You will closely observe the community, school (the building, faculty, students, processes and protocols), classroom, and educators where you are working and submit an analysis that describes elaborates the context for teaching and learning. This analysis includes a detailed description of your school and community in both a quantitative and qualitative manner. The analysis extends beyond a mere description of the setting and includes a thoughtful observation and analysis of the school and community; it tells a story about both the context and the beginning of school practices.
Describe the cultural context of the local school and community, to what extent are diversity, equity, and different cultural practices honored; use the data you have collected for the Ecological Portfolio, also check your school and county website for additional information. To better understand your context of teaching, please analyze these items with respect to the practices, procedures, and messages impacting your students’ development.
Focus on the following four elements: reflection, content, connections, and criticality:
Reflective analysis: includes the review and analysis of events and/or issues that draw together multiple perspectives and resources to come to a new understanding of the event or issue.
Content: addresses a substantial range of areas of teaching and learning and makes meaningful connections across these areas.
Connections: establishes / examines a significant number of links with outside resources and relevant theory; these resources are used carefully support and guide the structured reflection.
Criticality: includes observations and interpretations of diversity, equity, and cultural context.
it should be 1,250 – 1,750 words (exclusive of references). The analysis includes 4-5 academic references to course material; appropriately cited in APA format.
You are being asked to cite educational research as evidence for the phenomena you are seeing in the schools and the decisions you and your mentor teacher are making. Using educational research, and eventually conducting it, is an important component of becoming a professional educator. It confirms our work and guides us in the best decision-making for our students. You can find also some support for how to go about citing it in the OWL website. This is good practice for any work you do as an educator.
You will find plenty of educational research and sources to cite in the books and materials provided you in your earlier coursework (i.e. course materials) - check the readings and suggested readings list; you are certainly welcome to seek more out via our library and other viable/credible internet sources such as the data sites listed for the School and Community Data Analysis section of the Ecological Portfolio.
The question is: what are your sources for the ideas/concepts/practices you are seeing in the school and how would you incorporate them into your reflection as support for what is going on, or support for your disagreement? I suspect you will find many references relevant to your reflection in the areas of diversity, power, equity as well as best teaching and learning practices specific to your content area.
The link to the site and this analysis is to be submitted to BOTH an OSE course dropbox AND the Student Teaching 1 course dropbox.
Information to Include in the Context of Teaching & Learning Analysis (use Ecological Portfolio data and your observations to describe):
Demographic and Structural Description – what is the school like?
Briefly describe the type of school in which you are working (K-8th)
What are the demographic data of your school?
What is the title of the course(s) you are working with?
Grade level(s) you teach?
What is the length of the course (semester, year, other)? Briefly describe the pace of the curriculum and testing schedule. What is the class schedule (e.g., 50 minutes every day, 90 minutes every other day)?
Where is the school where you are teaching located? (city, suburb, town, rural) What data/information are you using in making that determination?