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Summative Reflection as a Curriculum & Instruction Graduate Student

Michael Caldwell

Depart. of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, Univ. of Texas - San Antonio

Comprehensive Digital Portfolio

Masters of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction

April 07, 2024

Abstract

As a graduate student in the Masters of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction (MACI) program at

the Univ. of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), I have had the greatest educational experience

possible as a full-time working employee and part-time graduate student. In my summative

reflection, I will discuss the various personal challenges, accomplishments, and learning gains I

have obtained during my graduate school studies while endeavoring to meet all program

requirements as a non-educator student. I will also center my reflection on highlighting the

socio-cultural and political dynamics bound to the six core values established by the Department

of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching (ILT), which all MACI students should keep

cognizant of as proponents for social justice, inside and outside of a classroom. I will reflect on

how these ILT core values, through an annotated literature review, allow MACI students

(especially educators) to embody an unyielding mindset that sustains a personal charge for

implementing, in all spaces, these six core values. These values permit one to be, which are

listed as follows: Critical in thought, ethical, intellectual, inquisitive, professional, and

transformative towards effectively impacting learners on the importance of safeguarding a just,

democratic society. Ultimately, I plan on expressing how my time as a MACI student has

positively influenced my life, presently, and what upcoming objectives I intend on fulfilling in

various work and training domains, professionally and career-wise.

Keywords: analytical, probing, renewing, conceptual, moral, and knowledgeable

Summative Reflection as a Curriculum & Instruction Graduate Student

Introduction

As a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction (MACI) graduate student, my goal is

to progress professionally and personally as I hope to gain higher education that will allow me to

become a more constructive and practical colleague to all individuals, inside and outside of the

workplace. Currently, I’m working at a local military installation in a selected training and

education setting focused on training new and prior-service military arrivals. In Particular, I work

as a training registrar who monitors and notes the entry and graduation of military trainees who

are attending designated training courses. I make regular report updates on these members'

training records based on the courses attended and their training statuses throughout all courses

entered. More so, I work closely with military training course managers, course curriculum

developers, military training leaders/mentors, and military and civilian training instructors, all of

whom play a vital role in ensuring our military personnel acquire and accomplish the necessary

training and coursework pivotal to their individual career paths.

For myself, I desire to utilize the MACI degree to become more empowered within our

training environment and to offer our training management team a more viable knowledge base

that will translate into more effective work productivity. Specifically, my goal with pursuing a

MACI degree is to promote at work into one of our curriculum developer positions. Our military

curriculum developers, or course writers, write out the military lesson and training plans of

instruction for training instructors who will implement the training plan into their training

classroom and field work. So, through my MACI coursework and learning gains, I wish to

provide our training environment with more critical thinking skills, ideas, and recommendations

that will help increase training productivity and work objectives. Moreover, I wish to become an
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inspiration for my family, encouraging my loved ones to become greater and reach further than I

ever imagined for myself.

My Objectives and Personal Maturation

An Inquisitive and Critically Conscious View of Education

In consideration of the ILT core values of viewing education through the terms of

Inquisitive and Critically Conscious lenses, I have learned to comprehend that education

possesses socio-political characteristics and socially constructed foundations that influence its

administrative objectives and processes. By maintaining critical awareness of the

socio-historical and political influences that navigate these institutional processes, I have gained

greater understanding on how these two terms become vital in perceiving the scale of social

interconnectivities that help forward these influences. The social interconnectivity at work may

include any of the existing relations between the political, historical, social, class, racial,

economic, and cultural forces that propel the nature of education and its control. More so,

through study of these two ILT core values, I better grasp how the components of learning and

education are sustained through political and socio-economic contexts. And I have obtained a

broader view of where teaching and education may be maneuvering towards, upcoming, with

regards to recent state and congressional mandates defining how education will be policed and

dictate what diverse, multicultural students learn about their past, present, and future existence in

society.

With regards to the above-stated social forces pushing education and improving these

interconnecting social features, academic researcher and critical theorist Leonardo (2004)

mentions how comprehending the concept of Critical Social Theory (CST) is instrumental to

grasping and gaining the necessary transitional understandings that can give cause to educational
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transformation, which may diminish the controlling social forces that dominate. I believe

education can offer all throughout our communities the opportunity to enhance their lives and

progress, optimistically, towards neutralizing any social obstacles or detriments to our wellbeing.

In our learning domains, I think we also gain insight on how the struggle to overcome social and

political barriers is not based on a single, individual stance but change requires an entire

communal effort to make positive adjustments for all to gain equitable benefits from.

