I like the “teaching to fish” bubble. Teaching students the skills they need to succeed in both their academic careers and the challenges they will face after is one of the things I wrote about in my teaching philosophy. I like that you brought up the “studio” as well. I feel that studios often emphasize that the work you are doing is a process, and there is always room for growth.

I feel like there is a great deal of weight and wisdom in the analogy of teaching one to fish, not just providing fish to eat. All of the statements in the graphic are relevant and important aspects of CP, but this one, in particular, seems to be the best at guiding a teachers’ motivation and purpose. If it is one’s intention to teach students how to fish, does everything else become scaffolding for that?

I like the cooking metaphor for critical pedagogy. I’ve heard many times that it is better to learn techniques to improve your cooking, rather than learning recipes. Once you learn the technique you can apply it to different foods rather than looking up a new recipe for every time you try to cook something. Also cooking is often just experimentation, and learning from experience. Teaching students the skills to think critically, and giving them a chance to experiment is very important.

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Your cooking analogy is brilliant and worthy of further development by us all as teachers. I think, like cooking, we need to anticipate the next best ‘thing’ to do.

Here’s a sampling of the questions that usually run around in my mind when I’m trying to make a plan for what comes next in teaching/learning.
How can we connect students’ experiences to the ‘next thing’ they need to learn?
How do we figure out what that next thing is (appropriate for each student – not necessarily for an entire class)?
How does the ‘next thing’ relate to the thing before and after it .. and what about the things all around those things (think a sphere with 100s of points all around it that are interconnected)?
How do the students’ experiences influence how they perceive what is to be learned and how do their existing skills play into what is learned?
How do we know what to do, and what to change in order to get the best outcome? Shall we measure our success by how well learning looks or how well it tastes?

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“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable in the classroom – recognize and set aside biases.”

This really stood out to me. In many of my classes, I like to play the contrarian but to be argumentative, but to play Devil’s Advocate. This often means speaking up in times when conversations become uncomfortable. I’ve found this to be a good source of interactional learning, and I try to employ this method in the classroom with students. Not to make them uncomfortable, but to try to engage them and have them think from perspectives not necessarily their own.

I agree with Nicole and Amy. Coming from a social science background, I am constantly exposed to new publications and behavioral theories. I’m certain I am not alone, and that other disciplines are as well. Teaching must remain fluid to account for new information and discovery to give students the greatest chance of success.

What Jaclyn said — I really like the way you focused our attention on the dialogic identities of teacher-learner.

Here I am, so amazed by how cool soil science is! This sounds like such a great activity.

I also really responded to Bethany’s strategy for encouraging independent work in office hours and to Qichao’s lovely expression that “there are many things that are too beautiful to skip.” At some level we all know that the process is as important and meaningful as the result or answer. And so I’m wondering if it would make sense to swap out the concept “convenience” for “help” in the example Armani cites here. Having a physical disability involves so much more than inconvenience. By offering to write for the student, Armani was trying to make an accommodation that would help the student, but inadvertently this kind of help encouraged the student to rely too heavily on her and not try to think through the problems himself. The terrific strategies noted above (and in the comments) for encouraging critical and independent thinking are also modes of helping.

Thanks for the comments. It’s true that one of the engineering ethics is to meet the client’s interest. In the civil engineering field, the clients are, in most cases, the governments or ultimately the governments whose interest is based on the social wellbeing. Fortunately, the governments and several funding agencies start to notice the social equity part of transportation. In reality, there are many cases that the transportation engineers need to work with urban planners. In that case, the concern of politics is necessary. Also, with the emerging technologies in computer science and artificial intelligence, be able to analysis the complexed systems and consider the human wellbeings will be essential to an engineer that can hardly be replaced by a smart machine. To prepare the students for their future profession, I think it’s good for them to be aware of the complexed reality instead of attacking the problems based on simple equations.

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