"Helping Each Other to Foster Critical Thinking about Environment, Science, and Society"
Prospectus (4/9/01) of workshop
to be held 16-17 July 2001
hosted by the Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
(http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~cct)
Graduate College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Organizer: Peter J. Taylor (peter.taylor@umb.edu)
Changing concepts of life and changing possibilities for the living are developed and negotiated in many sites and situations‹from disputes over access to pasture and water to global climate modeling conferences, intellectual property agreements to grassroots movements, boardrooms to classrooms. With a focus on environmental studies, this small workshop (10-15 participants) will explore ways that placing developments in science in their social context can enliven and enrich environmental education and activism. Participants will lead each other in activities that can be adapted to college classrooms and other contexts, allowing them to share insights, experience, experiments, struggles, and plans. A provisional program based on what participants volunteer in advance will be adjusted as the workshop unfolds during the two days together.
The workshop's guiding principle about "process" is that academic meetings are more fruitful when they allow participants to connect theoretical, pedagogical, practical, political, and personal aspects of the issue at hand‹in this case, fostering critical thinking about environment, science, and society. In this spirit, the workshop aims to catalyze collaborations and networks among the participants, in recognition of the fact that we not only need tools, but need continuing support and inspiration as we weave new approaches into our work.
Sections to follow
Confirmed Participants and their interests
The Program as it is Evolving
Finances
Related Workshops
Things you should do to get involved
Location & dates: Quinnipaic College, CT, morning of July 16 - evening of July 17, 2001
Confirmed participants (affiliation & interests) -- sessions they might share --
Steve Fifield (Biology Education, U. Delaware) -- evolving conceptions/practices of self and science pedagogy
Corinne McCamey (Science Education, Harvard U; local knowledge & learning in non-traditional settings)
Peter Taylor (CCT, UMass Boston; Śheterogeneous constructioną of environment, science, and society; critical reflexive practice within the natural and social sciences; teaching critical thinking about biology and society) -- stimulating students and researchers to make (helpful) diagrams of complex intersecting processes
Chris Young (21st Century Studies, U Wisconsin-Milwaukee) -- productive positioning when teaching multiple disciplines and diverse students)
Please suggest other possible invitees to Peter Taylor
Updates of this prospectus will list confirmed participants, their interests, and their session proposals (see http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~ptaylor/helping 01.html).
Towards a Program
Invitees should contact Peter Taylor if they have ideas for experiential sessions, that is, sessions in which, instead of telling us what you have thought or found out, you will lead other participants to experience the issues and directions you are exploring and the tools you use to help others think critically about them. If you don't propose a session, you might invent one during the workshop. In any case, come prepared to expose your work in small groups as the workshop develops. It is expected that in reponse to what arises we will deviate from any pre-circulated program, and participants are expected to be open to experimenting in different forms of interaction. In addition, people are encouraged to submit a paper, manuscript, thought-piece, or reading for pre-circulation.
The workshop will begin with brief introductions, then continue with longer spoken autobiographies, centered around how each of us had come to be working on environment, science, and society in some sense and/or chosen to participate in this workshop. Material emerging in such autobiographical statements and sessions provides more and different context than formal presentations‹We know more than we are usually able to say, and opening this to exploration in subsequent conversations and sessions is an important basis for (inter)connecting our work. Hearing what we happen to mention and omit in telling our own story also serves as a source of insight into our present place and direction.
For examples of what else has been done in previous workshops, view http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~ptaylor/pp2.html.
Steve Fifield (Biology Education, U. Delaware)
"I would ask participants to work together to flesh out their [autobiographical] stories of teaching in ways that appear challenge traditional pedagogies and epistemologies. My goal is to begin to assemble an interpretation of how our teaching selves and the understandings of science we offer students intersect and evolve. How do new conceptions and practices of science pedagogy entail changing relations of self, science and place (classrooms, labs, homes, neighborhoods, nature)? The session might be an opportunity to search for (or build) metaphoric roots of these changes in biographies. I think I could avoid charges of fostering mere navel-gazing because these investigations of ourselves as teachers are thoroughly embedded in conceptions of science and science pedagogy. By thinking about ourselves and our students, we will think about the many things science is or might be. Out of the ongoing community of support and inquiry you are building in these get togethers, I see the possibility for a longitudinal study of evolving conceptions/practices of self and science pedagogy."
Chris Young (21st Century Studies, U Wisconsin-Milwaukee
"In teaching interdisciplinary courses in biology and society, I am increasingly awed by the diverse connections between students' initial conceptions, the assigned texts, and my pedagogical goals, not to mention my own personal aspirations. This sense of awe arises partly out of the exciting expansion of possibilities for learning, both for me and for my students, but it also arises from anxiety that even modest goals for understanding the content of science may be lost in the shuffle. My incessant focus on multiple disciplines leaves me (and I fear also my students) feeling adrift precisely in areas where traditional approaches to science education are most concrete. I would like to talk to others who teach interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary courses about how to better ground our discussions of biology and society and how to plan effective projects and assignments for students. I am currently teaching a course entitled "Person in the Environment" at Alverno College, a small liberal arts college for women. The course is part of the college's weekend program, which attracts primarily non-traditional age women with a variety of life and work experiences. The challenges in this course are many, and I have struggled to identify landmarks where improvements can be made. My suspicion (my hope) is that by sorting out these familiar challenges -- multiple disciplines and a student group that is diverse in numerous ways -- I can build a curriculum that is more valuable to the students and more rewarding for me."
Finances
There is a fee for the workshop to cover costs for publicity, xeroxing and refreshments and, most importantly, to equalize the real cost of attendance. CCT is trying to maintain a fund to subsidize travel for long-distance participants and to offer a lower, sliding-scale registration fee for those without institutional support. People in those categories please contact us well beforehand about your costs and needs for subsidy. The regular registration fee is $100 (send checks to CCT by June 30th, payable to the Graduate College of Education). If it looks like income will exceed expenses, dinners will also be covered; otherwise, we will share those expenses.
At Quinnipaic College, dorm accommodation, breakfast and lunch will be available at inexpensive rates‹details will be supplied later. (If the workshop is held in Cambridge, participants from the Boston area will be asked whether they can spare a bed and so reduce the costs for out-of-town guests.)
Initial seed money to begin these workshops in 1999-2000 was provided by STEMTEC (http://k12s.phast.umass.edu/~stemtec/).
Related workshops
This workshop will precede the meetings of the International Society for History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology near New Haven in Connecticut (7/18-22), and open pre-ISHPSSB workshop on Teaching Biology in its Social Context, on 7/18.
This workshop will also fall within a series of Friday-Saturday workshops on "New Directions in Science Education" organized by CCT and offered on a for-credit or non-credit basis by Continuing Education at UMass Boston (www.conted.umb.edu) (July 13-14, 20-21, 27-28). The first workshop (7/13, 14) on "Science in its social context" will be led by Peter Taylor. View http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~cct/suminst01.html for more details.
To do:
Indicate if you want this prospectus & updates sent in the mail
Indicate interest in participating (definite/tentative)
Provide/update info about your affiliation and interests
Suggest a session, however tentative
Suggest other invitees
Subsidy needs for travel and for sliding-scale registration fee