Further, educational researcher and academic pioneer Ladson-Billings (2006) mentions

how socio-political, economic, and historical forces interconnect with a debt psychology that

apparently has, in past times and current, company with enabling learning achievement gaps in

school settings. Fundamentally, these learning gaps observed in the classrooms between the

haves and have-nots highlight the lack of institutional investment in the welfare of all students

and principally becomes a reoccurring, perpetual debt service for educators, as Ladson-Billings

(2006) professes. The achievement gaps existing here can also instigate distrust within lower

socio-economic communities housing residents of color, where these learning gaps tend to

center, that can apparently negate school reform and more equity learning opportunities for all

students, as Ladson-Billing (2006) proclaims.

Altogether, I highly recognize how the academic authors here encourage Inquisitive and

Critically Conscious thinkers on education to weigh the social forces, e.g., socio-political and

socio-economic attributes, correlating with educational attainment, achievement, and equity for

all student learners. As a MACI program student, I have learned to mature and nurture greater

awareness on the relevance of sustaining a pedagogic criticality and inquisition on why

educational research is pivotal towards improving scholastic attainment and student success.

Additionally, I think every advocate for educational integrity and justice should gain full grasp of
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the interconnecting social forces that can politically, culturally, and historically inhibit learning

arenas these days and times. Enough information and knowledge appears to exist on what and

why these inhibiting issues in classrooms broadly persist. And these equity advocates should

personally acquire an inquisitive and critical mindset toward enacting the corrective actions

needed to resolve any of these impairing forces that diminish fairness for all in school.

Comprehension and Application of ILT Measures and Observations

An Intellectual and Professional Voice on Education

As academic researchers conceptualize how the just-mentioned social forces yield

differing impacts on various learners and their acquired knowledge, I have learned as a MACI

student a number of diverse learners inevitably experience some form of these social constraints.

Researchers profess in countless scholarly readings I have studied how political and cultural

forces, amongst others, become ingrained into a broad number of diverse, multicultural

communities and their designated schools. To counter these unyielding forces and constraints, I

have gained greater understanding on how a professional, academic perspective that

philosophically conceptualizes how these social impediments in schooling systems thrive and

what formal measures may curtail and transform them, altogether.

For instance, I view the banner educational research performed by academics who remain

on a never-ending quest to gain resolution to the social ills that prevail in our social and learning

arenas, becomes centered on rooting out these strains and posting in new, transformative

methods for change benefiting all participants. From a professional perspective, academic

researcher Mertens (2017) pioneers a strong philosophy on the socio-cultural changes and

research that help to propel resolution by stating, “My work on the transformative paradigm as a

philosophical framing for research is based on the premise that if we are to contribute to
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transformative change, then we must conscientiously design our research to incorporate that goal

into the research” (p. 19). In these statements and throughout the MACI program, I have gained

greater knowledge on how social resolution, which could lead to academic resolution within

educational domains encountering achievement gaps that have ties with these social strains, can

triumph with a progressive, transformative approach that diminishes the old and reconstructs a

new, equitable way forward in schooling.

Also, comprehending how research can provide insight on what changes and

readjustments can be implemented in society and likely carry over into schooling systems, I

possess more confidence that the observable learning gaps that dominate within a wide number

of diverse communities can become minimized with an increased intellectual awareness. From a

logical and socio-cultural stance on learning achievement and in creating more educational

awareness, academic and education researcher Au (2009) steadfastly mentions that, “Culturally

responsive instruction resides firmly within a pluralist vision of society, recognizing that the

cultures of different ethnic groups provides content worthy of inclusion in the curriculum” (p.

179). With this kind of responsive awareness on diverse, multicultural groups of students

possessing an educational capability comparable to other more academically mainstream

students who have greater socio-economic access to higher learning resources, I understand how

all students still have great potential for school success if it is facilitated and cultivated in a

nurturing and humane learning environment. Personally speaking, the big challenge seems to

relate with state agencies ensuring their school districts meet the academic challenges and needs

of all students at every level, with the appropriate cultural response required. And with those

kids who are experiencing significant learning deficiencies in classrooms, the desire is school
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administrators and teachers will seek and provide more assistance to parent-teacher groups in the

effort to help quell any educational shortfalls.

Adjustments Necessary for in Accomplishing Specific Objectives

A Transformative and Ethical Perspective on Restoring Education

In the MACI program, I have also perceived how to evaluate applicable learning theories

and how they apply in multicultural and mainstream classrooms that have variable resources and

expenditures. Moreover, a number of educational philosophers and researchers forward how the

critical requirement for logical, analytical dialogue between teachers and students that underlines

the socio-historical and political constraints upholding the tenets of oppression is vital to social

progression. Also, I have recognized how the subjective influences pushing neoliberal agendas

forward through educational domains, e.g., local news stories highlighting state politicians

advocating for unjust school vouchers, which dedicated education philosophers and academic

stalwarts highpoint in critical narrative for dialogue. For example, education theorist and

researcher Freire (1970/2000) asserts a socio-political agenda towards preserving

community-impairing social constraints and immobilizers (like mentioned above) exists, which

tends to negate one’s mutual inclusivity and equitable access within learning domains, and also

must be critically scrutinized by common cause, voice, and people.

