EXHIBITS
These exhibits have been selected to illustrate important characteristics,
themes, and products of my work. Given my immediate audience in CCT and GCOE,
these are organized around four overall pedagogical goals and related points
introduced in a statement of teaching philosophy that leads off the exhibits.
Each section and each exhibit is introduced in a cover page.
Fostering Critical Thinking about Environment, Science, and Society
(Teaching Philosophy)
1. Reciprocal animation
I promote strong two-way interaction between the sciences and
interpretations from STS disciplines. The ways I do this are demonstrated in
five exhibits:
A: Model Science-in-society courses, which break down the barriers
among the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities; and between
the sciences and STS.
B: Publications resulting from linking my scholarship and teaching.
C. Conceptual exploration and theoretical innovation.
D. Case studies using social contextualization of science to enliven
science education and wider social discussion about science.
E. Institutional initiatives.
2. Critical thinking
I encourage students to contrast the paths taken by science, society,
learning, and people's lives with other paths that might be taken, and to base
actions upon the insights gained. To promote critical thinking my teaching and
advising emphasizes:
A: Writing for learning, in contrast with writing to show what a
student has learned.
B: Making comments on writing in ways that stimulate rethinking and
revision.
C: Exposing the constructedness of teaching and learning; acknowledging
the variety of ways people develop questions and come to know what they know.
D: Teaching/learning as a joint dynamic; both learning and teaching
benefit from teachers and students viewing the class from both the teacher's
side and the students'.
E: Empowerment to act upon critical thinking, building students'
confidence to go beyond simply adopting a critical position.
F: Advising towards lifelong learning
G: Facilitating trans-disciplinary exploration
3. On-going development of pedagogy.
My commitment to developing STS teaching over the long term, and CCT
teaching in the last year, has led me to experiment, innovate and develop
better ways to learn from teaching about teaching and learning. This is
evident in my:
A: Developing a large range of CCT courses.
B: Experimenting to develop pedagogical approaches specifically tuned
to STS and CCT and their open-ended state as fields.
C. On-going development of courses.
D: Varieties of course evaluation, integrated into the
teaching/learning process.
E: Promotion of teacher-teacher interaction.
4. Heterogeneous construction as a model of agency
EXHIBITS
Teaching Philosophy
This statement of teaching philosophy dates from 1995. The only
significant revision since then has been to make explicit a fourth goal,
namely, to "introduce heterogeneous construction as a model of agency." Rather
than formulate a new statement after only one year working in a College of
Education, I decided to reflect on the transition by taking stock of the ways
that my current efforts fitted within or departed from the 1995 statement.
1. Reciprocal animation
I promote strong two-way interaction between the sciences and
interpretations from STS disciplines. The ways I do this are described in the
personal statement and the statement of teaching philosophy and demonstrated in
the five exhibits that follow.
A: Model Science-in-society courses, which break down the barriers
among the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities; and between
the sciences and STS.
Extracts from the syllabus for CCT611, "Seminar in Critical Thinking: Science
in Society"--Course description, overview, and schedule of classes and
activities. The full syllabus is included in section I.
B: Publications resulting from my linking scholarship and teaching.
i) My essay, "Natural selection: A heavy hand in biological and social thought"
(1998; see attached p/reprints) originated from teaching of evolution as a
graduate student. For several years, given that my research focus is in
Environmental Studies and STS, the manuscript emerged only during my teaching
of Biology and Society (see exhibit 1.B, classes 5 and 9). When preparing a
more technical critique of natural selection theory for a Festschrift to
Richard Lewontin, I revised "Heavy hand" and submitted it in a journal,
Science as Culture, intended for a wider STS readership.
ii) My essay "Critical tensions and non-standard lessons from the 'tragedy of
the commons'" (forthcoming) begins as follows:
C. Conceptual exploration and theoretical innovation
This exhibit consists of the table of contents and first half of the
introduction to The Limits of Ecology, preceded by an excerpt from an earlier draft--which may find its way back in--that
amplifies the role I give to conceptual exploration.
D. Case studies using social contextualization of science to enliven
science education and wider social discussion about science.
