Ruth Tringham Pedagogical Philosophy

 
Movies about Teaching and Practising Digital Archaeology  at UC Berkeley and the SF PresidioDigital_Archaeology.htmlDigital_Archaeology.htmlDigital_Archaeology.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1

The courses that I teach are based on a pedagogical philosophy that emphasizes the integration of research and learning by both faculty and students; that – as suggested by Vygotsky and Freire and Cole - learning through practice, especially in collaboration with others, creates a sustained enthusiasm for lifelong learning; that teaching is about guidance and scaffolding inquiry, rather than transmittal of facts; that – as maintained by Erich Fromm – boredom is the greatest undiagnosed illness of our society and that students are responsible for their own inquisitiveness, inquiry and learning; that learning is a lifelong process, which is why I like Michael Ashley’s term K-Grey.


This same philosophy provides the foundation for all the courses I teach, whether introductory or upper division undergraduate courses, or graduate seminars. It finds its most creative expression, however, in the courses I teach in the Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology (MACTiA).


The MACTiA courses have few rules, but we do insist that learning and inquiry guides the use of technology, not the other way round; that depth of content and creativity in research is more “gradeworthy” than technical prowess (although design expertise is not be scoffed at); that the process of a project is as (or more) important as the product (but there is definite empowerment through completing projects); and that we learn from each other through working together.


Students learn to contribute to real-world databases and websites and the on-site interpretation of past places through the real-world practice of  teamwork and deadlines. They learn to re-use, re-contextualize, and re-combine images, text, and sound to create new data in the process  of interpreting archaeology and creating knowledge about cultural heritage worldwide to share across the Internet.

“Cultivating Thinking, Challenging Authority” a movie about pedagogy and the feminist practice of Archaeology (18 mins)