Personal Reflection: A Reflection on Encouraging Critical Thinking and Empathy: Using So-TL to Examine Teaching Effectiveness in a Social Justice in Graduate Education Class

Abstract This essay addresses the search for a more comprehensive and reflective method through which to analyze the efficacy of my teaching approach in a graduate level social justice in education class. I explored tenets of scholarship in teaching and learning as a basis for developing a more coherent and organic assessment approach, with the goal of assisting students to better address the intellectual challenges posed by the discussion and application of sensitive social justice topics. I was also interested in using scholarship of teaching and learning to analyze the effectiveness of the applied anthropological approach, now employed to assist culturally homogeneous graduate students and classroom teachers develop more empathic attitudes towards their international, multi-ethnic classroom population while examining their own approach to student learning outcomes