Standard #5

InTASC Standard: Application of content - The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues (InTASC, 2013).

Brief Description of Evidence: During the 2018 fall semester in my EDUC 101 - Introduction to Education class, I participated in a group action research project. An action research project is where you address an issue or issues, and find a solution. My group focused on two local and global topics - poverty and soft skills.

Presentation:

Interview with an Ivy Tech Professor:

Ecological Systems Theory: Urie Bronfenbrenner

Hidden Rules Among Classes: Ruby Payne

Analysis of What I Learned: Through our interviews and survey results, I observed that many people did not really know what soft skills were. Regarding poverty, a lot of people had an immense amount of different answers. The responses didn't really surprise me, I figured that most would give answers to our problems - but not really come up with ways to solve it. However, most people were very honest when sharing their answers with us. I think that a lot of people do not truly have an idea of how poverty and soft skills impact a child’s education and a classroom. As a future educator, it is our duty to make people aware of this and to start making a difference to better education as a whole. We need to be supportive of those who are in poverty and have a lack of soft skills, especially in our classrooms.

How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence of the InTASC Standard:

I was able to educate others about the complexity of two local and global issues in our world today. Throughout my action research project, I was able to connect these two concepts. My group discussed with learners how we can use our current knowledge to come up with ways to help prevent these issues. In our class, we had already discussed poverty, but we wanted to dive in deeper and maximize our understanding of the topic. We wanted the class to really think about these issues and challenge them to come up with creative ways to prevent them by using collaborative problem-solving skills. I had the chance to communicate with others and interview them about the topics to gain an understanding of differing perspectives. I made a powerpoint for this project using Prezi. I had never used Prezi before, so this allowed me to advance with technology use.