My next set of classes has started. We are reading The Reflective Educator’s Guide to Classroom Research in one class, and Chapter 1 mentions starting an inquiry journal. The book is about doing inquiry-based research or active research in your classroom. It discusses the importance of intentionally writing down the observations of the class (Dana and Yendol-Hoppey, 2020). This makes sense, given that you have a lab, research, engineering notebook that needs to be done if you are doing scientific research. These are taken seriously as the documentation. I think teachers should be doing this as well.
I thought this would be a great place to my inquiry journal and record my thoughts. My hope of learning about inquiry-based research is to do more research in my classroom. I want to use data in my classroom to drive my teaching methodologies and maybe publish (One of these days, I will write about how much I fear writing). Even if I don’t publish, I would like to use my research to help others through workshops and PD. I am hesitant about the time it will take. I am nervous that I won’t follow through once I am out of the course. I hope to find ways to incorporate it and continue to grow as an educator. I need to continue finding educators who also want to listen and explore teaching with me to do this. Thanks to social media, this is easy to do. I also hope to keep all three classes separate in my mind. One is on technology assessments, creating a STEM culture, and this class. Fingers crossed, seven weeks left.
Reference:
Dana, N. F., & Yendol-Hoppey, D. (2020). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research: Learning to teach and teaching to learn through practitioner inquiry (4th ed.). Corwin.
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