I searched “school spirit” and you’ll never guess what kind of stuff is out there. When searching the OmniFile database, I stumbled upon articles ranging from measuring school spirit to how Jell-O is fostering school pride. I know exploring the Jell-O article sounds interesting cause well, who doesn’t like Jell-O? However, I am focusing on this gap that has appeared with the presence of all of my articles.
My Research Map – Source: Cory Gong
This roadmap is a visual of how I believe all of my articles connect. From the photograph, I have connected all of the sources I have found already, to an article that claims to measure school spirit. I initially thought this was the end of my process, but then I found an article claiming there to be professional teaching.
The article about professional teaching described how this idea possibly leads to professional pride in one’s school. Therefore, this article brought up the idea of a professional school spirit, which I found to be fascinating.
The requirements for professional teaching included many aspects: attention to detail, attention to well-being of students, and many more. I then thought that the requirements for professional teaching could also be applied to further school spirit.
However, I realized that my prediction—of treating the professionalism of school spirit and the professionalism of teaching as the result of the same variables—is not guaranteed. Therefore, a gap emerges between getting from measuring school spirit to claiming whether or not a school’s spirit is “professional.” In other words, I do not know what qualifies school spirit as professional despite the leading example that professional teaching presents.
This gap brought forth some more questions for myself: What does a school’s spirit need to be professional? Is there even a requirement that could be professional? Even further, do we need to categorize school spirits into professional and unprofessional and what are the possible outcomes of that situation?