Month: March 2017

The department of sociology tends to attract diverse groups of students from varying backgrounds, especially in the 1000 and 2000 level courses. This is likely because all disciplines are required to fulfill a social science unit. Interaction with students from different disciplines opens  an excellent opportunity to introduce them to racial, gendered, socioeconomic etc. inequalities in their varying career paths and in the social world in general.

Part of teaching students about, for example, race and racial inequalities, is in helping them to conceptualize race as a social structure – a systematic ordering system with empirical effects, locating racialized power dynamics and recognizing the role their own intersectional privileges play in their individual and group trajectories. This can be a difficult task as 18 and 19 year old often students come into the classroom without an open mind, largely reflecting the socio-political views of their parents and not yet having scratched the surface of disenfranchisement. The necessary conversations surrounding power and privilege can create a sort of resistance (to the material presented) on behalf of the students instead of intended engagement.

I enjoyed Fowler’s approach to teaching power dynamics – through Bourdieu’s notion of “cultural capitalism.”  This offers students a starting point; a reference to critically arrive at conclusions that are less interpersonal. It also gives students the tools to think through difficult concepts in an intellectual and thoughtful manner. Such an approach has the ability to be both critical and self-critiquing.

Even with Fowler in mind, I cringe at having to teach about power dynamics in the classroom. I am a black woman. My visible racial classification has a noticeable impact on how students receive social fact. I have been undermined numerous times as a TA with students suggesting that statements I make and supplemental material offered are a reflection of “my feelings” as a “black woman.” Given that I work hard to present empirical facts, teaching such a topic can be frustrating and draining at best.

I wonder any ideas regarding how to engage in critical teaching, especially for new professors who are from minority groups (including women, international persons, disabled persons etc.)?

In this sense teaching is not about transferring knowledge or contents. Nor is it an act whereby a creator- subject gives shape, style, or soul to an indecisive and complacent body. There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. One requires the other. (Freire)

This week’s posts made me wonder, are humans unique in their learning/teaching abilities, or do most (if not all) species exhibit some form of learning/teaching. This question kind of threw me through a loop, and I decided to dig into the literature to see what kinds of animal learning exists, and if there are any relevant examples that link back to our readings this week.

The field of ethology (the study of animal behavior and learning) reaches across many academic disciplines, including but not limited to psychology, computer science, and education. This field has the power to inform how we educate each other. To ensure successful evolution and survival, many animal species, including humans, must exhibit various levels of learning abilities. There seems to be three main animal learning mechanisms: Non-associative learning, associative learning, and social learning.

Non-Associative Learning

Adaptation is one of the most prevalent signs of an organism’s intelligence, and non-associative learning is a form of adaptation. This is the simplest, most natural form of learning, and is found in virtually every variety of organisms. It is considered a “low-level” learning mechanism, and often leads to other learning mechanisms such as associative learning. The two main types of non-associative learning are habituation and sensitization.

The primary type of non-associative learning is habituation, which is a decrease in response from a repeated stimulus. For example, if you hear loud bangs coming from a nearby building, you might initially wonder what the noise is for. If the banging persists over a span of a week, you will likely eventually tune out the sounds. Since the banging repeated over an extended amount of time, your response decreased during that time, and you have become habitualized to the noise. Habituation can last for an extended amount of time, or just a few minutes. Sensitization is the opposite of habituation, when irregularly repeated stimuli causes an increase in response. If during a thunderstorm the thunderclaps are at random intervals or have long gaps of time between them, you will be more prone to be startled by the noise.

Example: A relevant example of non-associative learning, specifically habituation, is continually using human presence to neutralize a wild animal’s natural response to escape or flee. When wild gorillas native to the mountains of Rwanda were continuously exposed to humans and over a period of time, they became tolerant of human presence, and learned that humans were not predators. Thus, these gorillas were used for primatological research where the gorillas could be observed at close quarters. This learning mechanism has been used as a method to domesticate animals, observe them for research purposes, and introduce them to captivity in zoos.

Human Context: Non-associative learning could be applied in a classroom focused on learning about construction by holding the class in a workspace where construction methods are actively being applied, such as a community makerspace focused on building construction. By repeatedly being exposed to members of a community who are practicing professionals, students would be habituated to this type of learning environment, breaking down the traditional barriers between the learners and the learnt. Through constant contact with such a space, students could observe basic construction methods and realize that they are attainable. This could have a domino effect, instilling a sense of self-efficacy and purpose for the students, aiding in their drive to be successful.

