As other disciplines have being faced with perennial questions, education has its own dilemmas, which are caused by various reasons. My point of view is to critique these dilemmas from a trihedral lens, namely, politics of the curriculum, culturally responsive pedagogy and the concept of disability.

Education’s essential goals are to promote skills and to create opportunities to experience social mobility, democratic equality and social efficiency for tomorrow’s society. Since these three paramount goals are hard to achieve by societies due to ambiguity of education as a social system, critical perspectives are essential to approach these ambiguities. Pinar and Bowers (1992) illuminates three key principles of critical pedagogy, specifically, correspondence, ideology, and hegemony. These three themes met in the idea of the curriculum designed by dominant culture as a base for the superstructure of society. It is important to not that integration of political view into the scholarship of education is an essential cornerstone for the field. Viewing curriculum as a political context may lead researchers not only to omit some key factors, such as race, gender, culture, ecological crisis issues, but also to eliminate thinking curriculum as a phenomenological context. With these concerns said, political view of curriculum had a paramount effect on researchers to examine these concerns closely and their place in the field.

Charlton (1998) raises three essential points of how we, as humanbeings view personal differences in society: We tend to ignore it, or we tend to copy it if it is dominant, or we tend to destroy it if it is subordinate (p. 25). The underlying fear of difference misguided the nations to misbehave to the world’s largest minority and different group: Clique with disabilities. Four backdrops pave the way for this social disaster, called as ‘disability dilemma’ in society, which are political economy and the world system, cultures and belief systems, false consciousness and alienation, and power and identity (Charlton, 1998). Charlton (1998) guide us to think further about hegemony (as system) and ideological dominations (as underlying ideology) of society’s perception led individuals with disabilities to conceptualize themselves false as ‘useless’. According to Pinar and Bowers (1992), the political view of educational curriculum grounds this misconception to schools’ duty as an example of social structure to create opportunities for experiences of social structure and to prepare students as adequate future workforce in order to ensure the continuum of the nation’s wellbeing. Since individuals with disabilities are ‘unable’ to serve this aim due to their ‘incapabilities’, it is a logical stand for some groups to accept them as ‘fag-end’ of society for centuries. They are marginalized from workforce, from social interactions, and are placed in a ‘pity’ dungeon. Various cultures and belief systems support this this false step. This issue results with misleading of society to internalize this notion, which is the most horrendous tragedy for human existence.

Disability oppression is a creation of power sources in the world’s system. Since the whole social structure is tied to each other with economy, politics, and power in the center, disability culture is ignored and individuals with disabilities’ right of access to capitals are restrained because of social perception about their lack of capacities. When we deduct this perception into education system, we confront with the perennial questions: ‘Why do we need to educate them?’. Even the sentence construction allows us to see that we are discriminating freedom of education in human rights by separating people with disabilities form the rest of the community. This problem can be based on the inability of viewing educational system in political context. It is argued in Pinar and Bowers (1992) that critical pedagogy lacks in adjusting empowerment, student voice, and dialogue positively, which are key-terms of education process, due to its vision of school structure as ‘structure of production’.  

Although its deficiencies about placing individuals with disabilities into its conceptual framework, viewing curriculum from political context infused to school structure by the hidden curriculum (Pinar & Bowers, 1992) that simply defined as values, perceptions, and believes (LeComplete, 1978). As Charlton (1998) articulates, backward attitudes are not the basis for disability oppression, contrarily; disability oppression is the base for backward attitudes. Since teachers’ believes and their teaching-styles determine hidden curriculum in a class, it is evident to say that school structure has a major role about conveying disability oppression for a long time. Additionally, one of the essential causes of ambiguity in education is uniqueness of teaching styles of teachers, which can convey a false message about disability to their cliques-students- to carry the misconception of disability to their future lives. On the contrary, it may also convey a positive message with the infusion of culturally responsive teaching into their teaching environment.

