Believe it or not, I submitted my last project of graduate school last night. As previously described, the Term V assignment is the Inquiry Portfolio, in which we develop a question to examine through our student teaching experiences. Our question thus serves as a lens through which we can reflect back on our year; in addition to this reflective purpose this project also gives us experience in using our classroom for teacher action research in the future. As a former education researcher, I found the Inquiry Portfolio to be a great opportunity to link theory I had previously explored to the classroom practice that I am currently engrossed in.
When I recognized this connection, I actually changed my Inquiry Topic to something that I studied in my former work. In the past I was particularly interested in researching the effect of noncognitive factors on student success. These include a wide variety of feelings and concepts that students get out of school that are not specifically academic in nature. A well-researched noncognitive factor is self-efficacy, or a students' belief in his or her ability to succeed. In the past I have evaluated and written about the extent to which increasing students' perceptions of self-efficacy positively influences their performance (academic and behavioral); and so in this portfolio, I took the opportunity to explore the ways in which, as a teacher, I could build self-efficacy. This link between my past work and future career was a fitting culmination of my time in this program. And yet, interestingly, this all seems somewhat anticlimactic. Indeed, I am left somewhat "unsatisfied" - though by this I do not mean that I am disappointed. Rather, I think that this sense of dissatisfaction comes largely from the fact that I am not "done" with anything. Although my coursework is mostly over, my preparation as a teacher has only really just begun.
Logistically, however, the year really is wrapping up. We have two seminar classes remaining, and the last day of student teaching is next Friday!
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