Associative Learning

This type of learning is considered mindless and does not enable a species to learn complex behaviors such as migration or foraging. It is commonly a result of two main types of conditioning: classical and operant conditioning.

Classical conditioning is a basic learning behavior that teaches an animal to learn a new behavior through association. This type of conditioning contributes to animal adaptation by enabling them to anticipate events, by associating an unconditional stimulus with a conditional stimulus. The most well-known example of associative learning is Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered the concept of classical conditioning. In his experiment with dogs, he used a repetitive tone and the natural response of salivating when presented with food. He then connected these two stimuli (tone and food) and observed that the tone alone could initiate a natural salivating response. The dog would eventually associate the tone with a reward, and would learn to perform specific behaviors with the purpose of hearing the tone.

Operant conditioning is a more complicated process than classical conditioning. It is the concept of strengthening behaviors through reinforcement from a desired response. Therefore, operant behavior is reflexive; there is both positive and negative reinforcement that affects behavior. This concept was first observed by B.F. Skinner in 1937, shortly following Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning. Skinner described operant conditioning as behavior “controlled by its consequences”. He put rats in a box that contained a lever, and as they moved around the box, they accidentally hit into the level, at which point a food pellet would be dispensed into a container next to the lever. Quickly, the rats learned to use the lever to receive food, and repeated this action whenever they were hungry.

Example: Endemic to southern Africa, pied-babblers are an avian species that exhibit associative teaching patterns. When a mother or father arrives at the nest, they make a “purr” call to their offspring. The offspring learn to associate this call with the arrival of food, and learn to be weary when the call is not made. This simple classical conditioning method helps ensures the survival of the offspring. 

Human Context: Associative learning is important in human culture by enabling humans to associate certain feelings with certain stimulus, such as positive feelings in response to learning environments. In a classroom setting, associative learning pertains more to the specific student and skill performance rather than the learning content itself. To create a healthy learning environment, especially in a classroom setting related to the built environment, positive reinforcement is key. Students can receive encouragement and approval, thus enabling their positive learning behaviors. Positive reinforcement can lead to a more open and collaborative learning environment.

Social Learning

To guide their learning, many species have adopted the ability to learn from others, which is the complex learning mechanism of social learning. The most commonly used definition of social learning is “learning that is influenced by observation of, or interaction with, another animal”. Social learning is an umbrella term that encompasses many types of learning. Social learning includes, but is not limited to, imitation, observational conditioning, social facilitation, emulation, and inadvertent coaching. Animal behaviorists, dating back to Charles Darwin, have long focused on the ability of an animal to learn valuable life skills by observing and imitating others. Typically, young members of a species learn from more experienced members– most often their parents. Most adult species interact with their offspring in the early stages of life, where their learning is most critical to achieve independence. Examples of behaviors in which young members could learn from more experienced members include foraging for food, learning to fly or swim, and creating shelter. Learned behaviors such as these are central to ensuring a species’ survival.

As previous studies have suggested, social learning “depends on social dynamics that govern the relationships among individuals”. Most often, the young learn from their parents. However, there are other instances of social learning, where the young learn from the successful (regardless of age), where the young learn from others because they are dissatisfied with their own performance, where the young copy another that is behaving more efficiently than they are, etc. If two members of the same species share the same environment, it is beneficial to the young and experienced to learn from another. These alternative approaches to the conventional offspring-parent social learning techniques help shape a more resilient and adaptable species.

Example: There are many of relevant biological examples that include the concept of social learning. Social learning methods have been found in a diverse number of animal species: mammals, insects, amphibians, birds, fish, and more. A noteworthy and proven example of social learning is the resilient learning methods of wild Norway rats. Ecologist Fritz Steiniger discovered that Norway rats taught their young what to eat, after his attempt to improve a rodent control poison. Steiniger repeatedly introduced poison bait to a single colony of rats, and although their numbers decreased at first, they eventually returned to their initial size after a few months. It turns out that the rats who survived the first few rounds of attempted pest control learned to associate the poison bait with illness and death. These survivors taught their young to avoid the poison bait, and eventually every rat in the colony rejected the poison bait. 

Human Context: An obvious and effective way to teach students about the built environment would be to bring a professional from industry in the classroom for a guest lecture or demonstration. Students could learn from the experiences of the professional, and share an open communication between them. Encounters like these are invaluable in educational environments.

