Assignment 1: Portfolio Proposal (Draft)

Mikayla M.K. Bornais

Department of Education, University of Windsor

EDUC 8795: Final Project Seminar

Dr. C. Cobb

July 8, 2024
 Item 1: Final Essay

Selection of the Item

The first item I chose is a Final Essay that was written in the Fall semester of 2023. The

assignment was created for EDUC 8005, the Leadership and Education Course. The goal of the

task was to choose a topic of interest that would help strengthen your Leadership skills within an

Educational Context. I had originally chosen this topic because I had just obtained a permanent

position as an English as a Second Language (ESL) Adult Education teacher and my hopes of

choosing this topic would be that I would be able to strengthen my understanding of ESL

learning to then apply this knowledge the classroom. I was further drawn to this topic after

reading the article “The Game of Accountability: Perspectives of Urban School Leaders on

Standardized Testing in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada” by Rashti & Sergeren (2023)

which discussed concerns regarding standardized testing among immigrant and racialized

students and how schools in areas with a large English Language Learner (ELL) population had

lower test scores. I then wanted to know how I could best teacher English Language Learners so

that I could help better support English Language Learners in my future classrooms.

Creation Process

I have never been one to enjoy writing especially writing essays. As a science undergrad,

I found joy in conducting research primarily in Bioacoustics where I went to different field sites,

collected the data and then analysed it for results. I really enjoyed that part of research but when

it came to writing it was always an uphill battle. During my master’s degree I found I had a

similar challenge, perhaps stemming from a lack of confidence in my own writing. When

developing this Final essay, I remember finding the writing process a bit easier because I was
really driven to learn more about ELL in order to adapt my current pedagogical practices within

the classroom. Looking back at my paper drafts, I noticed that originally, I had hoped to find

information on pedagogical practices that supported ELL in the classroom but remember finding

many interesting papers about practices that not only supported student learning but impeded

their learning. Upon reading these articles I realized that discussing both the do’s and don’t of

teaching ESL would help strengthen my paper and therefore I revamped my literature review and

layout in order to allow for the discussion of both those topics.

Scholarly Growth

As this was around the midway point in my masters, I had practice writing many papers,

however, during this assignment, I think it was my breakthrough on how to develop a good

literature review specifically how to hone in on a topic. I struggled with trying to research and

discussion too large of a topic and it was through this paper where I further developed my skills

in conducting more targeted literature reviews and narrowing down on research topics in order to

have a better focused and structured literature review.

Next, I also believe that the findings in this article helped shape who I am as an educator.

This assignment allowed for the evolution of my teaching practices, and I found that I adopted

many of those strategies within my classroom, particularly the concept of Culturally Sustaining

Pedagogy.

Strengths

I think I did a good job at introducing the topic and explaining its relevance and

importance for research. I used a combination of statistics in both Canada and Windsor-Essex in

order to both grab the readers attention as well as explain why it is worth researching.
Areas of Improvement

The first area of improvement would be the need to define key terms within the

introduction. For instance, I think providing a definition of an English Language Learner would

have help strengthen the paper.

In order to enrich this item, I think it would have been beneficial to add in another

heading titled “Positionality” in between Purpose and Literature review. I think this subheading

would allow the readers to understand where I am coming from as a writer so that they could

also understand my background as an educator and further understand my individual standpoint

and educational lens that I will have used in order to write the paper. The idea of Positionality

was an important topic with the Issues and Education Course that I took in Intersession 2024 and

was an area that help me develop scholarly as a researcher.

Selection of the Item

The second item chosen is a Research Proposal that was written in Intersession of 2023.

The assignment was created for EDUC 8003, the Qualitative Research in Education Course. The

goal of the task was to choose a research topic and then create a mock research proposal as

though you were to conduct the research in Windsor-Essex. Upon reflection, I decided to choose

the topic of “Students Perceptions of Vaping Prevention Programs”. I was really interested in the

concept of teaching the whole student and the notion that students come in with their own

baggage and external factors that impact their learning in the course. In addition, within my

courses, I was challenged to reflect on the role of the education system and concluded the need

for schools to prepare students for the real-world as well as the concept of learning happening

inside and outside the classroom. This led me to choosing the topic of Vaping Prevention

Programs because it re-emphasized this need for preparation and learning within the classroom

and gave an example of external factors that could impede on student learning. I was also drawn

to this topic because as a teacher, this was a big issue in the school board and I wondered how as

a teacher and as an education system, we can educate youth and try to prevent their involved in

these types of negative activities. Overall, this topic combined my love and interest for health

and science with my love for education and supporting students.

Creation Process

Although I often struggle with the writing components of my master’s I really enjoyed

the whole process of the research proposal. I liked the creativity of being able to design a

research project. I also found it solidified what I had learned in previous courses thus far because
I had to apply the content I learned, from other courses such as Research in Education and

Survey Design, to develop the proposal. The literature review was a difficult process as I found

there was very limited studies conducted in Canada. In addition, my topic of choice, vaping in

schools was a relatively new issue as e-cigarettes are a fairly new product. When conducting the

literature review, I found that Prevention Programs were just being introduced within Canada and

therefore I based a lot of my literature review on pre-existing Prevention Programs in the United

States as their school and student culture is similar to the schools in Canada. The big area of

struggle for this assignment was choosing the sample size and the methodology for the research.

Not only did I want to ensure that the sample size was large enough I wanted to make sure that

the research methods were culturally sensitive and ethical, more specifically that there would be

no undo harm caused to the participants if they were to participate in the study. Therefore, I

found that this part of the research proposal was very time consuming.

Scholarly Growth

It was during my Research Proposal in this course that I truly considered doing

qualitative research. I had heard it mentioned in early master’s courses, but this was the first time

on dove in deeper on Qualitative, and one of the reasons why I took the course Qualitative

Methods, rather than statistics. In fact, this course was a turning point that really opened my eyes

to the importance of Qualitative Research as prior to this assignment, I solely focused on

quantitative research. This assignment allowed me to understand the applications of gaining

student opinions and pedagogically reinforced the importance of always making sure I hear

student voices and student opinion.