K. Nyerere Turé
Ph.D. Candidate
American University
Teaching Philosophy & Methods
Philosophy:
Education, particularly at the college level, is the process of transferring important knowledge
systems and skill sets that will cultivate the critical awareness of emerging leaders, who in return
should adopt practices that transform society and increase the general well-being of all humanity.
My observation and direct experiences in teaching at the college level make clear the
disadvantages of only making use of traditional pedagogical practices, such as routine lecture
and discussion. Today’s diverse and technologically savvy students are predisposed to care about
social justice issues at the local and global scale; they have earnest desires to effectively problem
solve, and they require a healthy blend of teaching approaches that include demonstration and
participation.
Salient in the experiences of today’s students are the related effects of globalization’s
advanced communication and data exchanges, inequitable transfers of resources, exposure to
different worldviews and population movements that particularly challenge the viability of
traditional teaching models. These students are diverse members of multiple micro-cultures and
are situated within structures of social hierarchy with differential access to power and resources.
This reality calls for a reflexive pedagogy that is capable of responding to fast changing and
dynamic learning contexts. I argue that the best way to carry out the general goals of higher
education is to embrace teaching methodologies that (1) nurture safe spaces for critical and
reflexive discourse; (2) respond to various learning modalities; (3) attend to power differences
and structural violence; (4) challenge the simplistic examples of criminality and culture of
poverty ideas that do not lead to substantive nor transformative agency; (5) and finally, expose
students to the life conditions of marginal and disenfranchised peoples through qualitative
research. My pedagogical orientation grounded in critical reflection embraces flexibility, seeks
out cross-disciplinary content and energizes students’ unrealized agency through participatory
learning.
In the course of teaching, I have observed several recurring themes which students
express concern, including the racialization and criminalization of marginal groups and the
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related incidents of racial profiling, police shootings of unarmed minorities and mass
incarceration, public housing and urban renewal, displacement and the general political
economic processes that underlie inequality. Many of my past and current students seek not only
deeper understanding of these complex phenomena, but also instruction as to how to change
them, particularly the practice of criminalizing a race. The disciplines of anthropology and
criminology share an established tradition in investigating identity, crime, and inequality. I seek
to meet students’ inquiries and concerns with a critical teaching paradigm grounded in both
anthropology and criminology disciplines that should illuminate the practical application of
knowledge and students’ own agency.
The teaching philosophy embraced here is based on several years of engagement in
academic environments as a student, adjunct professor, and recently as a full-time visiting
instructor. To meet the outlined teaching goals, I actively refine my teaching methods in an
ongoing basis through students’ feedback, course evaluations, input from colleagues, and in
suitable and timely ways that appropriately translate scholarly content to local and global social
conditions. Below, I share some of the instructional techniques I’ve adopted, developed, and
continue to modify.
Select Sample of Teaching Techniques:
“You Chart the Solution” (YCS) is a learning exercise I use in which I divide students
into small groups around a pressing topic, such as drug-dealing crimes, structural violence,
and/or issues related to community development. I ask the students to outline current and
popular arguments, pro and con, to a singular issue on the white board (or chart paper). Students
are then required to use course concepts and theories to evaluate the debate and effectively
demonstrate their competency in using social theory by assuming a position guided in the
literature. This exercise serves well to create small, culturally diverse groupings in class and
allows for cross-cultural exchanges. A complimentary exercise I use is called “Think – Pair &
Share through Multimedia” (TPSM). In this exercise, I divide students into pairs, ask each
participant to discuss how a particular issue, such as poverty or crime, is treated with a social
group they claim membership; they are then instructed to discuss the similar and dissimilar
understandings and treatments of the selected topic with their paired partners. While this exercise
allows students to reflexively develop their identity profiles, I probe them to consider the
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difficulty in assuming a homogenizing explanation of how their selected cultural group would
treat a particular social phenomenon without eliding forms of intragroup difference. Finally, I
merge the student pairs into group discussion at the scale of the entire class and ask students to
offer insights on inter/intra-cultural differences. I also ask them to think about the way
portrayals of crime and poverty in mass media corresponds with their cultural understanding of
the issues. This exercise brings the various cultural understandings of social issues into relief and
draws attention to the way mass media fashions social consciousness. It demonstrates the
importance for analyzing media imagery of marginal populations.