Before I knew I was taking up a position at U. Mass. Boston, I prepared a
proposal to complete a book of case studies "promot[ing] critical thinking
about the reciprocal relationships between developments in the life sciences
and changes in society." Exhibit i) is an attachment to the proposal, listing
the cases already developed through my Biology and Society teaching. I also
prepared an NSF proposal to do further research into one of those cases and
research on an additional case. This research is described in the exhibit ii),
my proposal to the U. Mass. Professional Development Support Competition to
revise and resubmit the NSF proposal.
E. Institutional initiatives
The Committee on Education of the International Society for History, Philosophy
and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), which I chair, aims to contribute to
and link ISHPSSB members to current initiatives concerning the teaching of
science in its social context. Exhibit i) is the initial version of the
Educational WebSite.
I organized a one-day summer workshop, "Science in society, society in
science," with the goal of showing how "placing developments in science and
technology in their social context can enliven and enrich science education,
science popularization, and citizen activism." Exhibits ii)-iv) are the
publicity brochure, a post-workshop report in the form of a website, and an
evaluation of the workshop written by Prof. S. Fifield of the University of
Delaware.
I also convened, "Changing Life," a working group of teachers and students in
the Boston area with interests in teaching critical thinking about the life and
environmental sciences. For me, this includes teaching science in its social
context. Exhibit v) is the flyer for the group.
2. Critical thinking
I encourage students to contrast the paths taken by science and society, and by
people's lives and learning, with other paths that might be taken, and to base
actions upon the insights gained. To promote critical thinking my teaching and
advising emphasizes the features described in the seven sections that follow.
A: Writing for learning, in contrast with writing to show what a student
has learned.
In all my courses, written work is assigned to be submitted every week
or every other week (see also exhibit 2B). Journals are required, which,
together with in-class writing, help focus students' thoughts and prepare them
to contribute to discussions and other activities, or reflect on them
afterwards. What is linked here is an excerpt from the "Notes on Teaching/Learning
Interactions" I wrote for "Critical Thinking" (CCT601) (as revised following
the spring offering of this course).
B: Making comments on writing in ways that stimulate rethinking and
revision.
Over a number of years my approach to students' assignments has evolved
significantly. At first, I wrote very detailed comments and allowed students
to revise and resubmit, but the "yield" from my efforts was quite low. Now I
respond to their writing in a cover page, do not "copyedit" their prose, and
require revision and resubmission. My current approach and the accompanying
assessment system is described in exhibit i) from this semester's "Notes on
teaching/learning interactions." A selection of students' responses to this
are included in exhibit ii).
C: Exposing the constructedness of teaching and learning, and acknowledging
the variety of ways that people develop questions and come to know what they
know.
In teaching critical thinking it is important to model it during classes. One
way that I do this is by making evident the past, present and on-going
development of my thinking, not just its polished products. This applies to my
thinking about both the process and the content of my courses. Admittedly,
some students can be disconcerted by a teacher learning on the job, by the
course as "work in progress." Eventually, however, when they appreciate the
range of different elements with which their teacher constructs his thinking,
they are more likely to reflect upon the analogous constructedness of their own
learning and understanding. Moreover, although my experience and my power
means that I cannot help being an authority, I want the effects of this
authority to be open for discussion and reflection. In general, I find that by
acknowledging the variety of ways people develop questions and come to know
what they know, students learn more effectively and contribute more
cooperatively to the learning of the other members of the class, myself
included.
Exhibit i) is an excerpt from my teaching philosophy with notes arising from
the early weeks teaching "Critical Thinking" (CCT601). This was handed out to
the class a little way into the semester, when some of them were asking for
examples of manifestos (a requirement at the end of the semester) and others
were asking us to be more explicit about what constituted critical thinking.
It was also the basis of one of the monthly CCT faculty discussions in the
spring.
Exhibit ii) is an excerpt from a student's evaluation of "Issues in Educational
Evaluation" (CCT685), a course that evolved during the semester as I learned on
the job.
Exhibit iii) is a mid-semester submission from a Fall 1998 student in
"Practicum: Processes of Research and Engagement" (CCT698) who, more than other
students, laid out the different strands of her work and continued to develop
and rework them.
D: Teaching/learning as a joint dynamic; both learning and teaching
benefit from teachers and students viewing the class from both the teacher's
side and the students'.
