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Ethics and Human Subjects
 
 
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Statement on Teaching Philosophy. Dr. Quetzil Castañeda, February 14, 2006

In my view, teaching is fundamentally an interactive dialogue and collaborative process. Teaching has the goal, on the one hand, of teaching the skills to creatively think through issues and to practically address problems and, on the other hand, of learning the needs and motivations of students in order facilitate the dynamics of productive exchange. Teaching, in other words, is a two way, collaborative process that builds on mutual trust, respect, and responsibility. It is the responsibility of the teacher to create a positive and safe environment for these attitudes, dynamics, and objectives to flourish. This is achieved only in part through course structure and design; care for student learning, including understanding motivations, attending to needs, and flexibility in response to emergent conditions, are also crucial conditions. When this view of teaching is developed and put into practice, the teacher-student binary is displaced and new roles surface, which is that of individual participants collaborating in a joint venture. The teacher is less a "teacher" in the inherited sense of the term and more of a facilitator to and a role model for the learning process. This shift in role and dynamics is the fundamental basis for "student," that is, participant, control and ownership of learning.

In designing courses, I seek to match strategies and styles of teaching to the particular contexts, participants, and situations. Nonetheless, I feel that the goals of collaborative dialogue and critical thinking must primarily rely on close reading and analysis of texts or on addressing practical problems. Thus, the types of courses that accentuate these objectives and corresponding methods are the seminar and the workshop or practicum. Fundamental to successful discussion requires providing participants the time to develop and to verbalize their thoughts. The ethic of listening is an important means by which to create respect and a safe environment. My role as facilitator is to figure out ways to engage participants in dialogue with each other. My learning from their own understandings and experiences helps me to do this and encourages their ownership of and opening up to the adventure of learning. By creating an agenda of collaborative discovery in the analysis and understanding of the text or problem at hand, we explore together the ideas that participants introduce into discussion. In this way we challenge ourselves and each other to critically assess, further question, and creatively develop lines of thinking or practice in relationship to an issue. Independent, critical and creative thinking is further enabled when we separate the merit of ideas from the ego of participants. Collaborative dialogue, infused with ethics of listening, responsibility, and ownership, compels and enables the brainstorming and risk-taking that expands group understandings and enhances individual thinking.

I seek to achieve a balance between seminar-style dialogue and lecture-style presentation of necessary background knowledge. One way that I as a facilitator in the classroom can aide learning is by placing concepts into the contexts of intellectual debates and history. Understanding the intellectual traditions, history, and disciplinary contexts of the ideas discussed in class are critical tools for participants to be able to contextualize texts chosen for seminar discussion and to create a foundation of knowledge on which participants can build in their later coursework.
My own family background, which includes artists, filmmakers, philosophers, and anthropologists, has contributed to my interdisciplinary approach and outlook. My interdisciplinary concerns are manifest in my use of a range of scholarship from the arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, as well as in my use of written, performative, visual image, and film texts. I develop courses that juxtapose "classics" from established canons and texts from minority traditions, non-Western cultures, and counter discourses. Interdisciplinary teaching has the advantage not only of providing learners with a broad array of methods and toolkits, but it inspires them to creatively apply these tools in innovative and alternative ways. In teaching interdisciplinary methodologies, it is important to teach the rigor of discipline without the constraints of disciplinary paradigms.

Teaching and research are two interconnected passions in my life. For me as a cultural anthropologist, research is fundamentally a way of learning from a community. Building on the principle that research is community based learning, I have explored pedagogical methodologies that bring students into sites of fieldwork for experiential learning and that bring research processes into the classroom. These forms of learning are particularly well suited for developing participatory action research and for the exploration of alternative ways of conceiving and designing the results of learning. In particular, experiential learning can lead to practical, artistic, performative, or multimedia projects that seek to contribute to community needs and that speak to engagement between student-researchers and community. The work that I have conducted in creating interdisciplinary field school programs are a primary expression and avenue for my continued development of an experimental fieldwork based in an engaged commitment to students and community members that participate.