Freire (1970/2000) also states this critical dialogue provides purposeful cause toward

seeking and gaining refinement of these societal spoilers and impediments, which can lead to

paving a road to social justice and democratic participation for all community members.

Additionally, academic and education researcher hooks (1994) poignantly expresses how,

emotionally, the pain she endured in attempting to understand the life’s happenings that occurred

while she was getting older was figuratively paralyzing due to the existing social constraints.
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The feminist voice and cause bell hooks academically endeavored for was temporarily hampered

by these societal ills until she started reading the work of Paulo Freire and gained enlightenment

from the concepts of social theory, which would lead to a personal awakening and renewal.

A highly meaningful quote from hooks (1994) that gifts to me greater understanding of

what educational theory and philosophy is, and what it can produce, is stated in the

following: I am grateful to the many women and men who dare to create theory from the

location of pain and struggle, who courageously expose wounds to give us their

experience to teach and guide, as a means to chart new theoretical journeys. Their work is

liberatory. (p. 74)

Fundamentally, I believe I have gained a higher knowledge on how the education theorists

mentioned here possess an unyielding knowledge on societal and educational refinement. And I

have learned better, as a MACI student, how classroom interactions depleted of

thought-provoking dialogue, collaboration, and sentimentality by the facilitator to push for

investigative discovery by the students seems useless, almost defeatist, without true cause.

Overall, as a graduate student, I have learned the main goal purposely required by federal, state,

and local education agencies and leaders, whose objective is evidently to ensure and sustain the

academic growth and cultivation of all students, as referenced to by the above-mentioned

educational researchers, is to fully enable teachers and lead these learners to an individual and

societal disposition of one day fully participating within society’s democratic process.

Summary and Future Professional and Career Objectives

In conclusion, with a Freirean action plan and approach toward implementing the

learning theories and concepts discussed here, via a critically engaged and responsive aim to

oppose the apparently harmful, socio-political divisions splitting schooling systems today, I
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realize institutional changes in education are highly needed. I also perceive how the existing

academic constraints relating to school management and student achievement voids center on the

community/political inequalities that wholly pace learning success (or not) and the relating

socio-cultural disparages contained within school settings. Most academics and educational

researchers appear to suggest, too, through full understanding of underprivileged students being

the subjugated, as academic and educational researcher Freire (1970/2000) explains, institutional

forces that control teaching spaces appear to extinguish the rise of classroom learning

enhancements and transformations for all students to experience and know.

Further, through the existence of historically driven biases against diverse, multicultural

people and their presumed differences, as Freire (1970/2000) posits, a full and thorough

reconceptualization of the schoolhouse banking-of-learning strategy presently existing is sorely

required for equitable learning to take place. Here, through just learning, I have become aware

of how school administrators, students, and teachers can critically and dialectically match

together and analyze, dissect, modify, and retire student achievement gaps, as mentioned above

and discussed by Ladson-Billings (2006). Moreso, I can also view how critically addressing the

divisive socio-cultural/ethnic/political issues that can fester within a number of learning

environments, whereby these issues can sustain subjugating experiences for a broad number

diverse learners, a dire need of consistent academic support becomes vital for student success.

So, to help success occur and thrive, a transformative educational rebuild is requisite to

implement lasting schooling success for all learners, as mentioned earlier by the corresponding

authors. In time, by recognizing the attributes existing between all of us, we can confidently

endeavor as a whole, throughout each and every community, to oppose and counter the
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socio-political and cultural divides that exist in schools, which may push aside learning biases

and educational contempt.

However, with a growing conceptualization on what, how, and who assesses and

implements education, curriculum, and instruction into learning environments, I can have a

noticeable impact on our social positionings, as I age and experience my social progressions in

life and witness them with others, I come to basically realize we each have a good part, still, in

defining for ourselves who and what we are to become, spiritually, faithfully, and lovely, which

can never fully be defined, captured, or realized by the social constructs of racism set in place by

a socio-historically color-conscious society. Finally, not until people are made to feel

uncomfortable and truly empathetic toward the plight and suffering of marginalized persons, as

Leonardo (2004) posits, will racial analysis and discourse produce a critical realization that leads

to transformative, social change for social justice, which becomes necessary for an all-inclusive

participatory democracy.
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References

Au, K. (2009). Isn’t Culturally Responsive Instruction Just Good Teaching? In Social

Education (Vol. 73, Issue 4, pp. 179–183). National Council for the Social Studies.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary ed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.).

New York, Continuum. (Original work published 1970)

Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York,

NY: Routledge.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding

achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12.

https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035007003

Leonardo, Z. (2004). Critical social theory and transformative knowledge: The functions of

criticism in quality education. Educational Researcher, 33(6), 11–18.

https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X033006011

Mertens, D. M. (2017). Transformative research: personal and societal. International Journal of

Transformative Research, 4(1), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijtr-2017-0001