Running head: CURRICULUM 1

CURRICULUM 8

Curriculum: Final ReflectionJon MerrillLoyola University Chicago

The various classes that I have taken within my Master's program have prepared me to be a student affairs practitioner. These classes ranged from educating me about the history of higher education to understanding how students develop within a collegiate environment. My program focused on theory-to-practice and subsequently challenged me to critically think about how the theoretical information I learned connected to my professional practice. These lessons were very valuable; however, I think taking the Curriculum Development in Higher Education course was key in becoming an educator. As result of taking this course I now see myself first as an educator, and this course provided me with the skills to create significant learning environment with students. This final reflection encompasses my key learning from this course. The first portion of this reflection will focus on self-assessment - I will articulate my strengths and areas of growth. Afterwards, I will focus on the largest theme that I have taken from this course. This will be followed by a discussion of the connections made across assignments and to other classes. Finally, I will summarize my experience in this class by articulating my personal philosophy of curriculum development. Self-Assessment of LearningAs previously mentioned, this first section will be an assessment of my learning this semester particularly focused on my strengths and areas of growth. My largest strength as a learner within this course was the ability to connect the course information to my professional practice. I think this is best illustrated by the way incorporated Fink's (2003) Integrated Course Design into my role as a conduct administrator. There are three components to this design: learning goals, feedback and assessment, and teaching and learning activities. According to Fink, all of these components should "reflect and support each other" (p. 71). Furthermore, he suggested utilizing a backward design when trying to integrate these components by first reflecting on how one would assess learning goals and then planning activities that would address this assessment. In other words, students and educators first ask "what would student have to do to convince themselves that they had achieved those learning goals" (p. 71). As result of learning this technique, I have found it useful in generating sanctions in a conduct meetings. Within this setting, I work with students to articulate how they can turn this incident into a positive learning experience. I frame the question by explaining that future employers will have access to this information and what they will be looking for is students to not only acknowledge that they violated policy, but also to articulate how they have grown or what they have learned from the incident. My role as an educator and conduct administrator is to then work with students to identify what they can learn from the incident and then to create sanctions that will allow them to articulate this growth to potential employers. In this example, the sanction is akin to the learning activity and students identify what their learning goals are. Finally, the future employer can be thought of as the assessment portion of the design. In addition to this strength, I recognize that there are still areas of growth for me as a learner. I think the largest area of growth for me is in contributing to classroom discussion. The majority of the meaning and learning occurred for me within the various writing assignments. These reflections required me to breathe life into the theoretical concepts that we were covering. This led me to de-value the in-class discussion portion of the course. Because I personally did not feel the same investment to class discussion, I tended to be more passive and silent. Although I had a very strong understanding of the concepts, I could have challenged myself and been more open to incorporating the views of my peers. I think this is something that I will have to continue to work on in the future.

