Week 9 Reflection – LTEC 6010: Reflecting on Identity: How My Learning Self Shapes Teaching, Theory, and Research

Identity sharing has been a strong mirror for me. Telling my story as a learner, teacher, and new researcher made clear how much I rely on dialogue, real problems, and attention to whose voices are heard in class. It also showed me that these are not just preferences but core parts of my professional identity.

How Identity Sharing Went

Sharing my identity felt both affirming and a bit risky. Naming that I learn best through conversation and problem solving helped me see a clear pattern in how I study, teach, and design tasks. At the same time, talking about whose stories count in classrooms made me ask when I may have failed to notice silence or exclusion in my own practice. I also saw that my use of problem based, open tasks is not only a method but an expression of who I am as an educator.

What I Learned About Myself

Through this process, I learned that I am someone who learns least effectively in lecture and test environments and is most engaged in dialogic, problem centered spaces. I am a person who quickly notices power and voice, who sees which students speak and which stay quiet, and whose knowledge is treated as normal or as other. I am also a researcher who wants to see learning in action, through classroom observation, talk, and participation, because I see knowledge as built in context, not just stored in individual minds. I realized that I hold a strong belief that learning should feel meaningful and connected to real life, which drives my work but can also limit my openness to other approaches.

Overcoming Personal Values to Learn New Things

My values support deep learning but can also narrow what I am willing to try. Because I value open and authentic problems, I can lose patience with very structured, stepwise teaching, even when it might support beginners. Because I dislike lecture heavy settings, I can dismiss content focused sessions too quickly. To keep learning, I need to hold my constructivist commitments with some humility, be willing to sit in environments that do not match my ideal and treat my discomfort as data rather than as a sign that the space is wrong. Overcoming my values does not mean dropping them but letting them be questioned and refined as I encounter new methods and new evidence.

How My Identity Pushes Theory and Research

This same identity shapes the questions I want to ask as a researcher. Since I see knowledge as socially constructed and tied to participation and power, I am drawn to questions such as who speaks in problem-based classrooms, how different students experience open tasks, and how teachers work within tight constraints while still trying to teach in a constructivist way. My identity pushes me to extend constructivist theory by placing power, emotion, and constraint closer to the center. I want to know not only that learning is socially built, but whose social worlds shape that building and who is left out of it.

Where Identity Comes From

I see identity as coming from the mix of personal history, relationships, culture, and institutions. My own identity was shaped by years of finding lectures less effective, thriving in project and discussion based courses, teaching students from different nationalities, and working within specific school systems. It is also shaped by the stories my culture tells about good students and good teachers and by how others have responded to me in those roles. Identity is not fixed. It is built and rebuilt through interaction and reflection across time.

Impact on Teaching and Learning

Identity has a strong impact on teaching and learning because it shapes what feels natural, what we notice, and what we value. For me, group work, discussion, and open problems feel natural, which leads me to design such environments for my students. My focus on voice and participation means I notice who is silent and who is centered. For learners, identity shapes whether they feel safe to speak, whether they see themselves as capable knowers, and how they read a task that is open or ambiguous. For teachers, identity guides method choice, expectations of students, and interpretations of behavior.

One example is my own learning. In lecture heavy classes, I often did little more than memorize for tests, while in project based courses I was energized by working on real questions with peers and having some say in my focus. As a teacher / trainer, having taught students from different nationalities made me more aware that what counts as normal is culturally situated and led me to design tasks that invite students to draw on their own experiences. As a researcher, my belief that learning is visible in interaction directs me toward qualitative methods and toward questions about process rather than only outcomes.

For me, identity sharing has become more than a reflective exercise. It is now a way to make sure that the person I am, the theory I read, and the research I plan are in honest conversation with each other.

Week 7 Reflection – LTEC 6010: Reflection on My Learning Activity, Design Process, and Reasoning

When I first started designing this learning activity, my aim was for students to think reflexively on how knowledge is created, instead of merely consumed.  I also wanted to self-reflect and think more critically. It makes sense to ground the activity in constructivist learning theory and interpretivist philosophy. They both highlight meaning making. According to the constructivists, understanding is “constructed” by each one of us. This idea was the basis of the learning activity design. To illustrate how philosophies differ, which shapes what becomes ‘evidence’, I chose these two case studies, one quantitative, the other qualitative. Study A looked at clicks, logins and time spent. It felt solid, organized, and backed by data. Study B included student reflections and journals. They capture experiences that numbers can’t. When I consider both things, it strikes me how technology “filters” our views of learning What measured often drives what we deem as the most important. On working through it, I saw how far I had to interpret to conclude. Through discussion I could see that evidence does not just appear, it is produced by assumptions about “good learning.”

