Engaging Students In Wicked Problems: Strategies For Inspiring And Preparing Students To Tackle Messy, Place-Based Challenges, Danielle Lake
Jul 2015
Engaging Students In Wicked Problems: Strategies For Inspiring And Preparing Students To Tackle Messy, Place-Based Challenges, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
The following webinar featuring Dr. Danielle Lake from Grand Valley State University – Engaging Students in Wicked Problems: Strategies for inspiring and preparing students to tackle messy, place-based challenges.How can we prepare students to tackle wicked problems? What pedagogical methods can be used to address interdependent, high-stakes systemic problems in our communities?This webinar will suggest we need to pursue an experiential, collaborative learning model: working across networks, disciplines, and institutions in order to tackle our social messes. Participants will discover strategies and explore possible methods for better preparing students to collaboratively tackle the wicked problems within their field.
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.
Tackling Wicked Food Issues: Applying The Wicked Problems Approach In Higher Education To Promote Healthy Eating Habits In American School Children, Danielle Lake
Dec 2014
Tackling Wicked Food Issues: Applying The Wicked Problems Approach In Higher Education To Promote Healthy Eating Habits In American School Children, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
Life-long healthy eating habits linked with sustainable local agricultural practices, as “wicked problems” in the United States, are intractable, on-going, and high-stakes issues. An interdisciplinary university course was developed to engage students in participatory research and fieldwork on the inextricably linked dimensions of food, health, and sustainability. Students worked with community partners, stakeholders, and experts to address the specific interdisciplinary issues of diet and promotion of healthy eating habits in American school children. Using a “bottom-up” approach, students co-developed projects with stakeholders (including school children) to empower movement for change. This interactive research process created an iterative feedback loop which …
Faculty Spotlight, Danielle Lake
Dec 2014
Faculty Spotlight, Danielle Lake
Danielle L Lake
GVSU Faculty Spotlight
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 …
