Artifact #3 Reflection 1

ARTIFACT #3: CI 6313 - Research Design I: Introduction to Research

Methods in Curriculum and Instruction - Fall 2023 - Crafting a Research Question Project

Reflection

Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching (ILT) Goals expressed within the

Artifact by the following ILT Core Values referenced:

Intellectual - Technological, cultural, pedagogical practices and knowledge gains are the

content applications obtained here in a study or school setting (Kathryn Au)

Professional - An honored and varying worldview perspective is discovered in a study or

educational environment through an enduring philosophical, practiced, and accomplished

identity that is well-versed in multiple arenas (Donna Mertens)

Artifact Context

The purpose of Artifact 3, a reflective individual course assignment document described

and titled as, “Crafting a Research Question project” from my CI 6313 Research Methods I

course in Fall 2023. The project was focused on building and advancing a firm research topic

question to transfer into the second Research Design II course for the Spring 2024 semester.

Primarily, the research question crafting process centered on evaluating the theoretical

foundation, positionality, research gaps or limitations, and background of the study topic relating

to my individual goals and knowledge gains from the literature review.

Through the artifact, the Research Question project, I feel, defines the basic premise of

the Research Design I course by allowing the students to research and review the corresponding

literature relevant to the subject matter under study. The project essentially offers the course

students a direct method of assessing, discovering, and formulating a research question that I

believe advances one’s initial approach and pathway in a study. For this artifact and its

assessment, I decided to use the academic and educational researchers Kathryn Au - for
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intellectual values - and Donna Mertens - for professional values, along with use of these

researcher’s academic writings, to provide guidance and insight on the Research Question project

and to assist with developing a solid study question (Mertens’ reading).

Researcher Kathryn Au in her academic writing, Isn’t Culturally Responsive Instruction

Just Good Teaching? explains how culturally responsive teaching is a structural methodology of

developing curriculum to meet the identity, cultural, and academic needs of culturally diverse

learners. And researcher Donna Mertens in her academic writing, Transformative research:

Personal and Societal, describes how a transformative paradigm in a research study can offer a

researcher a structured foundation in constructing transformation, individually and communally,

through an achieved self-efficacy and relationship-building process with stakeholders in a study.

I will attempt to use these academic researchers’ writings to explain my artifact’s approach and

purpose.

The Developmental and Learning Gains Achieved by the Artifact

Intellectual Values

Academic and educational researcher Dr. Kathryn Au’s educational framework relates to

classroom teaching that centers on a culturally responsive education that requires curriculum to

acknowledge the home/community, success-potential, and humanity of culturally and ethnically

diverse classroom learners, as Au, K. (2009) gives reference to. Primarily, the Research

Question project was outlined to create a solid research question themed on the qualitative

methodology and interview processes relevant to the pending correspondence and engagement to

occur with workplace study participants in a military training environment. I believe Dr. Au’s

Culturally Responsive framework, on an intellectual level and as displayed in the artifact, is most

applicable in how to approach training instructors and personnel within a military training

setting, in that, the framework allows an evaluator who is seeking to connect and interact with

training managers a supportive and respectful understanding of the trainer’s military duties and

responsibilities. Overall, Dr. Kathryn Au’s framework apparently offers one the mental-scope of
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comprehending how a teacher, researcher, or other must effort to possess a definitive

self-efficacy and identity awareness in order to efficiently and successfully work and bond with

learners, I feel in any training arena.

Professional Values

Academic and educational researcher Dr. Donna Mertens’ transformative research

framework spotlights how research should be grounded on humanitarian cause and social justice

aspects, for ethical considerations, as Mertens, D. M. (2017) proclaims. For Dr. Mertens, in

order to maintain a professional standard in research, evaluators must also recognize the existing

social dimensions, along with one’s personal characteristics, for transformative changes and

reformations to take place by way of a proposed study that is grounded on cultural and

community appreciation. I believe maintaining a professional, ethical mentality and approach

towards all research participants and stakeholders is pivotal toward recognizing the honor that

should be held by a researcher and the praise that should be awarded to all research study

contributors.

There is, as I have learned in other curriculum course readings in the graduate school

program, an ethical code and sense of morality that researchers must safe-guard in order to work

with and yield validity and reliability through a study that can potentially carry over into

follow-up studies by other researchers with transcending progressions. Ultimately, I think a

modifying standard that is wholly desired in a problematized area of study, which is in need of

humane approaches and solutions, as alluded to in the artifact, has great potential of being

discovered and realized through a transformative methodology and framework.

Future Outlook and Value of the Artifact in Career Aspirations

Moving forward, I feel the curriculum course readings I have had the opportunity to

review and study have provided me with increased intellectual abilities and an expanded

professional range of work concepts, methods, and procedures, which I believe I can carry into

any inquiry or study, particularly where cultural and societal considerations are warranted. The
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artifact and the associating readings here have certainly provided me with a heightened

knowledge base that I will take forward as I go ahead in my job aspirations and future

employment goals. In time, I desire to someday teach in a classroom when I finish my current

employment duties and will always carry beside me the research methods and curriculum and

instruction methods I have obtained that will guide me in performing and sustaining culturally

responsive teachings.

Conclusion

The greatest knowledge gain I have achieved in completing this artifact is by learning

how transformative methods in a study can lead to advancing comprehensions on cultural or

social matters, which may not have been recognized or visible without critical perspectives and

their relating pathways. I have obtained a more analytical appreciation of the ethical approaches

that must be acknowledged when interacting, collaborating, and making inquiry in diverse

settings where participants or attendees likely exist who require and deserve the utmost civility

and care. Altogether, the cultural awareness perspectives, identity consciousness, and

transformative acknowledgements I have realized through completion of the corresponding

artifact and readings become vital toward my educational and research understandings in

essentially all learning and training platforms.

References

Au, K. (2009). Isn’t Culturally Responsive Instruction Just Good Teaching? In Social Education

(Vol. 73, Issue 4, pp. 179–183). National Council for the Social Studies.

Mertens, D. M. (2017). Transformative research: personal and societal. International Journal of

Transformative Research, 4(1), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijtr-2017-0001