Learning this filled me with smiles and made me enjoy constructivist approaches even more. The knowledge wasn’t going to be given to me; it was something that we all co create. That activity was more than theories; it was turning back. The habit of asking questions of the data, the tools, and even of me was part of it. It was clear to me by this time that educational technology is not neutral. We need to question the values and choices that are coded into it.

Week 4 Reflection – LTEC 6010: Rethinking Theory, Philosophy, and Doctoral Thinking

At first, when I started learning theory and philosophy in this program, I have to admit that what I had learned from previous courses (especially when I was pursuing my masters) hadn’t even come close to scratching the surface. Ideas about theory seemed abstract, and the long complex texts had me feeling like the authors were trying to confuse me instead of helping me. At the beginning, I thought theory was just something academics would add to "actual" research, such as a decorative frame to hang a painting. I felt philosophy was even farther away from "practical" work. However, over the course of the last few weeks, my perspective on theory and philosophy has changed greatly. Today I see theory and philosophy as the foundational aspects of research itself; they form how we think, the questions we pose, and what we accept as knowledge in the first place.

It took many readings and a significant amount of digging into, for me to begin to understand terms such as epistemology and ontology from a more profound perspective. I came to realize that these concepts are not intended to provide immediate answers but to facilitate understanding of how we construct knowledge in the first place. When I finally grasped that concept, there was a change in how I went about learning. I began to appreciate that doctoral level thinking is not about obtaining definitive truths, but about being comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. It's about acknowledging that our ideas are constructed through frameworks we rarely acknowledge. As time passed, I grew increasingly comfortable with not knowing the answer to every question. I've come to value the tension created by questioning deeply and the reluctance to settle the issue quickly.

My newfound comfort with uncertainty has also influenced how I communicate through writing and speaking. Prior to this experience, I believed that if I gathered sufficient evidence, that my argument would be robustly supported and lead to obvious conclusions based upon the data. I now take an additional step back and examine the underlying assumptions of the evidence I present. I now ask myself what perspectives influence how I interpret the evidence and I am now referencing thinkers I never envisioned I would incorporate into the conversations. I do not merely refer to their theories to demonstrate familiarity; I utilize their thoughts to engage with issues that cannot easily be resolved. I have also become more willing to challenge my own arguments and recognize how each side of the issue stems from distinct and contextually based decisions. Currently, I communicate (write and speak) not only about what I believe but also about why I believe it.

The greatest transformation for me has been understanding the differences between a PhD and a master’s degree, or other professional degrees. Before, I thought that a PhD was simply "more research," a longer and more developed version of a master’s program. Now, I see that the distinction between a PhD and a master’s or other professional degree is not based solely on the quantity of work involved in achieving the degree; the fundamental difference lies in the type of thinking required to achieve the degree. Many master’s programs in my opinion are designed to apply existing knowledge to real world problems, which is extremely important. However, doctoral studies go one step further, they inquire if the frameworks that we use to identify and resolve the very same problems are, in fact, part of the problem itself. While the application of knowledge is essential to doctoral studies, the inquiry into where that knowledge originates and whose perspectives are represented in it is equally as important. This is a far less predictable process than the application of knowledge, however, it is also the most transformative aspect of this educational journey.

I have begun to understand the PhD as not a pathway to becoming an authority figure who possesses all knowledge, but as a process of cultivating greater awareness, philosophical, ethical, and personal. I have also gained the understanding that research does not merely serve to explain the world, it assists in shaping it. Having gained this awareness has instilled in me feelings of empowerment and humility. Through working with theory and philosophy, I have developed the ability to think more critically and more responsibly regarding my function as a scholar. The work that we complete as researchers does not simply contribute to academic dialogue, it aids in the development of how knowledge evolves.

More than ever, I feel connected to the nature of thinking that is required to pursue a PhD. Not due to my acquisition of all the answers, but due to my gaining the ability to pose better and more meaningful questions. For me, that is the essence of academic life; maintaining curiosity, allowing for uncertainty, and utilizing theory and philosophy to expand beyond what we believe we currently know.