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Today's biology and
agricultural science graduates are generally well prepared to address
problems and opportunities in the world at the organism, organ, cellular, and
molecular levels. My courses are designed to complement this education
by helping students understand complex food and agricultural systems at the
population, community, ecosystem, and spiritual levels. Practical
management and theory-based studies of biophysical relationships are balanced
with studies of social relationships in both classroom and real-world
settings. Students are challenged to examine and clarify their core
values, individually and in community, while reconstructing their sense of
self beyond the individual to include the family-self, community-self, and
global-self. My courses are
based on a model of transformative learning that builds student's capacity to
make meaning of their experience and learning. Most agricultural
science courses are grounded in a commitment to build instrumental knowledge,
that is, knowledge about how the biophysical world works. This
knowledge is then used to manipulate the world (generally toward specific
ends, such as productivity or profitability). While instrumental
knowledge is important, it must be balanced by communicative knowledge
of values, feelings, and cultural concepts such as justice, freedom and
love. Communicative learning relies on the use of decision cases,
role-playing, insight dialogue, story telling, web-based inquiry and
discussion, and service learning among other methods, to help understand
complex human and human-natural system interrelationships. While
instrumental learning may occur in hierarchical systems where the power of
the teacher is greater than the student, communicative learning thrives in
environments that support co-learning of both teachers and students.
Most adult learning after graduation is unstructured, random, and takes place
as a result of living and making meaning from everyday experience.
However in much of our university education, knowledge is handed over to
students in “safe, officially approved packages” to be handed back to
teachers for evaluation and reward. The interchange of information
between teachers and students is like a "mental handshake" in which
a prescribed set of facts is passed from an old head to a young one and back
again. Power remains in the hands of the teacher. While effective
in one sense, this type of teaching does little to nurture the curiosity,
inventiveness, or leadership capacity of active adult learners. Transformative learning requires more than mental handshakes. It requires a human-to-human connection that is deep, personal and lasting. It can offer an experience of rigorous intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth - motivated by awe and wonder. Transformative learning is nurtured by an environment of community caring where thinking and feeling are both honored, and the values of happiness, health, friendship, love, justice, freedom, responsibility, democracy, and productive work are explicit, and desired outcomes of the learning environment. It is this environment that I try to create in my teaching. Sometimes I succeed. |
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