Exhibit i), is a student's unsolicited reflection on "Educational
Evaluation," a course that evolved more as we went than my other courses. This
same student sent an email early in the course expressing her frustration at
the diversity of activities and tasks.
In the past positions I have held "debriefing" sessions after classes, during
which two or three students comment on the particular class and on the progress
of the course to date. These sessions is more difficult to arrange after
evening classes. Email exchanges are a next-best substitute. Exhibit ii) is a
student's response to my email reflecting on the previous class in which she
presented a map of her project. Exhibit iii) is feedback after students
presented on their work in progress.
E: Empowerment to act upon critical thinking, building students'
confidence to go beyond simply adopting a critical position.
The CCT Program emphasizes not only critical and creative
thinking, but using that thinking to inform practice. To
encourage and support students to extend critical thinking into reflective
practice it is necessary to take them seriously as individuals. For me, this
begins with learning and using students' names by the end of the second week,
even in large classes. In large classes it is also not possible to sustain a
truly individual-individual interaction with each student that is the ideal of
the developmental philosophy (see discussion in the personal statement).
However, through small group discussions, peer commentary, work-in-progress
presentations on student projects, and, more recently, focused conversations
and other facilitated group processes, I am able to bring out many students'
voices. As a consequence, I also find that students' evaluations of my courses
include more detailed and penetrating observations than those I have seen for
other teachers.
The exhibits I have included here are:
i) an excerpt from a student's report, in which she describes her productive
workplace use of a group facilitation technique I had introduced in class;
ii) a compilation of "critical thinking manifestos" (at the front of this
portfolio). This assignment asked students for "a synthesis of elements from
the course selected and organized so as to inspire and inform your efforts in
extending critical thinking beyond the course" (see, in particular, the two
manifestos marked by post-its);
iii) one student's review of his life in terms of heuristics, which began as a
journal entry in response to a class in which I had introduced the concept of
critical (thinking) heuristics;
iv) cover notes from some student's portfolios. This end-of-semester
assignment (renamed in 99-00 syllabi as a "process review"), called for "4-6
examples of the process of development of your projects and thinking. Journal
entries, free writing, drafts, etc. may be included. The point is to
demonstrate the development of your work and thinking, not just the best
products. Explain your choices in a cover note and through annotations
(post-its are a good way to do this)."
F: Advising towards lifelong learning.
Given that CCT students are mostly already working as teachers or in other
professional occupations, they have already shown some inclination to life-long
learning by joining the Program. Nevertheless, intensive advising is often
needed, over and above what courses require, to help them persist through to
completion of the Program, weave their studies into their changing work and
lives, and turn that inclination into an on-going commitment to life-long
learning. (In this regard the testimonials submitted in 1996 by its graduates
in support of CCT are very impressive.) My particular emphasis in this first
year at U.Mass. has been to cultivate interactions and connections beyond the
classroom student-teacher focus. This is evident in:
--the revived CCT web-site (exhibit i), which informs students about the work
of previous students;
--a letter (exhibit ii) as acting Program Director to a) solicit information
for a directory of CCT students, graduates, and faculty, which will list their
interests and projects, and b) initiate a regular forum;
--websites for my courses, with links beyond the course texts (see
e.g., http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/698-99p.html); and
--a "briefing" assignment in some courses, through which students cover more
topics than is possible in classtime; and help each other address the explosion
of information.
For a number of years I have maintained connections with graduates and
facilitated connections among them. (An email list, CRITICA-L, has been one
vehicle for this.) I write I have on my desk as I write a reprint of an
article from Journal of the History of Biology by a former student,
Carla Keirns. Although one cannot take credit for the decisions and
accomplishments of others, after Carla took courses with me in Biology and
Society, her intended career moved from genetics to history and sociology of
science, building on her own experience with asthma. I look forward to future
reports from CCT graduates that bear some sign of my assisting them in
clarifying their interests and career choices, and, in particular, in
envisioning their careers in relation to their specific social and personal
concerns.
G: Facilitating trans-disciplinary exploration.