Ladson Billings highlighted the deficiency of implementation of students’ cultural artifacts into the education system (1995). According to her (1995), there is a no balance between school and community culture, and home culture, which led students to accept what is dominant, generally the school/community culture. ‘Pretending acceptance of another culture’ is one of the biggest obstacles in front of school structure’s ultimate goal-social reform. Thus Ladson Billings (1995) highlighted the importance of infusing cultural background of students into education, in order to create a shared culture in the classroom, in which students are not alienated. Culturally relevant teaching is a response to the deficiency in political view of the curriculum. While Pinar and Bowers (1992) indicated that curriculum conceptualized as an ideological mystification in politics of the curriculum and dominant culture defines the ideology, Charlton (1998) based disability oppression onto this issue of ‘ignorance and/or destruction’ of disability culture due to its’ being as insubstantial comparing to dominant culture. Hence, Ladson Billing (1995) underlined that the discrepancy between student and teacher race, ethnicity, gender, and cultural characteristics can be decreased by application of culturally relevant pedagogy into education. There won’t be a pressure of dominant culture any more if culturally relevant pedagogy is applied to curriculum because all stakeholders including the teacher and all students will take part in their culture.

As a person who believes social reform, I acknowledged that it is hard to success in social reform via schools and educational systems. Because history guides us about external sources such as politics, economic, and power balances both locally and internationally are more effective than what we teach in schools for democratic change, social mobility and social efficiency in future society, I don’t have utopic expectancies from education system. Especially when we consider special education in political context and contrarily in culturally relevant pedagogy, we face with two major dilemmas regarding ‘disability’ concept in education, which were evident for decades and will be present in the near future.

The first obstacle is the social perception of disability. The perception of societies about individuals with disabilities starts with emotion of ‘pity’ and prejudice about their capabilities in life. Then, these emotions and prejudices lead societies’ actions to form false towards people with disabilities, which create a false self-consciousness and alienation for them. This situation is significant evidence about Charlton’s (1998) claim about society’s response to human differences (either ignoring, copying, or destroying). As the political view of curriculum underlines the power of dominant culture on education systems, it is hard to change the misconception of disability in culture because of the general tendency of ignorance or destruction of a difference to eliminate the differences in society. This is also accurate in teaching environment interactions. Although inclusive education is a worldwide trend in education nowadays, it is not effective as it is expected. Since there is no change in social perception of people with disabilities about labeling them with their ‘incapable areas’ rather than their strengths or capabilities, inclusive education will stay as ‘physical attendance’ into teaching environment, which is a good fit only for a symbolic change in society.

The second obstacle is the strong organization and continuity of the world power system. It is easier to feel pity and engage in symbolic actions for the majority of society due to their unwillingness about making changes in their lives regarding economic and power factors. Individuals with disabilities, especially in third world countries, experience poverty and powerlessness, which are major elements of their isolation from actual social, economic, etc. capitals. It is hard to determine the ones who are stakeholders in hegemony of the world power system, who generally hold economic and politic power. Even application of culturally responsive pedagogy into our teaching environment to create a bridge between school and community in order to revise our perception of ‘disability’ will hardly make a change due to hardship of changing ‘believes, and values’, and the little possibility of being organized to protest hegemony.

After all being said, the concept of disability takes the bad perspective towards it with the good in the scholarship of education. The good determines the end of previous social actions towards disability such as eugenics movement, sterilization, and institutionalization of individuals with disability because of society’s primitive fear from human differences, and being discussed and gaining recognition in the field as a major component of society. However, bad side of the disability concept is that although we state dilemmas, and ways to solve them, it is close to impossible in the current world power system to provide equality to individuals with disabilities, because it destroys hegemony of stakeholders. Lastly, I share concerns of some scholar who believe critical pedagogy’s ‘utopian goals’ cannot be attainable in this world order (Pinar and Bowers, 1998).

References

Charlton, J. I. (1998). The dimensions of disability oppression: An overview. In J. Charlton, Nothing about Us without Us (pp. 21-36). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ladson Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(2), 465-491.

LeCompte, M. (1978). Learning to work: The hidden curriculum of the classroom. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 9(1), 22-37.

Pinar, W. F. & Bowers, C. A. (1992). Politics of curriculum: Origins, controversies, and significance of critical perspectives. Review of Research in Education, 18, 163-190. 