The two aforementioned exercises enable me to create and maintain an atmosphere of
trust, respect and cultural tolerance throughout my courses, but also begin to engender a space
for critical and reflexive awareness as well as participatory learning. Participatory education
seeks to involve students as co-constructors of the learning environment and in this regard, I
value students as active participants. In addition to having students work collaboratively and
integratively, I use devices such as the “Parking Board” (PB), to invite students to submit ideas
about course content, instruction, and relevant social matters of value to the course. The PB is a
way to allow students to suggest new perspectives of their interest into the course content and to
allow them to shape the learning experience. To further my aim of participatory learning
environment, I use an exercise called “Focus Group Discussion” (FGD), to illuminate and
prepare students for the cooperative nature of cosmopolitan society. In this assignment, I assign
readings from course content that focus on social inequality, crime (both social and corporate),
and general social conflict. Then I form students into groups where they are free to choose the
best method to present the article to the class. As the instructor, I am looking for information on
the authors’ standpoints, article summaries to include pro/con/complex positioning, intertextual
thinking that compares and contrasts with other course materials, and finally how the group
engages the class with well-thought-out discussion and questions. Beyond a participatory aim,
this exercise allows me to identify students’ different learning modalities, as well as affords
students the opportunity to enhance their interpersonal skills. I develop exercises for learning
beyond the class as well.
There has been a significant shift in criminology, anthropology and sociology that
emphasizes public engagement (Burawoy 2005; Currie 2007; Lassiter et al. 2005; Ruggiero
2012; Turner 2013) and extending learning beyond the classroom. I use two exercises, “Coming
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Out and Going Public” (CO & GP) and “Urban Windshield Tour” (UWT) to expand the
classroom boundary to the broader community. CO & GP requires students to select a thoughtprovoking statistic, quote or passage from the course content with my approval, and then to chalk
that selected content in a designated and public location (common asphalt or concrete sidewalk
in the central campus plaza that is consistent with the university’s chalking policy). Then the
students are to randomly engage a dozen passersby about their thoughts on the related chalked
text. Finally they are to include the recorded thoughts of passersby in an essay that includes
discussion of the scope and nature of the issue and how they would develop a public campaign,
and an evaluation of their experience carrying out the assignment. Among this assignment’s
many benefits: first it introduces students to a creative, public, research and engagement
approach; second it expands the scope of classroom learning to the larger campus community;
and third it activates students’ leadership capacity towards issues they are most passionate about.
The UWT exercise requires groups of students to select thoroughfares that traverse an
urban to suburban geography and that cross though different communities of ethnic/racial and
social classes. They are to travel these routes from the safety of their vehicles (through
pedestrian travel only when safe to do so) and to observe the various environmental factors, such
as built, natural and social environmental factors that may cause, maintain, and/or better explain
social difference and inequality. Students must consider social policy as they think through their
selected route. They may take photos and/or collect data through interviews in order to compose
their course report and presentation. UWT’s final task requires students to suggest or design a
public policy intended to solve the social issue they identified. This assignment is intended to
ignite students’ sense of participatory development and community problem solving. This
exercise helps students to disabuse themselves of the sensational narratives of crime, deviance,
and “culture of poverty” notions regarding marginal communities, and to have them reflexively
and critically examine the underlying structural conditions that produce and reproduce social
inequality.
The outlined exercises here represent some of the teaching devices I continue to use and
develop as an instructor in the disciplines of anthropology and criminology/criminal justice. My
theory and methods of teaching are grounded in the idea that collegiate education is integral to
solving social equality. The traditional practice of philosophizing the world fails to fully
empowered students because students are looking for ways to refashion the world in just ways.
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References:
Burawoy, Michael
2005 For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review 70(1): 4–28.
Currie, Elliott
2007 Against Marginality Arguments for a Public Criminology. Theoretical Criminology
11(2): 175–190.
Lassiter, LukeEric, Samuel R Cook, Les Field, et al.
2005 Collaborative Ethnography and Public Anthropology. Current Anthropology 46(1): 83–
106.
Ruggiero, Vincenzo
2012 How Public Is Public Criminology? Crime, Media, Culture 8(2): 151–160.
Turner, Elizabeth
2013 Beyond “Facts” and “Values” Rethinking Some Recent Debates About the Public Role of
Criminology. British Journal of Criminology 53(1): 149–166.
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