Gender, Race, and the Complexities of Science and Technology

(2017: Changing Life: Reading the Intersections of Gender, Race, Biology, and Literature)

(WoSt 597, Spr '09, '11, '13, '15, '17)

Initial goals for the course
Challenges and Responses
Future plans
Syllabi: 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017
Student evaluations: 2009 (summaries), 2011, 2013 (summaries), 2015, 2017

• experienced and appreciated a "developmental" model of teaching/learning, which aims not for a common final standard of work, but to guide and support each student to develop or improve as much as they can given their background and current circumstances;
• learned and practiced tools for engaging with provocative cases designed to stimulate interdisciplinary inquiry and exchange;
• clarified and pursued their particular interests in teaching, research, or activism around the complex production of science and technology;
• acquired resources, tools, guides to help navigate a manageable number of substantive bodies of knowledge in interpretation of the dynamics of science and technology, especially using feminist, anti-racist, and other critical frameworks;
• synthesized these knowledges into resources for future students and others in the form of reports from cases, annotated references, and additional cases;
• initiated ongoing patterns of subverting barriers to wider access-for themselves and others-to the production of scientific knowledge and technology; and
• explored the theoretical and practical implications of the question "What can we do with the knowledge we generate for ourselves and others?" with respect to engagements with/in the complex production of scientific knowledge and technology.

The evaluations combined:
• appreciation for the PBL experience (e.g., "starting with a problem and then beginning to acquire the expertise needed to solve it is, I believe, very productive and also lets each one follow her interests");
• awareness that the course requires finding a lot of time; and
• directive recommendations for changes made responsibly (i.e., not in the tone of disgruntled consumer getting back at the instructors through the evals)
Some of the evaluation comments seem easy to address and, indeed, were already being worked on before the semester ended, e.g.,
• An initial class that makes explicit the pedagogy that runs through the whole course and begins the process of students making connections with each other (see mock up).
• all materials into one online place-the blog-with a menu of shortcuts to specific items when helpful.
• Guidelines for each assignment stated in the flow of the syllabus, albeit with reminder that the aim is for the student to pull each assignment in a direction that connects with their interests.
• Assigning a default common reading for each week (but with the option of students choosing substitution), with annotations to be posted on the blog; selected from the required and recommended texts and ordered so that a scaffold or framework is built up in parallel with the cases.
• Shorter presentations, esp. final presentations, allowing more time for discussion and not going over the end-of-class.
Others comments are more challenging to address:
• "there was no pressure to actually critically engage with race and gender. There was no pressure to engage with the field of STS." Did you "check... in with students who weren't doing annotated bibliographies or reflections"? We didn't pressure students or check in because we a) wanted students to appreciated what one student mentioned, namely, that "a particular level of maturity is required to be awarded such autonomy"; b) expected that students would "critically engage with race and gender" and "with the field of STS" and we'd be a helpful guide, not someone lassoo-ing anyone back to those emphases; and c) were not quick on our pedagogical feet, e.g., to arrange timely conversations with students who got behind or didn't seem to be getting into published literature on gender, race, and science. Perhaps, given the inevitable competing demands that professors have, the two co-instructors could take 2-week turns to take the initiative in reaching out and talking to such students.
• "more foundational texts at the beginning and discussed them before diving into the cases" It is not just that this would run against the goal of Inverted pedagogy: "The experience of case-based learning is expected to motivate students to identify and pursue the disciplinary learning and disciplined inquiry they need to achieve the competency and impact they desire" (from https://sicw.wikispaces.com/-/GRST/g/ObjectivesTheory). It is that, from experience, if a PBL instructor sends out a signal-even once-that there is an established answer that students are expected to get to even if they haven't been told this, it is hard for students to take their own not-yet-well-articulated interests seriously enough.
• "we spent a lot of time doing discussions with the cards that weren't really about any specific thing" and "a few went way off." The dialogue process format is intended to make use of what students come prepared for, that is to talk about and to think about as it is raised by other students. When I was a grad. student I was always active in seminar discussions, including ones structured by moving through a set of predefined questions, I don't recall any professor trying to help students who were silent express themselves or develop their thoughts during the discussion. Yet, the quoted comments suggest again more pedagogical quick-footedness rather than going with the flow.
• "use of personal experience in a responsible way" This comment, which refers to discussions, makes me wonder if spoken-aloud experiences have more status than the personal experiences that informed, at least as I experienced these, your directions of inquiry and the resulting products. If so, what to do about that?