 “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

Identities are powerful. They affect us like when we are the pebble who is thrown to an ocean of knowledge. It affects and changes us while we sink into it, while we affect the whole body of knowledge by creating small growing circles on the water as well. As a beginner educational researcher, which is defined as “the hardest science of all" by Labaree (2003), I aim what Schubert (1982) underlined: utilizing humanistic vision of personal meaning and be capable of using scholarly heritage logically by determining how to use this educational researcher identity into teaching, research and service areas of professional and private life by collaborating with my other titles, such as being a teacher, a sister to an older brother who have cerebral palsy, and whose home country needs a radical social change in the manner of its’ diverse citizens that have differences, such as people of colors, race, ethnicity, disabilities, and gender. To critique this social change, we need to investigate the foundations of our knowledge, their importance in educational research, and find the roots and connections between them. Personally, I have challenged myself to have an inductive way of thinking of my ultimate dream, which is to see and serve for the radical change in daily lives of Turkish people with disabilities while increasing social awareness in Turkish society regarding this matter. I also want to reflect on materials and discussions that we had in this class in another geography by using telescope that is conceptualized in the US perspective to see Turkish educational research. I raised two points, namely, personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective, and having expertise to impact to and serve for social change regarding importance and usage of diverse foundations of educational research.

The Code of Ethics of the American Education Research Association (AERA, 2011) requires “a personal commitment to a lifelong effort to act ethically; to encourage ethical behavior by students, supervisors, supervisees, employers, employees, and colleagues; and to consult with others as needed concerning ethical problems. This sentence covers the definition of educational researcher’s identity and has a lasting impact on researchers to imply this identity to different areas of life. There was an internationally recognized devastating ethical failure about plagiarism in 2007 caused by Turkish researchers (Clarke, 2007) which is ended with not only withdrawn of articles from systems (ArXiv, 2007), but also identity of ‘Turkish researcher’ is inwardly dishonored. This though break was not acknowledged enough by researchers in Turkey, because plagiarism and ethics of researching still struggles from not only this problem but also related other ethical ones, such as misusing of expertise, and employment decisions. This upsetting consequence of Turkish researchers’ unethical actions lead me to think what can I do to fix this. I thought of interdisciplinary input of Marshall (1992) to ethical considerations from anthropology to educational research. According to her (1992), there are three main principles emerge in ethical consideration in anthropology, namely the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice from a solid basis for assessing ethical conduct. One monumental concept is highlighted in my mind: Honesty. I decided to provoke critical thinking of my students who will be pre-service special education teachers about honesty as a tie for these three concepts to apply in their teaching and learning environments.  These values are not just important for anthropology, but also are shared interdisciplinary, especially in social sciences, which are regulating social life of human in different perspectives. Furthermore, when I dig into the reason of these unethical occurrences, it is clearly noticeable that we, as researchers, are not taking historical perspective of educational research into consideration enough in Turkey. As Eisenmann (2005) articulates in her study of integrating disciplinary perspectives, we need to consider diverse lenses of different disciplines into education, such as historical perspective to see future clearer. Either from centuries or decades, we need to recognize input of understanding historical perspective’s plausibility and multiple causality historical events into our research, teaching and services in our professional lives in order to prevent reoccurrences of unethical events.

My personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective are consistent with my changeable interdisciplinary world-view. My understanding of the reason and/or matter of educational research that is distinctive by the nature and relationship of education field and it’s stand point in life (Labaree,1998), is consistent with Kaestle’s (1993) definition, which is educational research’s standpoint is to make practice of education more efficient. This possible efficacy is developed under diverse disciplines understanding of ethical principles that are built upon each other (Ham, 1999) tightly. As it is said previously, I consider other disciplines’ input into education as a vital part of expertise based on ethical considerations. This will create a community of pre-service teachers and researchers including me who criticizes the existence of problems and present their discomfort towards larger society in the light of ethical procedures and gratification of their knowledge that is scaffolded by various perspectives from diverse areas. Reciprocity of this environment not only will allow me to grow my diverse identities’ collaboration to each other, but also will be a spanner for “awful reputation” of education (Kaestle, 1993) in Turkey.

