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Sample
The researchers who participated in this study are faculty at a mid-sized
university in southeast Texas who all teach or have taught a graduate-level classroom
management course. After revising this course several years ago with the goal of
making the curriculum more student-centered and meaningful for students, we began
to question whether students were developing the skills and mindsets we wanted. Our
goal had been for our students to become more knowledgeable about how to develop
an inclusive and positive classroom community. One of the changes included in the Dr. Debbie Price serves
revised course was adding a research assignment in which students were able to as a faculty member
identify a classroom issue with which they were struggling and then locate resources with Sam Houston
State University and
that provided information about how to address that issue. Another change was holds degrees from The
adding a book club assignment. Students were provided a list of books and asked University of Colorado
to choose one to read. Based on the book selection, they were put into groups and in Boulder, Louisiana
given the freedom to meet as often as they liked in the way they preferred, i.e., in State University in Baton
person, via Zoom, and either asynchronously or synchronously. Students responded Rouge, and a PhD from
positively to the changes in the course, but the researchers began to question whether The University of Texas at
Austin. Prior to pursuing
the students were really developing the skills and mindsets identified as important by the doctoral degree,
the researchers, which led us to this research project. Price taught elementary
We wanted to hear from the students whether they had gained the knowledge school for 13 years. She
and skills we intended in these assignments. So, we decided to ask them! Once we served in the role of
calibrated the rubrics and determined they accurately measured what we wanted to professor and director of
discover, we met to plan how we were going to integrate this study into our course. the Doctoral Program in
Literacy in the Department
Initially, we simply asked our students to reflect on the course assignments from of Language, Literacy,
the semester when completing their final exam. Our students were asked to identify and Special Populations
which of the assignments helped them to develop relationships with their students, at Sam Houston State
grit (sufficient to remain in the profession), and rigor. The researchers met to assess University for 17 years. She
the findings from their students’ responses. We found that our students “got” some currently teaches courses
of what we wanted—but not enough of it. We also discovered our students were not in literacy, education,
and curriculum and
recognizing the concepts of relationships, grit, and rigor. Our solution was to make instruction.
those concepts explicit throughout the course by including information about these
concepts we wanted our students to embrace. edu_dpp@shsu.edu
Accordingly, in the first module of our online course, we define the following
concepts: grit, mindfulness, and relationship building. We identify these three
concepts as the cornerstones and framework of the course. For each assignment,
students are required to make a connection to at least one of these concepts for each
submission. For the final exam, we ask students to reflect on what they learned
during the semester and whether they found any of the course modules specifically
helpful in developing grit as a teacher, in developing mindful teaching practices,
and/or in developing relationships with any stakeholders such as parents or students.

Methodology
The purpose of this research was to explore the dimensions of our teaching
through a reflective practice. Because this was a small-scale research study
conducted by a professional learning community, we felt that a micro-/meso-hybrid
case study (Swanborn, 2010) was most appropriate to determine if our curriculum
was meeting the needs we identified for our students. We began by developing a
rubric to use to collect our own thoughts in a way that was organized and allowed
for a logical method of analysis. Then we recorded our thoughts independently on
the rubrics, carefully considering the ways in which we believed our curriculum

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