In my view, teaching is fundamentally an interactive dialogue and
collaborative process. Teaching has the goal, on the one hand, of
teaching the skills to creatively think through issues and to practically
address problems and, on the other hand, of learning the needs and
motivations of students in order facilitate the dynamics of productive
exchange. Teaching, in other words, is a two way, collaborative process
that builds on mutual trust, respect, and responsibility. It is the
responsibility of the teacher to create a positive and safe environment
for these attitudes, dynamics, and objectives to flourish. This is
achieved only in part through course structure and design; care for
student learning, including understanding motivations, attending to
needs, and flexibility in response to emergent conditions, are also
crucial conditions. When this view of teaching is developed and put
into practice, the teacher-student binary is displaced and new roles
surface, which is that of individual participants collaborating in
a joint venture. The teacher is less a "teacher" in the
inherited sense of the term and more of a facilitator to and a role
model for the learning process. This shift in role and dynamics is
the fundamental basis for "student," that is, participant,
control and ownership of learning.
In designing courses, I seek to match strategies and styles of teaching
to the particular contexts, participants, and situations. Nonetheless,
I feel that the goals of collaborative dialogue and critical thinking
must primarily rely on close reading and analysis of texts or on addressing
practical problems. Thus, the types of courses that accentuate these
objectives and corresponding methods are the seminar and the workshop
or practicum. Fundamental to successful discussion requires providing
participants the time to develop and to verbalize their thoughts.
The ethic of listening is an important means by which to create respect
and a safe environment. My role as facilitator is to figure out ways
to engage participants in dialogue with each other. My learning from
their own understandings and experiences helps me to do this and encourages
their ownership of and opening up to the adventure of learning. By
creating an agenda of collaborative discovery in the analysis and
understanding of the text or problem at hand, we explore together
the ideas that participants introduce into discussion. In this way
we challenge ourselves and each other to critically assess, further
question, and creatively develop lines of thinking or practice in
relationship to an issue. Independent, critical and creative thinking
is further enabled when we separate the merit of ideas from the ego
of participants. Collaborative dialogue, infused with ethics of listening,
responsibility, and ownership, compels and enables the brainstorming
and risk-taking that expands group understandings and enhances individual
thinking.
I seek to achieve a balance between seminar-style dialogue and lecture-style
presentation of necessary background knowledge. One way that I as
a facilitator in the classroom can aide learning is by placing concepts
into the contexts of intellectual debates and history. Understanding
the intellectual traditions, history, and disciplinary contexts of
the ideas discussed in class are critical tools for participants to
be able to contextualize texts chosen for seminar discussion and to
create a foundation of knowledge on which participants can build in
their later coursework.
My own family background, which includes artists, filmmakers, philosophers,
and anthropologists, has contributed to my interdisciplinary approach
and outlook. My interdisciplinary concerns are manifest in my use
of a range of scholarship from the arts, humanities, and social science
disciplines, as well as in my use of written, performative, visual
image, and film texts. I develop courses that juxtapose "classics"
from established canons and texts from minority traditions, non-Western
cultures, and counter discourses. Interdisciplinary teaching has the
advantage not only of providing learners with a broad array of methods
and toolkits, but it inspires them to creatively apply these tools
in innovative and alternative ways. In teaching interdisciplinary
methodologies, it is important to teach the rigor of discipline without
the constraints of disciplinary paradigms.
Teaching and research are two interconnected passions in my life.
For me as a cultural anthropologist, research is fundamentally a way
of learning from a community. Building on the principle that research
is community based learning, I have explored pedagogical methodologies
that bring students into sites of fieldwork for experiential learning
and that bring research processes into the classroom. These forms
of learning are particularly well suited for developing participatory
action research and for the exploration of alternative ways of conceiving
and designing the results of learning. In particular, experiential
learning can lead to practical, artistic, performative, or multimedia
projects that seek to contribute to community needs and that speak
to engagement between student-researchers and community. The work
that I have conducted in creating interdisciplinary field school programs
are a primary expression and avenue for my continued development of
an experimental fieldwork based in an engaged commitment to students
and community members that participate.
|