Community-Based Teaching In A Wicked World: Preparing Students For Messy Inquiry, Danielle Lake, Anna Sluka
Mar 2015
Community-Based Teaching In A Wicked World: Preparing Students For Messy Inquiry, Danielle Lake, Anna Sluka
Danielle L Lake
In contrast to static, disciplinary problems, many of the issues we face in the world today can be characterized as “wicked,” dynamically complex, interdependent, high stakes issues with no simple or obvious definition (let alone any simple or obvious solution). These wicked problems confront us with high levels of uncertainty in situations where both action and inaction carry serious long-term consequences. Current top-down, siloed, and abstract pedagogical strategies do not provide students with the tools for collaboratively managing such problems.
How can we prepare students within our own fields to tackle large-scale wicked problems?
What pedagogical methods can be used …
Pedagogy For A Wicked World: The Value And Hazards Of A Transdisciplinary, Dialogue-Driven, Community Engagged Classroom Model, Danielle Lake
Dec 2014
Pedagogy For A Wicked World: The Value And Hazards Of A Transdisciplinary, Dialogue-Driven, Community Engagged Classroom Model, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
This presentation provides a number of strategies for instructors interested in a more participatory, transdisciplinary, and experiential educational model in order to foster real-world change around our high-stakes, complex public problems. By utilizing soft system’s thinking in addition to a feminist pragmatist methodology students can successfully collaborate with community partners and integrate across their disciplinary expertise in order to co-develop and implement action-plans with community stakeholders. Given the value of this work, but also the challenges, this session also highlights the potential pitfalls of working to prepare students for a messy, iterative process of collaboratively learning-by-doing in a “wicked” world.
Dewey Addams, And Beyond: A Context-Sensitive, Dialogue-Driven, Action-Based Pedagogy For Preparing Students To Confront Local Wicked Problems, Danielle Lake
Dec 2014
Dewey Addams, And Beyond: A Context-Sensitive, Dialogue-Driven, Action-Based Pedagogy For Preparing Students To Confront Local Wicked Problems, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
Traditional, theoretical pedagogical practices based in disciplinary expertise generally fail to prepare students for high-stakes, public problems. In contrast, “Wicked Problems of Sustainability” is an undergraduate course designed to provide students with the opportunity to redress complex, local problems through an experiential, community-engaged model. By implementing pedagogy developed through the integration of a feminist pragmatist framework with the literature on wicked problems, this course offers opportunities to impact real problems, develop skills, and foster virtues necessary for tackling public problems. Given the value of this work, but also the difficulties, this article highlights the potential pitfalls of community work on …
Sustainability As A Core Issue In Diversity And Critical Thinking Education, Danielle Lake
Jun 2014
Sustainability As A Core Issue In Diversity And Critical Thinking Education, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
As educators, we recognize that teaching sustainability is not something that need be limited to environmental studies and business courses. I suggest that the integration of sustainability into general education courses is not only appropriate, but necessary. Understanding sustainability as a wicked problem and recognizing how an egoist ethic otherizes the environment and is thus in large part responsible for the abuses that have led to a number of current environmental and social problems are central to the resolution of this pressing situation. While I in part argue that most general education courses have something valuable to say about the …
