submit your answers to these questions to the discussion post for session 13 (
share/view/78350687). Scan the timelines and email them to Peter so he can review them and link them to the discussion post.
Strategic Personal Planning
For the
Strategic Personal Planning, focus not on the biographical part of Rubin but the pedagogy in the course.
Imagine Peter some time after the project is over looking back with a sense of accomplishment on how far he has come in the area of teaching Action Research. (Construe accomplishment broadly so it can include my reflection and growth.) What happened to make this so?—What different kinds of things do you envisage having gone into or contributed to that personal and professional development? In preparing for this brainstorming, take note of the following:
These things can span the mundane and inspiring; tangible and intangible; process, as well as product; relationships as well as individual skills. (By mundane, think of all the different tasks that might be on a professor and program director's plate —over and above those for this project—that potentially affect my ability to carry out teaching Action Research in a way that is satisfying.)
Keeping in mind the question above, brainstorm 30-40 three to five word answers onto Post-its in block letters. (Alternatively, on your computer, you can make virtual Post-its that you can move around.)
Move the Post-its around into groups of items that have something in common in the way they address the question.
Describe the groups using a phrase that has a verb in it or, at least, indicates some action. For example, instead of “Holistic Artistic Survival Project,” an active name would be “Moving Holistically from Surviving to Thriving as Artists.”
Group the groups in pairs or threes and give these larger groups descriptive active names.
Group these groups and name them, until you arrive at a descriptive active name for the practical vision Post-its as a whole.
Submit your answers to these questions to the discussion post for session 13 (
share/view/78350913). Scan the timelines and email them to Peter so he can review them and link them to the discussion post.