Final reflection:  Excerpt of Assignment #4: 

Curiosity has been key in this meaning-making journey of a student who, at the beginning of this EdD802 journey, publicly stated that upon embarking on this journey, “ not only did I not experience self-doubt, but I also did not contemplate the extent of my lack of knowledge about knowing and learning".  Kuhn (1970) as referenced in Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2011) states that “science is a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectual violent revolutions… in each of which one conceptual view is replaced by another” ( p. 705).  As a myriad new concepts have emerged in our readings, some even contradictory at times, students in this EdD802 journey have had to make a conscious effort to carefully select which ones were essential to understand and apply (Bloom, 1956) at each phase and stage of the journey.  Those, who have continuously aimed to gradually align small chunks of vast amounts of information to their practice, can now draw upon previous purposeful “poking and prying” during the initial stages of their “formalized curiosity” in order to learn a little more about the “cosmic secrets of the world” as posited by Hurston (1984).  As a result, this consciously orchestrated alignment of concepts, assumptions, beliefs, resources, quotes and processes previously put forth can now be critically analyzed, synthesized, criticized or modified and even discarded as one continues to be exposed to diverse philosophies of research and knowledge production and, more recently, to the possibility of “assessing learning that goes beyond cognition” (Siemens, 2016).

Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education (7th ed.). London: Routledge.

Hurston, Z.N. (1984). Dust Tracks on a Road.  Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.