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Phase 2: Content Analysis
To stay true to our goals, we believed we needed to continue to build upon our
curiosity and bring these ideas to our students. First, we asked ourselves, “What
phrases do we have that support what we are looking for? Are we making this
expectation explicit to the students?” Our idea was to make the final exam have
reflection components that could tie back to the students’ class experiences and
their understandings relative to the curriculum. We wanted to know what students
remembered from class experiences, including assignments, book clubs, and other
activities regarding relationships, mindfulness/empathy, and grit/resilience without
our explicitly telling them to look for it in their work. After making the modifications
to the final exam, we decided that, to gather data in a coherent way, we would again
need to conduct a content analysis, so we created the student-response measurement
tool to help outline student responses in a way that made sense.

Phase 2: Findings
Based on our student responses to the final exam, all of our assignments helped
students to develop mindfulness practices and relationship-building skills. Sometimes
student responses were supplemented with citations from textbooks and other readings
associated with the class, and sometimes they were paired with anecdotes from the
students’ teaching experiences with their own students. Occasionally, the students’
responses indicated they understood the assignment was helping them develop either
mindfulness practices or relationship-building skills, and they could show evidence
of that in how they had modified their instructional practice. However, they could
not quite articulate why they understood that connection between our content and
their action(s). It was notable that only one student reported just one assignment
helped with grit, but another student reported that having our assignments submitted
in correct APA 7th edition formatting was a continual activity in helping to develop
grit. Another student reported that grit was not something that could be learned in an
assignment but rather through “tough experiences and overcoming and dealing with
those situations.” Although these findings were validating in that they corroborated
our Phase 1 observations for relationship building and mindfulness skill building, a
new dimension was identified: the further exploration of what it means to have grit
and how we can translate that kind of skill building to our students through our class
experiences.

Conclusions
We acknowledge that the fact that our analysis and evaluation of the outcomes
of this inquiry lead us to more questions could be viewed as the result of a flawed
initial study. We see it differently. Our analysis and evaluation have supported us and
affirmed what we believe is good practice—but have also led us to a need to know
more. Our learning continues.
From our perspective, our model here matters: how we teach, how we interact
with students, the respect we show them, the caring, the concern—that is what
they take with them … even if they don’t necessarily articulate back the words that
we used to identify the skills that we were hoping they would learn through their
experiences in our class. We believe that including these concepts in our course
through our assignments will increase our students’ awareness of their role in
cultivating relationships with their students, in developing enough grit to remain in
the profession, and in strengthening rigor.

Promoting Professional and Personal Growth of Educators and Excellence in Education 21