Second essential point is that, Kaestle (1993) says that public believes importance of education. However, teaching’s ambiguousness and mutant nature based on current political, economical, and technological needs of human-being raise some important questions. How to create a learning environment, which is lifelong and usable in society? Does education practice has power to make a radical change in societies for its people? Where does educational research stand in it? There is a lack of understanding in educational expertise in Turkey. As alumna from one of the best educational faculty in Turkey, I have never been exposed to think further and reflect on educational foundations collaborating with other disciplines. Also, it is not a common activity for educational researchers and scholars to raise their voices against discomfort of status quo and unethical activity in the field, and hidden mobbing of politics in educational faculties. This misleads academics to mislead pre-service teachers whose chance of misleading further generation would increase and chance for radical social change decreases by this chain. When I approach with questioning this dilemma, one well known but hardly understood name came to my mind: John Dewey. Dewey’s (1937) passion on democratic education system has variety of answers to our dilemma in Turkey. According to him (1937), to have voluntary choice, cooperation and mutual free consultation to experts is a demand for a healthy social order in society. Since we know that we cannot expertize in various numbers of areas, we can modify Dewey’s thoughts by mastering in educational research in a specific area with consulting to different experts from different areas to revise our knowledge constantly to meet the needs and standards of current progress of science, technology, politics, economics and their implications to societies (Dewey, 1938). When we dig into between lines of his thoughts, the importance of a collaborative research culture (Paul, & Marfo, 2001), and understanding each others’ context, raising voices according to relational epistemology (Thayer-Bacon, 1997), acknowledging efforts for understanding curriculum as a political text (Pinar & Bower, 1992) and lastly necessity of an ecological perspective for cultural phenomenon (Schubert, 1982) hit the surface as fundamental needs for educational revision of Dewey’s thoughts. When we modify ourselves as researchers, our teaching philosophies add more building blocks to our expertise area to serve current needs of society with a mutual respect, tolerance, and honest cooperation (Dewey, 1938). Furthermore, it will be easier to form a culture for a healthy and lasting relationship between research and practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and ultimately for a radical social change.

Kastle (1993) and Labaree (2003) raises a complementary opinion about relationship between educational researchers and teachers as practitioners, which is researchers need to revise teacher worldview to a more analytical, intellectual, universal, and theoretical bases, even though funds and demands are often not enough. The light of diverse disciplines such as epistemology, anthropology, history, pedagogy, sociology, etc. structures all presented ideas to establish effects of having diverse foundations not only for a personal and professional growth as a beginner educational researcher, but also for widening my horizons to contribute a small share to a social change in Turkey. Having foundations of diverse areas not only pushes education to go further of just transferring knowledge, but also using it affectively by seeing life in different lenses.

Finally I am aware discussing all of Turkish current educational system problems are out of this reflection’s depth. However, I am confident to say that I carry my primitive urge for personal satisfaction of ‘complete’ knowledge by having diverse foundations’ wide effects in my scholar identity to have a more stabile basement of teaching, research, and service philosophy, which I believe eventually affect my students’ critical thinking and actions, who will affect future generations’. Tyack, & Tobin (1994) underlines that schools change reforms by using its’ cultural constructions as an engine for common public good. By acknowledging power of having multiple foundations in educational research and using them effectively to impact others, we have our contribution for social change. Then, we will have more hope for Turkey based on Gandhi’s quote.

