My pedagogical strategies are based on critical thinking, autopoiesis, appreciation of various discourse communities, and robust interpretation. This active reactivity—a spontaneity that utilizes daily writing; the Socratic methods of elenchus, dialectic, and parrhesia, or free-speaking; and self-reflection as a means of metacognition—teaches students a way of being that they can transfer beyond my classroom and into their everyday lives.
I align this strategy myself with a tradition of contingency that traces through thinkers such Roland Barthes and John Dewey to ancient times when Isocrates and the sophists of Athens encouraged students to gather their interests and cultivate their abilities to speak and write more effectively. By invoking students’ interests, I hope they become more excited about their work and more easily transfer what we discuss, read and write about to other classes or life situations. My goal is for the openness and critique we practice to break down habituation and highlight dissonance in those structures that many of us participate in unthinkingly. In turn, this helps students better understand better who they are, what they have been, and what they can be. Engagement with sensitive issues is part of an affirmative ethics which I explore in my own interdisciplinary scholarship of creative writing, literary and theoretical revaluation.
My scholarly background emphasizes the autopoietic power of reframing stories to interrogate truth. I foster a classroom ethos which uses dialogical principles of disagreement and discussion to point out the subjectivity of narrative and to help students engender their own perspectives as they think, speak and write. My hope is that students learn from me not just terms and concepts germane to the shifting landscapes of first year writing or humanities surveys, but that they can take these ideas into a rapidly evolving technological world with a new way of being and deconstructing that which up to now they have been taught they must accept.
In so doing, I embrace diversity, inclusiveness, and openness in my classroom, and offer students a chance to transfer their newfound knowledge and skills not just to other classes, but to any relevant situation in their lives—from today well into their decades ahead. To see how this has unfolded in my pedagogical practice, download my CV below.
Daniel the Writer 