This assignment was a reflective presentation piece on an inventory I took called the ELI inventory. The ELI inventory measures preferences for one of four ethical lenses or outlooks. It gathers the preferences through the answering of questions about oneself. This ELI inventory confirmed that I am a highly empathetic person and choose empathy to problem solve. This is grounded in and develops a professional knowledge base of the self that integrates practical and research knowledge, exhibiting CPED principle one. It also exhibits the transformation of professional knowledge and practice in that it has helped inform my own professional practice through reflection on the ethical lens I see the world through. 

In this presentation I reflect on how I approach ethical entrepreneurship in my own practice, and I introduce my own practice of Design Thinking to help me empathize with my students and colleagues. Since the ELI inventory showed that empathy was essential to my ethical lens, I found it appropriate to discuss and reflect upon utilizing Design Thinking in the classroom. Empathy is a crucial component of the process of Design Thinking, and it is how I work, and problem solve. I also pull into this thinking the Noble Eight-Fold Path. This practical knowledge was integrated into my learning and helped me formulate how to further develop ethically. 

This was early on in my own academic discovery and at this point I thought I was going to pursue more research into design thinking and its impact on the classroom. It was summer semester 2023 and I was finding my academic footing again after taking a break Spring 2023. Overall, I learned much about my own ethical leadership style and how to leverage it for impact.  

To this day I rely on empathy to help solve problems, but I take more time with my reasoning, following the Noble Eight-Fold Path’s caution about presence and awareness. I have begun to see the world in a newer lens, an academic one. Through my reflections on the happenings in my school, community, and in the field of education in general I feel I am able to empathize in new ways. I have become bilingual in empathetic and academic language. Empathy was a starting point for curiosity and academic research. Although I will not end up using the Design Thinking framework in my dissertation in practice, I will use some key components with other methods which shows growth on my part as practitioner and researcher.