My strength as an adviser has always been that helping students explore their
wider intellectual and practical interests, and backing up such exploration
with bibliographic suggestions and connections to colleagues beyond my home
institution. When the students settled on project and thesis topics, I would
provide detailed comments on drafts of their writing. At the same time, it has
not been straightforward to strike the appropriate student-specific balance
between facilitating trans-disciplinary exploration and maintaining the rigor
of discipline-based inquiry. In CCT, although the Program has its roots in the
fields of philosophy, psychology, and education, the scale is necessarily
tipped towards the trans-disciplinary. That is, students' interests almost
never lie within conventional disciplinary boundaries.
My efforts to facilitate trans-disciplinary inquiry are illustrated in the
project topics from the Practicum course in the fall of 1998.
3. On-going development of pedagogy.
My commitment to developing science-STS teaching has led me to
experiment, innovate and develop better ways to learn from teaching about
teaching and learning. This now continues in learning to teach CCT and is
evident in five features of my work that are described in the following
sections.
A: Developing a large range of CCT courses.
Taking into account the small number of CCT faculty and the need to provide
both required courses and a range of electives, I have already developed six
courses for CCT and made significant revisions to a seventh (CCT601). Except
for the last one, all the syllabi are entirely different from those of previous
instructors, either because I built the course around a new theme, injected new
approaches to the subject, or did not have access to previous syllabi when I
designed the course. To see the range of these courses, refer to section I.
B: Experimenting to develop pedagogical approaches specifically tuned to
STS and CCT and their open-ended state as fields
There are few models for teaching critical thinking, especially about science.
As indicated in the personal statement, I have sought out ideas for classroom
and group process techniques in a variety of venues (see exhibit i), a
reflection on different approaches to learning styles and group process which
has subsequently informed my teaching and advising of CCT teachers interested
in different learning styles).
Moreover, just as I expect of my students, I experiment, take risks, and
through experience build up a set of tools that work for me. Some of my
pedagogical experiments over the last year are illustrated in the exhibits
included here:
ii) the handout I prepared for an early meeting of this fall's faculty seminar
on "becoming a teacher-researcher";
iii) the gallery walk, an ice-breaker for the first Education Evaluation class,
adapted from a workshop I attended the previous November; and
iv) an example of a student's briefing on one of the course texts. This
assignment directed attention to the insights and details of the course text
without taking time away from activities and discussion to present lectures.
Students were asked to go deeply into one or two chapters of the text and
produce a briefing that would give other students a quick start if they were to
address the issue or topic of those chapters. The compilation of briefings was
distributed to all students.
C. On-going development of courses
My courses develop a) in response to new developments in the sciences and STS
interpretations of those sciences; b) as I address the difficulties and
challenges of teaching critical thinking and education more generally; and c)
in response to suggestions from students and course evaluations. I no longer
keep Teaching Notebooks to document this process of development, but instead
enter proposed changes to each course syllabus directly into a revised version
on my computer, in footnotes to that revised syllabus, and in a "to do" list
for each course. Of course, some of my handwritten annotations made during
class remained only on my class notes, not transcribed into these computer
files. I make further changes and add to that "to do" list after digesting the
written comments in end of semester evaluations.
The two exhibits included here convey the effort I put into self-assessment of
my courses and thinking about improvements:
i) A snapshot from the "to do list" I keep on my computer for CCT 601.
(Because these notes were not written to be read by someone else, they will be
somewhat cryptic, but they should convey the active process occurring); and
ii) The revised syllabus "Practicum: Processes of Research and Engagement"
(CCT698) as produced during and after the fall 1998 semester. This should be
contrasted with the original fall 1998 syllabus, and the current fall 1999
syllabus, both included in section I.2.
D: Varieties of course evaluation, integrated into the teaching/learning
process.
End of the semester course evaluations have four potential audiences and
goals:
i) The professors -- to guide them in continuing to develop the course
ii) Future students -- to guide them in choosing courses, and knowing what to
expect
iii) Current students -- to allow them to take stock of how to get the most
from courses and teachers in the future
iv) Colleagues and superiors -- to make decisions about promotions and about
support to give to courses
Standard course evaluations, especially computerized ones, address few of these
audiences/goals well. For several years I have used my own written course
evaluation, which begin with a student self-evaluations (goal iii), and ask for
synthetic statements to be submitted later (goals i & iv) (the return rates
are only moderate). Through written evaluations students not only provide more
guidance about how to improve teaching, but also reflect on how they can get
more from classes. In recent years, before students write their
end-of-the-semester course evaluation, we make time for spoken appreciations,
reflections of students' responsibility in the course, and suggestions for
changes (goals i & iii). I used to summarize the written evaluations
(goals i & iv), and distribute the summary to new students on the first day
of the following year's course or on the course website (goal ii). I have been
unable to make time for this at U. Mass., but hope to be able to include on
course websites a summary of what I plan to work on from the evaluations plus
the full (scanned-in) text of the evaluations. The diversity of students'
concerns strikes me as important to convey to future students, so I am becoming
less committed to summarizing the written responses. In this spirit, I have
begun to facilitate evaluation activities that aim for the whole group to share
and make sense of a common pool of experiences of the situation (exhibit
iii).
