Peter Taylor

Environmental and Health Sciences in their Social Context:
Critical Thinking & Reflective Practice

Research, Teaching, Field Building and Associated Links

I joined the Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) Program in the Graduate College of Education (GCE) at UMass Boston in the fall of 1998 and have been enjoying the challenges of teaching experienced educators, other mid-career professionals, and prospective K-12 teachers. Working in the CCT Program (which I have directed/coordinated 1999-2004 and 2007-) also provides opportunities to promote reflective practice in ways that extend my contributions to ecology and environmental studies (ES) and social studies of science and technology (STS). In those fields I focus on the complexity of, respectively, ecological or environmental situations and the social situations in which the environmental research is undertaken. Both kinds of situation, I argue, can be characterized in terms of unruly complexity or "intersecting processes" that cut across scales, involve heterogeneous components, and develop over time. These cannot be understood from an outside view; instead positions of engagement must be taken within the complexity [a,b,c]. Knowledge production needs to be linked with planning for action and action itself in an ongoing process so that knowledge, plans, and action can be continually reassessed in response to developments -- predicted and surprising alike. In this spirit, ES, STS, and critical pedagogy/reflective practice have come together for me in a project of stimulating researchers to self-consciously examine the complexity of their social situatedness so as to change the ways they address the complexity of ecological and socio-environmental situations. Through collaborations in and beyond the GCE [*,**] I also seek to promote a vision of critical science and environmental education that extends from improved teaching of scientific concepts and methods to supporting people to become resilient and reorganize their lives, communities, and economies in response to social and environmental changes. (* In 2004 I became director of the Program in Science, Technology and Values.) I am now taking these interests in new directions through engagement with various social epidemiological approaches that address the intersections of environment, health, and development [***].

This project on complexity and change had its beginnings in environmental and social activism in Australia which led to studies and research in ecology and agriculture. I moved to the United States to undertake doctoral studies in ecology, with a minor focus in STS. Subsequently I combined scientific investigations with interpretive inquiries from the different disciplines that make up STS, my goal being to make STS perspectives relevant to life and environmental students and scientists. Critical thinking and critical pedagogy became central to my intellectual and professional project as I encouraged students and researchers to contrast the paths taken in science, society, education with other paths that might be taken, and to foster their acting upon the insights gained. Bringing critical analysis of science to bear on the practice and applications of science has not been well developed or supported institutionally, and so I continue to contribute actively, to new collaborations, programs, and other activities, new directions for existing programs, and collegial interactions across disciplines.

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Created June 11, 1995; Last revised September 1, 2008