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"[Adult education is] a co-operative venture in non-authoritarian, informal learning the chief purpose of which is to discover the meaning of experience; a quest of the mind which digs down to the roots of the preconceptions which formulate our conduct; a technique of learning for adults which makes education coterminous with life, and hence elevates living itself to the level of an experiment." ~Eduard Lindeman, What is Adult Education? (1925). |
I believe that the liberal education necessary to sustain democracy begins in the grey spaces between disciplines, in the cooperation of applied and theoretical inquiry, in the unifying power of civic engagement and action. Nowhere is this type of learning more evident than in the critical investigation of the problems and policies of urban places that I plan to undertake in graduate school. For the last two years, I have worked closely with faculty and students to integrate community-based learning components into the curriculum as a teaching assistant in Portland State’s University Studies department. This has exposed me to the complexity of community partnerships in the learning process and inspired me to pursue a degree that enables me to apply my philosophy of transformative pedagogy in a university setting. By espousing a multicultural, critical, student-centered approach to education, I hope to empower future generations to become the primary agents in their own learning and actors for social progress. My experiences, thus far, with the theory and practice of liberatory higher education: University Studies General Education Program
Consortium of Liberal Educators of Artists National Conference: "E-portfolios as reflective practice," Seattle, Washington, April 2005 EPFA 407/507:Teaching Technology in Higher Education, Portland State University, instructor American Association of State Colleges and Universities: American Democracy Project National Conference "Plenary speaker: Institutionalizing civic engagement at Portland State University," Portland, Oregon, June 2005 |
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