Exhibit i) is the course evaluation activity I designed for "Critical Thinking"
(CCT601). Exhibit ii) is a summary submitted by one of the groups of 4 (see
exhibit i). Unfortunately, we received few of these and needed to supervise
more closely their completion.
Exhibit iii) is the historical scan activity refered to in the personal
statement.
I also incorporate course evaluation during the semester (goals i & iii).
I often solicit email exchange (see exhibit 2.D.2) and this last year
experimented with a number of forms of feedback, including:
Exhibit iv)--a "best and worst" grid in the "Practicum" (CCT698), which asked
students to reflect back on their best and worst experiences in cultivating and
on this basis make suggestions elicit ideas about how to foster the processes
Exhibit v)--the final product of a "card-storming" activity early in "Issues in
Educational Evaluation" (CCT685). In this activity individuals defined
elements of their vision for the course--what they would like to happen--and
then these were grouped and named by the class as a whole, give or take some
post-class input by me after we ran out of time.
Exhibit vi) is the summary of responses to a "Critical Incident Questionnaire"
completed by students at the end of class during the early weeks of my spring
courses.
The commitment to integrating evaluation into a teaching/learning process is
also evident in this portfolio itself. It is designed to provide many more
bases for future interactions with my colleagues about teaching than a standard
compilation of course syllabi and evaluations.
E: Promotion of teacher-teacher interaction.
Over a number of years I have made opportunities for receptive colleagues and
students to observe each other teach. The role of observer has, for me,
clarified many elements of engaged and engaging teaching. This fall's faculty
seminar on "Becoming a teacher-researcher" is providing more opportunities to
experience the value of another's observations. Other recent efforts to
stimulate give-and-take around teaching include:
i) a three hour Honors Faculty Development Workshop I led last June; see the
handout I prepared to accompany this; and
ii) a college faculty and graduate student workshop I am organizing; see the
two excerpts from the prospectus for this workshop. (Originally this was
scheduled to precede the July 26th. practitioners workshop, but has been
postponed to a weekend to be determined.)
See also exhibits 1.E. ii-v) concerning the Practitioners' workshop and
"Changing Life" working group.
4. Heterogeneous construction as a model of agency
By exposing points at which the science could be--or could have been--pursued
differently, reciprocal animation and critical thinking open up a more
difficult issue: Through what processes are alternatives actually realized? My
STS work emphasizes how, in order to know the world and practice their science,
scientists harness diverse resources--from funding opportunities to metaphors,
status hierarchies in their discipline to data available/collectable given the
time allocated for the study. As a teacher I therefore highlight the diverse
kinds of practical measures, not just conceptual shifts, needed to modify the
development of the episode of science we are considering. Of course, the
particular resources and their inter-linkages making up such heterogeneous
constructions differ from case to case; reconstructions of their complexity
require considerable practical experience. Whether or not I introduce the
concept explicitly, I try to make heterogeneous construction accessible to
students through exercises in which they attempt to map the diversity of
influences on their own development, the ways these build on each other over
time, and the different potential points of intervention. After achieving only
moderate success getting students to do this in the "Thinking, Learning, and
Computers" course, I developed the framework included as an exhibit here, with
which I hope in the future to better shape students' thinking.
Heterogeneous constructionism is allied to constructivism in education with its
emphasis on students learning concepts by (re)discovering them for themselves,
but extends this by tying of conceptual themes strongly to practical ones.
Eventually, I hope, I will refine ways to stimulate students even in the short
span of a semester to bring a heterogeneous constructionist view of agency to
bear on their own research, applications of science, teaching and other social
interventions.