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This post isn’t completely relevant to our readings this week, but I think learning about these common animal behaviors is helpful to remember when discussing human learning and teaching mechanisms. There are many types of learning, and maybe it is worthwhile to further look at animal learning mechanisms and how they can inform our teaching methods. Afterall, we exhibit the same learning/teaching mechanisms as animals, so why not learn from them?

See below for my word vomit.

I was introduced to  Paulo Freire this week. Interesting dude. Freire is who we have to thank for the concept of critical pedagogy where basically students are finally seen as something other than trash cans for rote knowledge.

As I was reading through the course materials, one quote kept popping up that just felt like a lightning rod to my academic soul.

“Intellectuals who memorize everything, reading for hours on end . . .fearful of taking a risk, speaking as if  they were reciting from memory, fail to make any concrete connections between what they have read and what is happening in the world, the country, or the local community.  They repeat what has been read with precision but rarely teach anything of  personal value.”

This quote about sums up a large bit of my undergraduate and graduate experience. I wish this were not the case, but it feels that way. This is also the very thing I am trying to combat now as I am shaping myself up to become a teacher. Man, is it challenging. After so many years of being in the back seat of the car (not even the passenger seat), it takes a lot of energy and willpower to muster up the courage to teach applying a critical pedagogical style. I fortunately function in an academic-verse where critical pedagogy is a bit more tangible then perhaps the “real sciences” might be.

In Freire’s work, he discusses how teachers have often applied the “banking approach” wherein teachers dictate knowledge as fact and students accept it as verse. I can safely say that has been my experience for a number of classes, but I also ashamedly admit that sometimes I just wanted to accept the deposit as a student and move on with my daily life. I try not to be that way, but sometimes it is an unchangeable feeling. I also grew up in a world where my teacher was my authoritarian figure, but then as I aged I knew it had to be challenge and changed. I can see why Freire is considered an empowering force for teachers and students alike. His pedagogy opens doors not previously accessible to everyone, especially marginalized populations. That is all rather exciting, and, I feel, in spirit with what education is meant to be: freeing.

It sounds like Freire is trying to change the world’s mind that instead of programming our tiny human robots, that we should be fighting this. Freeing this mind. I can only think of a handful of my teachers that even attempted this approach with us students. I think most are generally going through the motions either because they have taught the class 900 times before, or it is a material they do not feel can be taught in any other way but in a banking approach, or that they think the students are just there to be told information and move on.

I must admit that I am not fully sure how I can properly incorporate this pedagogical style into my classes, and I would welcome some guidance on that. Given my area of expertise is tourism and events, I think I am meant for this pedagogical style.

The passage that stood out to me the most in Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire was, “It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.”

The reason why this passage stood out so much was because I felt like I was not properly prepared by my high school teachers into entering college. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe I had a good education growing up 30 minutes outside the nation’s capital, but there were many key skills that I was never taught and had a steep learning curve my first year in college. First off, Virginia public schools are all about Standard of Learning (SOL) assessments. This forces our educators to stick to a set curriculum and impose memorization skills rather than critical thinking skills. When it came time for me apply my thoughts in writing my first college essay, I was not the best at articulating my thoughts, and it did not help that I was more so a math and science person; I failed miserably. Furthermore, the type of memorization training I had in high school initially hindered my engineering education. I was so used to memorizing equations and how to solve math problems that when I was faced with an engineering question that required me to apply those skills, I did not know where to start. Of course, I soon adapted to the way teaching should have been done during my high school career, but I also saw a lot of my peers struggle and ultimately quit engineering programs to switch to less vigorous disciplines or drop out of college all together. We must change our philosophy on teaching methods in order to create a generation that is more so critical to solving complicated worldly problems that do not have direct black or white solutions.

This week’s readings on critical pedagogy and the different interactions between students and teachers reminded me of an article by Don Peppers titled “Curiosity is an Act of Rebellion“. Like Paulo Freire, he also argues for the importance of curiosity as a moral obligation. Engagement can only be achieved through independence of the mind, not passive reception of information. It seems like the standard of education favors the authoritarian and paternalistic models where everything flows in a unidirectional manner from the top of the pyramid of power, down to everyone else below. And as Freire once stated: “Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.” These models are kept in place by discouraging curiosity which, as an act of rebellion, can often involve the critique and questioning of the status quo.

“… shake the certainty of teachers…” I think this is at the root of the problem. As a society, we have placed so much pressure on always getting things right, avoiding “failure”, or avoiding being wrong, that we perpetuate this fear by trying to prevent any form of dissent or disagreement. Despite all the data pointing to the great value in disagreement as a means to innovation and progress, somehow most areas across the political, religious, and scientific platforms still opt for a model of dominance at their core. Maybe a way to move past all this is by celebrating the “failures” and cultivating humility. In Freire’s words “only through communication can human life hold meaning” and “dialogue cannot exist without humility”.

Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed discusses the “The Banking Concept of Education” and the negative consequences of this system.  The concept of banking is pretty simple the teachers are the depositors of knowledge and the students are the depositories. Through this system students just receive, file and store these “knowledge deposits.”  They don’t really think about what they are being taught they are just memorizing the information that they are given . I found this to be an interesting and well thought out way to describe the lack of critical thinking in the educational system. What I took away from this was that in order for students to really gain something from there education there needs to be more of a dialog between the students and the teachers. This is something that has come up in class before, education is not a one-way street where teachers just throw knowledge out for the students to memorize; it is important that students really think critically about what they are learning and question things that are unclear or don’t make sense to them.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) in The Critical Pedagogy Primer (2004) discusses what it means to be an educator according to Freire. Educators are “learned scholars, community researchers, moral agents, philosophers, cultural workers, and political insurgents. One thing that I found very interesting is that Freire said that “teaching is a political act” and argued that educators should embrace this fact.  He believed that teachers should “position social, cultural, economic, political and philosophical critiques of dominant power at the heart of the curriculum.” While I think it is important that educators not push their own political agenda on their students, I think that teachers should provide students with appropriate information and allow them the opportunity to think critically about their own situations and how they can work to better their own lives.

Before reading the article by Paulo Freire (http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/philosophy/education/freire/freire-2.html), I thought a good teacher should teach as much knowledge as he/she can to the students. But I neglected a very important fact that the success of a teaching process not only depends on the teacher’s input but also on the student’s acceptance of the knowledge. Students are not bank account, onto which you can deposit as much money as you want. Students are people who have different background and cognition of the world. So they probably cannot accept (really understand) all the knowledge taught by the teachers.

Effective teaching methodology should treat students as humans not objectives that can memorize all the knowledge given by the teachers. Therefore, the teachers need to communicate frequently with the students and know how they reflect on the contents taught in class. It is important to encourage the students to discuss in class and talk about their ideas on the subjects. This can inspire critical thinking not only for the students but also for the teachers. The teachers should cultivate an atmosphere that the students want to play an active role in class, i.e., they are willing to express their opinions and interact with the others. By this means, the unidirectional teaching-learning process will be transformed into bidirectional teaching-learning process where both the students and teachers teach and learn at the same time.

The bidirectional teaching and learning process not only frees the students from memorizing so much knowledge but also frees the teachers from preparing so many materials. More time can be saved for discussion. The discussion may generate new ideas and questions, thus the learning will not be limited within the teaching materials. Based on the discussions, the teacher can adjust the teaching materials for next class. I think it will be more effective than the traditional lecture-only classes. Overall, what I learned from the article is that a good teacher should teach less and learn more from their students.

Question: What is the opposite of war?

Answer: …?

Before you continue to read this post, and for once it’ll be rather short (comparatively, but not by much), take a few moments to answer the above question. While I will be, quickly, linking what I am saying to Freire’s work and thoughts, although I will be assuming relative familiarity with Freire’s problem-posing model and not explaining it, my set-up is going to be non-traditional. In fact, I am going to be pulling from Philip Hallie’s “From Cruelty to Goodness“. Hallie is a scholar who investigated the cruelties of the Holocaust and worked to answer the question I posed to all of us earlier. Given the recent events here at Tech against our Jewish community, it is an answer that I think salient for the critical pedagogy we are investigating this week.

Peace

When folks are asked to name what the opposite of war is, many (I include myself in this number) will initially answer “peace”. Likewise, if I had asked a question about the opposite of harm/pain, many would have initially said “relief from pain” or something of that sort.

Peace, and relief from pain, are not the opposite of war or pain; they are their absence. For Hallie, they are not sufficient for overcoming decades and, sometimes, centuries of social conditioning and structured oppression. That is a systems claim, but I see little reason for it to not apply to the classrooms level as well. As such, I would like to posit that we need to do more than remove negative elements in our classrooms. If we ever want to practice a critical pedagogy of the sort Freire posits, a pedagogy that necessitates the destruction of a power differential, we need to have something positive as opposed to neutral in our praxis.

