I am confident enough that I believe I can

Personal Voices on Issues in English Education Class

4 min readSep 24, 2020

The call is out!
Schools must change to be more than extraordinary.
The roles of educators have to be wakened up.
The rules and regulation in education need to be modified.
_Personal voices ahead

These voices sound more real and crowded in my head. The right place to shout it out in academic ways is, throughout this place. One of the chances is in this Issues in English Education class where I can verbalize my ideas, experiences, and deliberation assertively based on the evidence and they should be proved by theories and specific problem solutions. Due to my personal consideration, I eventually planned to make use of this idea for my master’s thesis.

Issues in English Education class drives me to be more critical and aware of my surroundings, problems, and improvements. It cannot happen this way if there is no eagerness or stimulation from the lecturers who always ask the students to think more. I realized from the way the lecturers taught that the more I question and exemplify theories, facts, ideas into sentences and explanations, the more they direct me to think of other questions. Surprisingly, it did not make me confused or lost, instead, I clearly recognize my answers to my questions.

Love at the first sight may not be the proper way to express my first impressions in this class. First meeting, the lecturers unconsciously gave me the insight to build my thesis draft. It is about curriculum, policy, and school transformation. Along with assigning us to read some journals as well as compare and contrast them, I have written a list of questions that is longer than my list of answers through reading other journals. These activities really improved my constructive knowledge, especially for the one who is always starving for new knowledge. In short, shaping students’ critical thinking needs process and stimulation. It may not be as easy and quick as we think, students may not accept it and give a positive response.

Every night after Wednesday’s class, I always do my Issues in English Education class assignments. It does not mean I am diligent enough to do the reading and learning activities, but I feel that I need to read earlier than my friends. I need more time to read, question the text, and shape my comprehension. I applied the same strategies whenever the assignments come. As a result, I am able to formulate plenty of questions and discover the answers independently before asking the lecturers regarding any relevant ideas.

The most interesting articles were transformative learning, curriculum developments and policies, and teacher agency. Those topic areas are actually my interest in doing the research. Fortunately, this class accommodates my interest in those topics relevant. Through the articles, I also learned not only the content or issues being discussed, but also focusing on the research methodologies which I can adapt to my thesis. Anyway, finding the appropriate instruments are very challenging.

There is an article that provides an ethnographic research methodology. By implementing an ethnographic method and critical discourse analysis as the approach, I was finally able to comprehend the process of these approaches. In my understanding, I can say that the ethnographic method deals with people and culture. By doing it so, I have tried to read other articles related to my topic interest as I mentioned above (transformative learning, curriculum developments and policies, and teacher agency), supported by research design eBook for qualitative research designed by Maxwell, fundamental of education research by Anderson, handbook of complementary methods in education research by Judith L green. The outcomes of reading these researches are, I am able to select the topic interest and support the ideas in order to transform their way of thinking become more logical, valid, and reliable.

On the other hand, this class topic arouses other in-depth discussions with my classmates and other friends who are dealing with the same topic. I love listening to other experiences and perspectives. With this regard, I have finally been able to release laudable conducts in my routines because I have already possessed a wide array of perspectives from different sources.

“Berotak London, berhati masjidil haram” is actually the aims of my alumni. This way of the character actually matches with Jesuit learning environment in the classroom. The model of Ignatius Pedagogy is reflected in the lecturers’ behavior and learning implementations. In my opinion, the best explanation of real examples is when we can show the character directly in real action.

Furthermore, this class and assigned readings are triggering my thought. I need to bring something important and fresh when I graduate later and go back to my community. My further thesis will not only serve as my golden ticket to pass the master but also as my mission to recondition my institution’s framework and strengthen everything that we have already had. Principally, changes force us to move out of our comfort zone. I do understand the consequences that might happen, and other stakeholders will influence and follow after realizing the truth. One thing for sure, belief on something good sometimes is not intended to respond positively, but the truth will lead the way. In short, everything that I have done so far, I do it to improve my institution for the next generation, and for my own kids to lead to the nation.