References ArXiv, (2007). 65 admin withdrawals [Web news]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/new/withdrawals.aug.07.html

Clarke, M. (2007, September 6). Plagiarism at arXiv, and Nature journals’ policies [Web log Comment]. Retrieved from http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/09/plagiarism_at_arxiv_and_nature.html

 

 

Education research reflects on me in the framework of Universal Design of Learning (UDL), which is a set of principles for curriculum development to provide equal opportunities in representation, expression, and engagement areas of knowledge to learn (CAST, n.d.) and based on an architectural theory (NCAIM, n.d.). Years of formal education with full of thought to shape myself in society influenced my personality deeply. Meanwhile, when I go through tail to head, I realize that my current understanding of educational research is based on one of educational frameworks as well, which is UDL. This essay includes two parts: representation (the purpose of the research), expression (the process of research), and engagement (effects/results in the real, present world) of educational research in my perspective of ‘goodness’ and reflections of these three areas of educational research on my scholar and individual personality as conclusion of this paper. The entire paper based and is built on one determined question, specifically ‘What is good educational research in the scholarly area?’.

A ‘good’ research presents knowledge to develop a person’s thoughts in personal and communal ways. The purpose is to build on new knowledge based on facts of present world and offers achievement by establishing new knowledge to education area and to serve society.  A good research should answer variety of questions: ‘Is there an ideology behind the educational research?’; ‘If there is, is it clear to reader?’; ‘how did the framework is built historically and related to other scholarship areas to make sense to reader?’. These questions represents that a ‘good’ research in education primitively should provide me knowledge to build up my personal perspective. It is essential for me what I got out from a research piece to add and/or change my inner ‘educator’. To put these questions in other words, I judge a piece of educational research with its goals and potential multiple purposes and philosophical foundations. According to educational goals in The US, three purposes of education have shaped society, namely, democratic equality, social mobility, and social efficiency (Labaree, 1997, p. 41). I raise democratic citizenship rather than social efficiency and social mobility similar to Dewey. Since he (1938) believes that there is an absolute relationship between education and democracy, schools should focus on the democracy concept in education because democracy is a build-up process, which is based on moral cause of dignity and the worth of individual, which will lead students to become sufficient and adequate citizens in the future society.

However, I am not very optimistic as him about co-partnership of three motives (of affection, of social growth, and of scientific inquiry (Dewey, 1903, p. 204) will increase democratic citizens for future by education because I believe Dewey had tried to implement his magnificent ideas into education without any research agenda unlike his eminent contemporary, Thorndike (Cohen, 1998, p. 445) which makes his arguments more utopic/unrealistic for this world. However, as a common sense between educational researchers I am one of them who ‘carries a Dewian’ in their heart, but as realistic people, I am one of them who understands the reality, socioeconomic status/barriers of societies and how can politics and economy can affect education and educational research.

Another step for a  ‘good’ educational research is to offer multiple expression ways to audience (readers) to develop a perspective towards it and maintain and/or develop this perspective persistently with applying ethical considerations to context. Also Kaestle (1993, p. 28) determined three related areas that constant reorganization, habitual timidity, and lack of consensus. These three concepts are affecting educational research community negatively, by reducing valid and reliable structure, knowledge, and results of their educational research. Which also leads two big groups in education to be unable to be aware of each other: education practitioners with their normative, personal and particular educational approach and researchers with their analytical, intellectual and universal educational approach (Labaree, 2003). This gap between two groups leads educational research to fail most of the time about producing ethically concerned, ‘good’ research. As an international beginner researcher whose home country educational research society has a big problem with these ethical considerations in research, as well as proper connection between researchers and teachers, I would argue why there is not much initiator factors such as governments or educational leaders, etc. to put this two group together in a room to fix a problem or have deeper understanding about a current issue.

Last requirement for a ‘good’ educational research is how it effects audiences’/readers’ thoughts and actions in social context, which is based on its’ philosophy. I could not place my perception of educational research exactly, since I have started to discover my inner thoughts recently about it. However, in recent advances that I pull out from this course, discussions and materials lead me to think that my sensation about educational research in the context of social world is placed crosswise between radical change and regulation criterias of Burell and Morgan (1979). I understand that there should be some regulations to provide individual satisfaction and social integration to society in educational research, but ‘good’ research should lead persons to objectivity by using functionality of knowledge in the society. I aware of having concepts determine the social sciences and they are needed to be present to determine the relationships between them to have a better understanding of where we stand in society in the context educational research. However, it is most likely to shift and/or change our position/opposition another concept because of our unique background knowledge. This means that the society shapes men. However, men also shape society, which explains why human nature and its dynamic influences important for social sciences.

