Felicia R. Goodman, PhD

• Professional Development Plan​

• Action Research Proposal

• Goizueta-Woodrow Wilson Microgrant for NABT 2017

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Professionalism is more than being punctual, dressing appropriately, and executing your duties with competence and a friendly, can-do attitude. As an educator, professionalism is also about striving for improvement; about being better at your craft today than you were yesterday and the day before. The French composer and jazz pianist Michel Legrand once said, “The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.” In other words, we never truly master the art and science of teaching: there is always more to learn and ways we can improve. In keeping with this theme of professionalism and lifelong learning, I will continue to search for ways to augment my teaching practice and increase student achievement in my classroom. I will do so by developing and maintaining an intentional, reflective teaching practice – that is, by analyzing how certain aspects of the curriculum are/have been taught, and how my teaching methods might be altered or improved in order to achieve better learning outcomes – and periodically conducting action research in order to determine best practices for my students and classroom. 

One of the artifacts that I included in this section of my portfolio is a proposal that I wrote for my Action Research class in which I identified a problem that I was having in my classroom – namely, that my students were unmotivated and often distracted during direction instruction portion of class – and designed a possible solution to address said problem. After reading many journal articles about the link between student engagement and scholastic achievement (Connell, Donovan, & Chambers, 2016; Kusukar, 2013; Swarat, Ortony, & Revelle, 2012;), I decided to assess the effectiveness of hands-on, kinesthetic activities on student motivation and retention of course content. The goal was to motivate students to perform better academically by making learning the content more interesting and fun! While I did not implement the plan, I have a better understanding of how to develop and implement such a plan in my own classroom in the future as well as importance of keeping a journal of my experiences in the classroom for reflective purposes. 

I will also make sure to stay up-to-date on current science education practices by maintain membership in the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). Membership in these two organizations comprises tens of thousands of teachers and administrators across all grade levels as well as research scientists and business/industry representatives from all over the world.  They also provide peer-reviewed journals that can be used in the classroom.  For example, the primary publication for NABT is The American Biology Teacher, which is published nine times a year, while NSTA manages five separate, regular journals of which The Science Teacher is the most application to me, because it deals with high school-level content. In order to fund my attendance at NABT's professional development conference, I wrote and a received a grant from the Goizueta-Woodrow Wilson Microgrant Program, which I have included as an artifact for this section of my portfolio.  

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REFERENCES

1.    Connell, G. L., Donovan, D. A., & Chambers, T. G. (2016). Increasing the Use of Student-Centered Pedagogies from Moderate to High Improves Student Learning and Attitudes about Biology. CBE Life Sciences Education, 15(1), ar3. http://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-03-0062. 
2.    Kusurkar, R. A., Ten Cate, T. J., Vos, C. M. P., Westers, P., & Croiset, G. (2013). How motivation affects academic performance: a structural equation modelling analysis. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 18(1), 57–69. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-012-9354-3. 
3.    Swarat, S., Andrew Ortony, & William Revelle (2012). "Activity matters: Understanding student interest in school science." Journal of Research in Science Teaching 49(4): 515-537. http://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21010.