Chapter 7: Investigating Intentionality and Mindfulness of Storytelling as Pedagogy: What Student Evaluations Reveal About My Practice

In this article, I describe the exploration of instructional effectiveness through an examination of student course evaluations. Five years of archival data for an undergraduate classroom management course served as the data source. Specifically, my intentionality and mindfulness of course activities, such as storytelling, are investigated. Positive findings of relational pedagogy and student-centered engagement emerged in analysis; however, critical outlier findings proved the most provocative in piquing pedagogical improvement and plans for future actions.

This study originated from my ongoing reflective practice and use of selfstudy methodology (Loughran & Russell, 2002; Samaras, 2011; Samaras & Freese, 2006) to critically examine pedagogical effectiveness as reported by students in course evaluations for an undergraduate classroom management course. The overarching purpose of the study was to identify instructional gaps in meeting students’ learning goals and their acquisition of skills. Five years of archival data (fall 2012–fall 2017), comprised of 18 sections of student evaluations (n = 430) for the face-to-face foundational EC-6 teacher certification course, were examined.