To conclude, my perspective has been building on during my education process, perhaps it will continue life-long. However, I an say that my perception about education research, its goals, importance, applications, and results in society is between humanism and functionalism, in the middle of subjectivity and objectivity because of my specialized area. As methods and expression of them, my view of educational research is parallel with Howe’s positivist dogmas, specifically, empirical science-humanities dogma (Howe, 2009, p. 432), which I categorizes as to fill the gap between empirical data and its valuable practices in reality. Mixed method serves perfectly to apply this dogma to research to achieve higher ethical concepts by proposing higher validity and reliability of research.

Since I am trying to find the answers of basic questions to understand ‘educational research’ concept, I sense from the reading that educational research is not a one-time puzzle to solve, more like a rubix cup or a pyramid of co-functioning ideologies and concepts from diverse scholarship areas and disciplines with practice and to make a good research is on the top of this pyramid. Frankly, as a new-thinker about the underlying questions about research in education, I cannot put my educational philosophy or myself to an exact place. Since I started to think about the basic concepts, goals and questions of good educational research, I felt like my thoughts are getting increasingly complicated. What I can say is that I feel like I am building an eclectic perspective toward educational research to understand different disciplines’ place in it and how to place harmony between them while applying them to reality. I deeply interact with these questions in my head to see actually where are the good researches in the whole mass of research in education as unique snowflakes in a snow hill, and how I can put a meaning to them and relate with actuality. It is essential for me to understand the difference between good and bad research in education in order to establish adequate abilities to perform good research from the beginning of my research career.

 

 

REFERENCES

Center for Applied Special Technology [CAST]. (n.d.). What is Universal Design for Learning?. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/research/udl/index.html

National Center on Accesible Istructional Materials [NCAIM]. (n.d.). What is Universal Design for Learning?. Retrieved from http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/promise_of_udl/what_udl#UDArchitecture

 

 

 

I was a technical learner before coming to here for pursuing doctorate. Since I am international student like many others fellows in our cohort, I have been taught to give the abstract knowledge in my assignments, projects or exams that I got from the classes, instead of my feelings, doubts and thoughts towards what I learn, or the learning process itself. I never thought that there should be a strong basement before I built it on and on. I had assumed that I got my structure in my family and during my prior formal education in Turkey.

As I stated in previous blogs many times, life is a challenge, a puzzle, or a Rubik’s cube for me. When I feel that I have a new challenge or surprise, I feel the power and excitement even in my veins, which is the desire for learning new things, opening new boxes in my brain for brand-new knowledge. I was thinking this class would put a lot new knowledge that I have to take a deep breath for a while to inhale them fully. However, I was greatly surprised in the process of this praxis class, when I realized that I was actually modifying my basement or foundations to scaffold a more stable framework for thinking how to relate academic writing, in depth reading and listening others’ and my thoughts on specific issues in reality. I would have never think more in depth about the basement or re-determining it before. The first paramount thing that I’ve learned about myself is how to use ‘third space’ more effectively to build a relationship between an article, background knowledge, and reality. I was tying these elements to each other loosely previously, but I started to get in between lines of the materials and thoughts with this class via asking more questions, and allowing to materials to interact with me.

Secondary fundamental learning from this class was to fill in the terms that I have been exposed to during my both masters in writing scholarly, such as theoretical and conceptual frameworks, purpose and research questions, importance of a particular writing, methods, analysis of data, and discussion. These constitutive technical components were known by their ‘term definition’, but I’ve started to notice that the ‘importance of connecting these elements to each other meaningfully both for writer and reader’ in a scholar writing/or material, such as how to make a explicit connection between conceptual and theoretical framework, how to relate components to each other and of course to discussion, how to celebrate and name other scholars’ works into our pieces, and conveying the main message to reader saliently so that entire piece of writing will make sense for readers as well.

