Universities provide an enabling environment for insight. There would be no university if there were no students. Therefore, teaching forms the foundation of a university’s activities, and moreover, it is the basis of intergenerational transfer of knowledge and innovation. Despite increasingly market-driven conceptualizations of universities as businesses, students are not just “consumers” of information; they are also “producers” of insight. Advising and teaching are the raison d’être of scholarship; they provide a context for sharing the insights gained through research. While publication of research brings validation by peers, teaching ensures engagement with those insights into the future. Furthermore, nuanced insight and passion for research are best conveyed in the classroom through one’s own empirical experiences, which make course material active and alive in the minds of students. Critical exchange through teaching produces a dynamic that allows ideas to develop and hybridize into a tapestry of possibilities. Questions from classroom discussions often open new vistas of research or provide fresh perspectives on old problems. Thomas Kuhn noted in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996) that paradigm shifts generally emerge from (1) young scholars and (2) those outside a discipline. Kuhn’s observations simultaneously make a case for intellectual pluralism and emphasize the role of young scholars. This acknowledgement of their contributions to knowledge is fundamental as it speaks to their significance in advancing ideas. Below I will describe five conceptual goals I use in designing my course syllabi and how these goals inform my teaching.
- Biophilia
The notion of biophilia informs both my course development and the research problems that I investigate. While the term biophilia, namely, love of life or living systems, has been popularized by the conservation biologist E. O. Wilson (1984), this idea was first articulated by Erich Fromm (1964), who was writing about the role of the university in the context of excesses of narcissism and war. Fromm argues that the primary role of a university scholar is to promote the love of life. The effects of anthropogenically induced crises such as climate change, structural poverty, environmental degradation, and war undermine the core value of biophilia. I believe it is not sufficient for university scholars to point out to students that the current predicament is leading to reckless destruction of life on earth or, in an evolutionary sense, the “death of birth”. Rather, their role is to investigate mechanisms that promote conservation of life and living systems. Biophilia is the ethical foundation of all conservation activities. Put succinctly, the intellectual fabric of conservation is an act of love woven with ethical values. - Intellectual Pluralism
Problems faced by societies and communities rarely present themselves neatly to be addressed by researchers in a single discipline. Issues such as conservation of biological and cultural diversity, poverty, socio-cultural and ecological change, and food security require multifaceted responses that draw upon a variety of approaches. By building bridges between different ways of knowing, scholars draw from the diversity of their cultural backgrounds and the variety of their life and learning experiences. In this sense, learning is not only about an ecologist working with an anthropologist, but also about these professionals directly engaging with a farmer and a herder to address the question of climate change and food security. Indigenous knowledge is in vital engagement with institutionalized scientific knowledge when communities of enquirers (such as students and professors) work with communities of social practice (such as farmers, fishers, herders, hunters, pastoralists, and civil society institutions). In teaching, the borders between research and practice are transcended to approach policy action. - Relevance
As researchers and teachers, our challenge is to make book-learning at universities relevant to societal needs. Pragmatism requires that teachers create a pedagogical framework that will engage students and facilitate their transformation from those who know about major challenges of the twenty-first century to those who know how to successfully meet these challenges in a particular sociocultural and ecological context. This approach demands that my research activities inform curriculum development and articulation of ideas in the classroom. To place an issue in context, students need to consider not only the “pastness” of the past, but also its present relevance and future possibilities. The idea of relevance links education to experience and learning to community. In my senior undergraduate courses (e.g., NTRES 3330), I have sought to combine critical thinking with applied research in the service of communities. - Phronesis
Phronesis, or practical wisdom, is the knowledge of how to secure “the ends of human life.” It is about the well-being of the household and habitat (oikos). Aristotle describes phronesis as an intellectual virtue in his Nicomachean Ethics (2004). Aristotle maintained that practical wisdom can be understood only in an applied context because we grasp the nature of phronesis by observing those who are adept at it. It cannot be appreciated just by book-learning. Phronesis requires practice. By combining critical thinking and practice, students experience how theoretical perspectives both emerge from and inform the application of their own work. In the process of learning, insights from a particular context have universal implications. Consider Galileo’s work with craftsmen resulting in the theory of gravity, or Darwin’s and Wallace’s research on two different islands in distinctive parts of the globe emerging in a theory of evolution. The particular hints at the universal.
These four conceptual goals of biophilia, intellectual pluralism, relevance, and phronesis suggest that a conversation about learning without practice is just as vacant as a discussion of rights without responsibilities. Fundamentally, rights such as freedom of expression are intimately linked to responsibilities. Such a perspective of teaching seeks to generate a cadre of young scholars who situate their thinking and ideas in the context of the universe-centered self rather than a self-centered universe. Barber (1994) argued: “The language of citizenship suggests that self-interests are always embedded in communities of action and that in serving neighbors, one also serves oneself” (p. 88). Self-interest does not exist outside of community but arises from engagement with the community. Therefore, responsibility is also embedded in knowledge.