ThemesThrough reflecting on my learning experiences within this course this semester, I now see making connections as the most powerful component in creating significant learning experiences. This semester, I had the opportunity to go on a service-learning program and it has become a personal example for the power of making connections. This experience had an in-class components, where I co-led a class of undergraduate men-of-color in exploring the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as a service component where we spent a week at a Latino service Jesuit middle school. As articulated by Jacoby (1996), reflection is a key component of service-learning and my co-leader and I facilitated reflections every night. Through these reflections we were able to connect our daily experiences to the theoretical concepts we had been discussing throughout the semester. Looking back, we utilized several of Finks (2003) taxonomies of significant learning and they manifested themselves organically throughout the program. Overall, making connections - for me - is the key to creating powerful significant learning experiences. As such, the next section of this paper will examine how I have made connections within and across this course.Connection Across AssignmentsThe biggest connection that I made across the course readings, assignments, and group project was that creating 'true' significant learning experiences or integrated courses is difficult. From the readings I was able to get a sense of what these concepts looked like ideally. However, in reality these concepts changed or were not fully adapted in order to be useful for the environment in which they were used. For example, in the first case study, I examined key points from Bransford, Brown, and Cocking's (1999) How People Learn and connected it to core curriculum construction in higher education. In their work, they described a key element in significant learning experiences - transfer learning. Transfer is defined as "the ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new context" (p. 51). Transfer learning is another way of stating the importance of making connection within the learning environment. The core curriculum that I analyzed had consistent trends that related to positive educational practices: developing a knowledge base, exposure to diversity, and focus on reasoning skills. However, these curriculum struggled to intentionally incorporate transfer learning into the core. I found similar trends throughout all three case studies - existing institutions did a good job of capturing certain aspects of what we learned in class, but not all of it. My understanding became much more realistic when I developed a syllabus and created modules for Marquette. In both of these exercises, I was challenged to practically use the various concepts that we had discussed in class. However, the environment was often a factor that influenced my ability to fully utilize the theories. For example, during the construction of my syllabus, I reflected on being able to easily integrate linearly across learning outcomes, but struggled when I tried to incorporate multiple learning outcomes into specific assignments. My motivation for doing this stems from Fink (2003) who articulated that incorporating multiple taxonomies of learning leads to more significant learning gains within the students (Fink, 2003, p. 91). While theoretically it makes sense to incorporate multiple learning goals or outcomes into specific learning activities, practically it was much more difficult. Connections to Other CoursesI found this course enjoyable due to its applicability to other courses and teaching techniques. Immediately after learning about Fink's (2003) Taxonomies of Significant Learning, I was able to make clear connections to some of my previous educational experiences as well as the techniques that my professors were using. One of Finks taxonomy is integration, where students are challenged to make connections between "specific ideas, between various learning experiences, or different realms of life" (p. 36). I immediately thought of my interdisciplinary undergraduate major: Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology. In this major, I took classes in what I initially thought to be three distinct disciplines. However, the courses required me to make connections between the disciplines, and I ultimately learned how I can understand the brain and cognition through many different lenses. As mentioned by Fink, this interdisciplinary approach developed my ability to look at a problem more holistically or through multiple lens. Additionally, based on these taxonomies, I was able to better understand my own educational experience. This semester I had the opportunity to take a counseling course, and although I was originally very excited about this course I quickly became disillusioned. In reflecting on his teaching activities lectures I realized they largely focused on one specific taxonomy: foundational knowledge. According to Fink, this taxonomy is the base for all of the other types of learning and focuses on "understanding and remembering specific information" (p. 34). I was comparing this professors teaching to what I have experienced in my Masters program where, in addition to teaching foundational knowledge, there was a strong emphasis on application, integration, and the human dimension of learning. In other words, this information helped me to become a much more critical consumer of my education. In addition to connecting this course content to teaching practices and learning experiences, I found that this content also connected to what I had learned in Student Development Theory and Organization and Governance in Higher Education. In Student Development Theory, we discussed Baxter Magolda's Model of Epistemological Reflection (Evans, Forney, Guido, Patton & Renn, 2010). In this theory, students move through four stages in which their understanding of the nature of knowledge become more sophisticated. In the first stage, absolute knowing, "knowledge is viewed as certain" (p. 125). Authority figures, including teachers, are seen as having the right answer. This stage best correlates with the foundational knowledge taxonomy of learning - in a sense, teachers are filling students container with basic knowledge. The challenge occurs when one tries to incorporate other types of taxonomies. For example, the Fink's (2003) human dimension of learning calls for students to make connections between what they have learned with personal experiences. In other words, it challenges students to see that their own experiences are valid sources of knowledge. This type of learning connects to later stages of Baxter Magolda's model and therefore requires students to be at a higher developmental level to effectively use. In another example, in this course we discussed undergraduate research as a form of high impact learning. In Organization and Governance in Higher education, we discussed how the federal government funds institutions of higher education, especially when it comes to research. Specifically, of federal funds dedicated to research, 50% consistently go to the top 100 research institutions. The other 50% is spread across all other institutions. Therefore, these top 100 research institutions have a lot more resources at their disposal. In theory, these resources potentially trickle down to the undergraduate level. With more resources for research there may be more opportunities for undergraduate students to become involved. Since these experiences are often linked to greater retention, it is arguable that students at these top 100 institutions are a competitive edge. In this case, I think the connection was made between federal funding practices and how that potentially intercepts with high impact learning practices. In conclusion, making connections has been the cornerstone of my learning within this course. As previously demonstrated, I have been able to connect this course content to subjects that superficially seem unrelated as well as to my professional practice. Based on my learning within this course, I have been able to develop a personal for curriculum development and educator. I see education as one of the most powerful vehicles for social change. Cognitive dissonance is key in education through dissonance we are challenged to continually make meaning of our understanding of ourselves and our social reality. This notion of dissonance is the key foundation of my curriculum development philosophy statement. As an educator, I strive to create curriculum and learning experiences that will engage students in conversations about diversity and multiculturalism. Through this experiences I will challenge their worldview and thereby start creating dissonance. Connection is the second foundation of my philosophy statement. Through these experiences I will encourage students to make connections between their lived-experience to course content. Through this approach, I hope to build students self-efficacy as they come to understand that we are both co-constructors of knowledge.

References

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Evans, N. J., Forney, D. S., Guido, F., Patton, L., & Renn, K. (2010). Student development in college: Theory, research, and practice (2nd Edition). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Jacoby, B. & Associates. (1996). Service-learning in higher education: Concepts and Practices. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Fink, L.D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to developing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.