Hospitality and Restoration

For some of the learners in our classrooms, and for some of us in class, there are live harms. There are historical and unmediated instantiations of cruelty and maimed dignity that are brought into the classroom as invisible knapsacks not of privilege, but of oppression, degradation, humiliation, and isolation. Under a neutral model, such as a peace model, these aren’t addressed and in being ignored can continue to impact the experiences of those in the classroom. We can’t, with Freire’s model, afford to ignore these past and live harms. We must address them and combat their reification in the classroom.

As facilitators in our classrooms, a positive possibility for addressing these harms is framed as hospitality. For Hallie, hospitality is “…unsentimental efficacious love” that ends cruel power relationships, and in my view transforms relationships, while seeking to heal those who have been harmed.

To contextualize this a bit more, hospitality is a response to oppression/institutionalized cruelties and these cruelties are captures by four aspects. The first is that the cruelty is substantial and maims dignity. [1] Second, that it is pervasive or total insofar as those living under the oppression cannot find respite from those assaults on their dignity. [2] The third is that it involves a power differential. [3] Last, it operates just outside of awareness and takes a constant effort to address. [4]

This persistence, resilience even, in the face of a historical banking method is necessary for instantiating a radically different pedagogy that, in many ways, is not of our own creating (more on this shortly). Our students have been impeded in a model, for the most part, that tells them over and over again that they are not capable of original thought, that they don’t have anything to offer, and that they are not worthy of our attention or deference. This is a sort of cruelty in its own way, and hospitality is a way of combating it.

In combating it, the facilitator gives deference to those whom they, for lack of a better term, serve. They ask “what do you need from me” and “how can we work together to make sure your needs are met”. I know this may seem odd, and even in liberatory thought deference and “terms” conflicts are readily contested, but I don’t see how Freire’s model can work any other way.

It is a risk, yes, and a risk that we have been systematically incentivized to not take. But what must we believe about those we work with to not be willing to cede power? What must we fear to not be willing to be vulnerable? And who benefits from our continued refusal to do these things?

Hospitality, as required by the model, does not set one person or group above the other and does not assume that one holds power over the other in the conventional sense of the term. Rather, it frames the actors as equals, as mutual laborers in a project of their creation, and stands opposed to the many paradigms of instruction that we have currently in the academy.

It helps create a possibility for the construction and production of knowledge that Freire was looking for. [5]

“Of” NOT “For”

For the critical pedagogy we are investigating, we are looking at a shift in model; we are looking at a student and learner centered model; we are looking at a pedagogy OF the oppressed.

The “of” is very important. This is not a pedagogy that is “for” the oppressed. It is not a pedagogy that is created, formed, laid out, and then applied “to” the oppressed. It is created by and on the terms of the oppressed and never otherwise. Perhaps this is why, in the introduction of his book, we find that a 16-year old boy and his “semiliterate” mother were able to understand the book and its message when the “academics” could not. The book was “of” them, not “for” the academics. [6]

In our classrooms, specifically in those spaces where we hold power granted by a system, this means a pedagogy that is ultimately only ever legitimated by the students and learners is stems from. It is not something we apply to them, though there are facilitation skills and elements of vulnerability imbedded in creating a classroom environment such that they can collaborate in the labor of making, and unmaking, the pedagogy by which they learn; a pedagogy that makes and unmakes them just as it makes and unmakes the facilitator in remarkable and, often, unimaginable ways. This is where hospitality comes into play since, without hospitality, we risk reifying historical power dynamics within the classroom or failing to account for the histories and lived experiences our students bring with them into the classroom.

Outside of that space, in the places where we no longer hold power, though for some of us those spaces are few and far between, there is an opportunity for our own pedagogy to emerge. A pedagogy which, in fact, can lead to the liberation of the oppressed and their oppressors alike. To tie this back to Hallie, hospitality restores humanity to someone else, or to a group of “other” people, but also restores the humanity of the practitioner.

For Freire, only the oppressed can liberate the oppressors. For Hallie, only the maimed can ultimately restore their maimer. For both the liberation of both is bound together.

For us in this classroom, and in our future classrooms should we answer Freire’s class, we will make it and it will make us in a continuous process of labor and relation.

It is a pedagogy of us and it is ours just so long as we are for one another.

[1] “Cruelty involves the maiming of a person’s dignity and the crushing of a person’s self-respect” (p.23)

[2] p. 24

[3] pp. 24-25

[4] “It is the viewpoint of the victim that is authoritative” (p.25) This requires that someone who has been taught how to not listen to the oppressed will have to actively work to listen to their stories.

[5] see p. 10 (by pdf page demarcation) in Pedagogy of Freedom.

[6] see pp.22-23 in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.