MY ROLE AS TEACHER RESEARCHER

Teacher Inquiry is essential to my effectiveness as a teacher. Effective teaching for me is a dynamic process that requires constant adaptations. Research allows me to ask what my students know, what they misunderstand, and what instructional strategies will best facilitate mediation between where they are now and where I want them to be. It involves a systematic gathering of evidence that often creates links between seemingly random events. Research helps make the patterns in my students learning more visible. It also helps me understand more concretely how my instructional techniques effect student outcomes.

Research situates me as  part of the community of teachers, professors and researchers looking to make sense of a certain phenomena. The understanding that my classroom is part of a larger, even world wide community of learners, opens up many more possibilities for me to incorporate practices that best stimulate student learning.

Through my research, I constantly examine the relationships between learning objectives, instruction,  and outcomes. Constant reflection combined with concrete data increases my confidence and competence as an educator.  The types of questions I research are founded in the notion that students should be learning in authentic and empowering ways. As a result of these focused inquiries my practice has been consistently evolving.