After all materials that we discussed and guest scholars that we talked with, and issues that we relate to class discussions to our general build-on scholar identity, I feel I am on the true path to build my scholar skills. I feel like I am discovering new learning and tools session by session that I structure my knowledge not only in academic writing, but also how to relate this area into other academic parts of my identity. I would like to still extend my knowledge and learning about how to express myself explicitly in my academic work, learn more about how to generalize my knowledge and establish my style and scholar identity in an enduring way. I have still struggles about conveying message to reader in a brief and clear way, and expect continuing to have Dr. Kurth’s and Dr. Kozleski’s opinions to guide me in this manner through the process. We have seen very diverse and unique approaches so far, and I would like to determine the differences and commonalities between these academic identities and styles to be able to pick the right one for myself and revised it. I would like to start using the strategies that we learned in the class, both in technical and general composition of my academic identity to consubstantiate these learning with my prior knowledge and from other classes immediately after this class if not before to be ready using these knowledge to solve next level puzzle.

I highlighted two concepts in the definition of identity of Holland & Lachicott (2007, p. 114) that are ‘mediating cultural resources’ and ‘to manage and organize our actions’ to create an identity. Balancing cultural resources are explaining massive knowledge that we got from our experiences, which is through our interpretations of what we have as our ‘background’, such as people in our lives, and cultures and cultural elements that we are exposed to. This balance creates different identities in our lives; being a student, friend, sister, daughter, worker, teacher, and/or a significant other. These two concepts are in a close relationship to create new identities in our lives according to my ‘interpretation’ of this definition.

Creating a new identity for one self is always a complex process, especially when we look to this creation from the lens of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). According to Erickson, there are two essential aspects of social interaction to create ZPD; namely, the dyadic and reciprocal (p. 30). It is important us to have meaningful social interactions with others to establish proper identities for ourselves, and vice versa as well for others.

While I was thinking myself about important elements of establishing my scholarly identity in the lens of ZPD, I remember Dr. Greg Chatham’s mechanical writing process figure. He was thinking whole process as ‘filtering’ ideas. I used this filter example to frame my thoughts about creation of my scholar identity (by courtesy of him). 

When I think my scholar identity, my undergraduate define how to be a productive teacher in a primary school, my two masters shaped my thoughts about how to narrow and categorize my knowledge on proper tables in order to use them effectively in practice and classes, and my doctoral program is guiding me to blend my previous knowledge with new ones and to fine-screen my thought to find my interest.

I have started to discover how to present a steady base for my thoughts and then go further analysis of thoughts to find research areas for myself in this doctoral process. The strategies and tools that I learned are including (but not limited to) following ones: framing my research interest in conceptual and theoretical areas, using formal techniques to determine their orders and relationship to each other, proper ways to present them to diverse population meaningfully are new areas that I have been exposed to during my classes and professional activities that I attended. While learning these strategies and tools to use, I also learned how to put ZPD in action for others and myself. By having one to one and group discussions with cohort to discover different perspectives of a particular topic, and with professionals of specific areas and professors to learn how to structure and scaffold my knowledge and tie them to each other.

I used to be an introverted person and defined myself an introverted learner as well. However, using ZPD by hearing diverse voices, and learning to enhance knowledge by questioning what I hear and what it is really meant to me have lead me to broaden my horizons. I wish to learn time management quicker to create more opportunities to use ZPD more effectively by attending diverse panels and discussions for diverse academic purposes. I aware of that have this challenge due to my cultural background, which I need to find the proper solution for it by using my contact with ZPD. Hopefully, this will help to others to find a way for their similar challenges as well to built on our scholar identity together step by step.

References

Erickson, F. (1996). Going for the zone: the social and cognitive ecology of student-teacher interaction in classroom conversations. In D. Hicks (Ed.) Discourse Learning and Schools (p 29-62). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Holland, D. & Lachicotte Jr., W. (2007). Vygotsky, Mead, and the new sociocultural studies of identity. In H. Daniels, M. Cole & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky (pp. 102-135). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain

When I think about this quote, I illuminate the words ‘easy’, ‘cross out’, and ‘wrong’ in my mind. Why writing is easy? Why Twain thought that there are wrong words that a writer should cross out from the particular piece of his/her writing?

