#TeachingCTinSTEM
Zoom Link: https://pima.zoom.us/j/96921881547
9:05 am – 9:30 am PDT
Welcome & Introduction & Definitions
Mays Imad
(To access the presentation, click here)
9:30 am – 10:30 am PDT
Keynote: Finding the Goldilocks Zone in the Classroom: Intellectual Empathy and Critical Thinking
Maureen Linker
(To access "Social Perceptions Interview Exercise" click here)
10:30 am – 10:45 am PDT
Break
10:45 am – 11:30 am PDT
Teaching Critical Thinking in STEM: Sample Assignment
Malcolm Campbell
(To access respective documents, click here)
11:30 am – 11:45 am PDT
Break
11:45 am – 12:30 pm PDT
Assessing Critical Thinking in STEM
Jeff Olimpo & Ryan Korstange
(To access the presentation, click here. For more information about assessment, click here)
12:30 pm – 1:00 pm PDT
Invitation to Construct Your Own Assignment
Javier Robalino & Oscar Fernandez
(To access respective documents, click here)
1:00 pm PDT
End of Day 1
Finding the Goldilocks Zone in the Classroom: Intellectual Empathy and Critical Thinking
By Maureen Linker, PhD
Astronomers use the term “Goldilocks Zone” to refer to a region of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star to be habitable or to maintain a “life zone.” The surface of a planet in the Goldilocks Zone cannot be so hot or so cold that liquid water would either freeze completely, or evaporate out into space. I am going to use this metaphor of a just right zone for explaining some of what goes on in the space of our classrooms, specifically classrooms that engage students with perceptual methods in the context of social reality and cultural differences.
Some of us, intentionally or not, may ignore, ostracize, render invisible, stereotype, leave completely alone, or interpret some perceptual data as ‘alien.’ But what would it mean to see through other eyes, to consider alternative ways of experiencing and try to understand how we may be perceived by others? In this talk, we will consider how sharing empirical information, particularly from the subjective standpoint, can increase mutual respect, effective communication, and increased knowledge, without becoming so hot we lose the ability to analyze or so cold that we lose the ability to think effectively.
Maureen Linker received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the City University of New York, Graduate Center. She is currently Associate Provost and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn where she has been teaching since 1997. She has published in a variety of academic journals including The Criminal Law Quarterly, Perspectives in Multicultural Education, and The International Journal of Argumentation. Her book Intellectual Empathy: Critical Thinking for Social Justice, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2015. The book, in its second printing, is used in a variety of courses around the U.S. and Canada including the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of West Georgia, University of Northern Illinois, Villanova, Michigan State University, and the University of Victoria. According to one reviewer, “Linker’s writing style is conversational and engaging, and her impeccable integration of scholarship with compelling, multi-layered contemporary examples and case studies makes it an excellent resource for educators." (Debra Jackson --Teaching Philosophy)
Zoom Link: https://pima.zoom.us/j/96921881547
9:05 am – 9:30 am PDT
Welcome & Introduction & Key Takeaways
Mays Imad
(To access the presentation, click here)
9:30 am – 10:30 am PDT
Keynote: To think, one must become lost: The sensuous sociomateriality of critical thinking in fugitive times
Bayo Akomolafe
10:30 am – 10:45 am PDT
Break
10:45 am – 11:30 am PDT
Teaching Critical Thinking in STEM: Sample Assignment
Keri Wilson
(To access the presentation, click here)
11:30 am – 12:15 pm PDT
Share & Receive Feedback
Steering Committee
12:15 pm – 12:30 pm PDT
Break
12:30 pm – 1:00 pm PDT
What’s Next?
Susannah McGowan & Joya Mukerji
1:00 pm PDT
End of Day 2
To think, one must become lost: The sensuous sociomateriality of critical thinking in fugitive times
By Bayo Akomolafe, PhD
Without a doubt, these very interesting times of converging epochal, epidemiological and existential crises compel us to rethink the ways we come to think about the world. Higher education is burdened with the task of producing critical thinkers who can help us navigate the challenges we collectively face today. But who is "us"? Who are these critical thinkers called to save the day? Can the ethical intensities within the ruins of collapse continue to support the idea that critical thinking is a singular set of skills available to individuals, or are we being invited to move away from these phallic, anthropocentric conceptualizations of criticality as a cognition-bound, human-bound event? In this talk, Bayo Akomolafe thinks through the conditions of becoming lost (as an indigenous concept of extending relationality to the more-than-human) and the racialized somatic-semiotic networks that make criticality possible, calling for new sense-making projects that spill away from the Anthropos.
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. In 2014, Adebayo was invited to be the Coordinator/Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Local Futures (USA). He temporarily left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance for a more beautiful world. Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, where he taught on ‘transraciality’ (his neo-materialist take on racialization) and postactivism. He has also taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (Totnes, England) – among other universities around the world.