Learning Activity 10.1

This is my response to Simarjit Shergill’s post on Unit 10’s Learning Activity.

Hi Simarjit,

I have enjoyed learning alongside you in LDRS 591!

Like you, I work in a large organization where decision making is not only up to me. In fact, oftentimes I am left out of much of the policy decision making at my work. Similar to you as well, I find that the skills I have learned in this course aids me in research and improvements in my own practice. I have found that as a teacher, after receiving my degree in education, it is up to myself to pursue meaningful professional development. Understanding how to discern and decide whether the resources I am using are credible helps me to improve my practice in my classroom. As well, it allows me to share ideas with my colleagues without worrying what I am sharing is unreliable. It makes me feel extra smart too when I am able to contribute to intellectual discussions on educational practices in the office 😉

I hope we are in the same course again soon!

🙂 Ruth

In unit 1, I discussed my decision making process regarding my baby daughter’s feeding options. I even mentioned the possibility of our exclusively pumping method changing and potentially Macey would learn to latch and breastfeed. Ten weeks later, no such luck and we are still pumping and bottling. However, I continue to research “exclusively pumping” regularly as a way to ease my mind. Because of the amount of work that goes into pumping and then feeding (essentially “double feeding”), I find I need to routinely read about the benefits of breastmilk (even if it is from a bottle) in order to stay motivated and stay on track.

My research method has stayed more or less the same because I believe I had proficient research skills even before. However, in this course, I have learned to use the databases more effectively. I have to admit, when I was working through the research assignments in the course, I often searched breastfeeding or exclusively pumping as keywords to see what would come up in the different search methods. I have found that while there are numerous articles on breastfeeding, there are almost no articles on exclusively pumping as it is not very common and has only become a realistic option in recent years with the production of more effective breast pumps and the push in normalizing breastfeeding, and thus the branches of breastfeeding as well.

I am now more aware of the credibility of sources. When reading articles, not only do I judge credibility based on whether it is peer-reviewed or written by an accomplished researcher, but I can now also assess the validity of a study by reading through the article and assessing the quality of each section. I am able to make more of my own judgement calls instead of relying on other factors such as publishing journal or academic affiliations.

Original assignment post found here.