Describe the equity strategy that you plan to implement into your course. What is it? How is it intended to work?

I plan to promote epistemic justice through the decoupling “expertise” with academic credentials through using exclusively pedagogical approaches rooted in active-learning and storytelling in almost-exclusively non-traditional classroom spaces. First, I want to challenge the traditional hierarchical relationship between myself-as-professor by integrating student ideas into the course syllabus. I will do this through the use of focus groups to generate ideas related what course content or topics to include. Further, I will allow great flexibility in learning activities and will dedicate myself to use narrative and storytelling more than traditional lectures to align with more scientifically-effective (and culturally-salient) ways of communicating with students from a variety of backgrounds. And, in general, I will practice a sincere curiosity as a constant learner for students with the hope that they emulate it.

In terms of course content, my field is rich with examples that integrate the perspectives of nontraditional forms of expertise, such as indigenous knowledge or local ecological knowledge as well as philosophies and paradigms that decenter human agency and supremacy over landscapes, ecosystems, and their disparate parts. For instance, I could engage students in active-learning activities related to insights from the New Materialists or content related to “interspecies cosmopolitanism,” or other frameworks that challenge traditional knowledge domains represented in university settings (and that are relevant to policy evaluation and design in natural resources). Introducing students to such content is essential to promoting epistemic justice and humility and will promote ethical and critical thinking among students.

I also think that remote learning during the pandemic should have us all thinking critically about the purpose and implications of reifying the classroom as the only (or the assumed or de facto) place of learning. We must be cognizant of how space influences learning and how to best utilize space to promote learning and our shared institutional values. In my teaching, I vow (vow, I say!) to only use traditional classroom spaces if it speaks directly to the course content I am teaching about (e.g., how seating arrangements and room design influence in-person public participation in natural resource planning processes). All other class meetings will be done in in-person field settings on or near campus (or further afield and longer optional field trips) or in synchronous or asynchronous online contexts). I will use my wide discretion as a professor with expertise in both my field and educational research in higher education to do this to the greatest extent possible because it serves students and the institution better than reflexively relying on traditional classrooms because that’s the way things are done.

What is needed in terms of planning and resources?

I am a second-year faculty member and I inherited very traditional syllabi across all of my courses. Much of the material is out-of-date and unrelated to the socio-ecological and socio-political contexts and ideas that students will engage with before and after graduation and workers and citizens in our fractious and pluralistic society.

Thus, the primary resource to make changes to my classes I will need is time. This time is needed to both engage with the material myself to assess its applicability to my courses, but also time to brainstorm changes to the courses in terms of course content and the pedagogical strategies that I employ, which will all be rooted in active-learning and storytelling in non-traditional contexts. In addition to time, I think I will need a resource of supportive and creative faculty members and instructors across Chico State (and the CSU-system) with which to brainstorm innovative pedagogical approaches.

What is your rationale for choosing and implementing this strategy?

My strategy of promoting epistemic justice through active-learning and storytelling is rooted in two things: (1) the practical needs of students as ethically-minded members of a pluralistic and fractious society and (2) pedagogical practice rooted in empirical evident (and not intuition or tradition).

First, students in my field, like many fields today, engage with wicked, complex, or fractious problems; or problems that do not have solutions (and must be mitigated), are value-laden, and require rigorous transdisciplinary collaboration to mitigate. Such collaboration, being transdisciplinary, requires non-expert perspectives to be integrated into knowledge construction and policy design and implementation. By equipping students with content related to epistemic justice, they will be primed to help mitigate these wicked problems after graduation.

Second (and simply), active-learning and storytelling works across a variety of contexts. In my teaching, I care less about what makes me feel comfortable and more about what is effective. I constantly engage with education and communication research, which informs how I cultivate learning among my students. And, again, these approaches work and can be equitable if done properly and a way that integrates student voices and perspectives.