Teaching Transformation: Contributions from the January 2008 Annual Conference on Teaching for Transformation of the Center for the Improvement of Teaching, UMass Boston

Book excerpt: This Winter 2008 (VI, 1) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge reflects the diversity and richness of presentations at the 2008 Annual Conference on Teaching for Transformation organized by the Center for the Improvement of Teaching at UMass Boston. Representing faculty across different disciplines, these essays reflect these teachers’ creative and thoughtful pedagogical approaches, their focus on challenging and engaging learners, and their commitment to both excellence and inclusion. The title chosen for this volume, “Teaching Transformation,” highlights a two-fold interest and commitment that the organizers and participants in the annual conference have commonly shared. One is to advance teaching as a venue for transformative pedagogical and social practices that empower students, faculty, and communities in favor of a deeper respect for diversity, inclusion, and justice. However, by choosing the title the editors also emphasize that to meet the first goal, it is also necessary to see teaching and one’s habits of teaching as fluid and dynamic, and not static and established, habitus. To advance transformative teaching (and learning), it is necessary to continually transform our teaching and pedagogical approaches creatively and help one another to do the same. Contributors include: Vivian Zamel (also as journal issue guest editor), Leonard von Morzé, Stephen E. Slaner, Sandra Clyne, John Chetro-Szivos, Lauren Mackenzie, Meesh McCarthy, Erin O’Brien, Corinne R. Merritt, Linda G. Dumas, Theodore Trevens, Pamela Katz Ressler, Tara Devi S. Ashok, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.