Immediately after, another thought follows these questions: Did he use metaphor in his quote? Is there any more meaning of these two basic sentences?

After all these questions, I realized that he used ‘wrong words’ as a metaphor. Obviously, writing is not easy because there is a long and rough path between thinking and producing words, which are visible marks of our thoughts and relationships between them that understandable for others. This analysis brings me again to the very first of this topic again: How a person’s thinking starts and follows that rough path until producing sentences?

In my case, I started with writing journals to transfer my thoughts that were interested me onto papers because I had struggles in social communication with my close environment in my adolescent period. My seventh grade language teacher was having discussions with me weekly about my journals and asking more questions every week about how to develop ideas regularly in my writings. Then after two semesters full of writings and discussions about journals, I started to realize the way I use to develop my writing: Solving puzzle of a concept. The time that I use for thinking process about how to structure my ideas into my writing was getting grater than what I put onto tabula rasa* which is used as a metaphor for white blank paper.

Tabula rasa is defined as ‘the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions’ in Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.). I always see the life, and incidences and experienced in it as little jigsaw puzzles to fill my tabula rasa. I need to understand their structure and it always amazes me how all the structures can differ between different sources of knowledge in the life, so every experience has a unique mark in my mind. I used this jigsaw solve-the-abstract-structure model into my writings as well, by following these seven steps: (a) Find the concept that interests you and think about the plot; (b) read or reach the sources that you can use to fully understand the topic; (c) relate different parts of topic to each other; (d) define the topic wisely and start to write your thoughts randomly; (e) put in order the thoughts to produce coherence; (f) eliminate the irrelevant thoughts or sentences which reduces the effect of thoughts and relation between them; and (g) reread the writing after a certain time to revise the terms. I always like twofold words or thoughts and link them. Sometimes it becomes full of metaphors of mixture of my knowledge from diverse sources, which is a little jigsaw I prepare for the reader. However, this life-grounded method that I used in every particular writing piece in my life has lack of adjustment in academic writing. Since we are learning how to frame our writing theoretically and conceptually in our professional works, I see that I have to shift my thinking method into a little more professional way of thinking.  Synthesized learning from chapters I, II, and III in Reason and Rigor, and discussions in the class are made me think about how to reflect my ideas properly and harmonious to write professional papers which are clear to readers as they are in my mind’s path. How to use others’ expertise into my work by shifting my way of thinking into a researcher’s one becomes my new jigsaw to solve in this particular class.

To summarize, I believe as a true beginner for ‘academic’ critical thinker for writing, I need to revise my way of thinking by using more metacognitive skills by blending of reflection of the sources I read about others’ masterpieces and manipulation of my experiences in my piece of professional writing. Then it would be possible for me to achieve what Twain says between the lines in his quote: We need to investigate the thoughts and to dig out the relations between them carefully for creating valuable marks on a white page.

References

Tabula Rasa [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Merriam Webster Online, Retrieved September 22, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tabula%20rasa

 

 

I am super-excited to share my thoughts based on publications that I read, occurrences that I experience, and visual/ auditory elements that I watch/listen about the field of education. Please do not hesitate to leave your comments about them. As picture takes for itself: The difference between all of us just creates unique experiment sequences for us, which we called as 'LIFE'! Thanks in advice for your valuable thoughts!! 
PS: I will try to share my all posts in English and Turkish, so that these blog can be more useful for more people. Help yourself to choose one of these two languages to read :)

Egitim konusunda okudugum yayinlar, izledigim/dinledigim gorsel/ isitsel parcalar ve deneyimledigim olaylar baz alinarak olusturulacak bu blogta dusuncelerimi paylasmaktan dolayi cok heyecanliyim!! Lutfen yorumlarinizi paylasmaktan cekinmeyiniz. Simdiden degerli dusuncelerinizden oturu tesekkurler!!
NOT: Tum gonderileri Turkce ve Ingilizce paylasarak daha genis topluluklara erismeyi planliyorum. Iki dilde de okumanin zevkini yasayin... nasil rahat hissediyorsaniz!! :)