A nondualist pedagogy . . .
one that is intended to foster a connected sense of self as integral to building just and sustainable communities, would be constructed around these basic principles:

  1. A nondualist pedagogy should foster in students a critical self-reflexiveness focused on awareness of the self in relation to others and to our experience of the world around us.
  2. A nondualist writing pedagogy should enable students to enhance their own competence as writers and users of technology in the context of developing a sophisticated understanding of writing and technology and their role in our lives.
  3. Students should develop, through writing and reading activities, an abiding sense of place that goes beyond the common ideas of "home" or physical context.
  4. Literacy practices in writing courses should be consistent with a just and sustainable lifestyle.
  5. The classroom structure and practices that characterize the pedagogy should reflect and promote connectedness and equity.
  6. The idea of sustainability, conceived within a framework based on nonduality and connectedness, should be fully integrated into the pedagogy.
As I have been suggesting throughout this discussion, many teachers have developed pedagogical approaches that are consistent with these principles, and many models exist for concrete classroom activities that can be adapted to support these goals. I am arguing that such work can be brought together under a broad framework based on the idea of nonduality. The specific possibilities for working within such a framework to promote the goals of justice and sustainability are limitless.
          It must also be emphasized that the kinds of changes I have argued for in this webtext cannot be accomplished simply by adopting a nondualist pedagogy – or any critical pedagogy--in the context of unchanged institutional structures. In other words, the changes I am calling for are much broader and akin to the kind of profound restructuring of education – K-12 as well as postsecondary – and of academic disciplines that critics like C. A. Bowers and David Orr have proposed. Such a restructuring would involve re-imagining (and in some cases eliminating) conventional educational structures and practices, such as defining educational programs in terms of courses and specific academic disciplines, that have come to be part of what Bowers calls our taken-for-granted beliefs about learning and schooling. A nondualist pedagogy should be seen as a step toward – and a part of – such broader change.

A Critical Self-Reflexiveness:
Some scholars (for example, James Berlin) have argued that composition is at heart a subject-forming enterprise; that is, we as teachers of writing seek to help students to develop into particular kinds of (critically) literate people. And in an important sense I am embracing that idea here: The kind of writing pedagogy I am imagining seeks to foster in students a specific kind of nondualistic sense of self. In this sense, such a course is a sustained and sophisticated inquiry into the self in the context of literacy and technology.
          But as I have tried to show throughout this webtext, this nondualistic sense of self is a challenge to the prevailing Western sense of self on which contemporary education is founded, and in that sense the kind of pedagogy I am envisioning also represents a critique of this Western sense of self – not unlike the kind of critique that characterizes cultural studies pedagogies, in which students are asked to explore – and resist – how they are constructed by their culture.
          Colleen Connolly's description of ecofeminism in the composition classroom as an "analytic methodology that is constantly aware of relationships – between humans, between nonhumans" (185) is close to what I envision as a pedagogy for sustainability. Through carefully designed writing and reading activities, students would continually explore how they understand themselves in relation to each other and to the nonhuman world and examine the consequences of their ways of being in the world for others as well as for themselves.

Enhancing Students' Competence as Writers and Users of Technology:
This goal is one that many writing teachers already embrace, and scholars like Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe have made compelling arguments for encouraging a critical stance toward literacy in general and toward technology use in particular on the part of students. But I am conceiving of this critical stance – what Cynthia Selfe calls a "critical technological literacy" – in a way that foregrounds the self – the student writer and technology user – as inextricably connected to other humans and to the nonhuman world as well. Thus, writing competence and technology skill are inseparable from an understanding of ourselves as beings-in-the-world. Many models for assignments and activities that can be used to accomplish this kind of understanding already exist.

An Abiding Sense of Place:
Writer and naturalist Barry Lopez (1991) has written that "a sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy." This emphasis on a sense of place mirrors philosopher David Abram's analysis of the integral relationship between the land, language, and thought (1996; see especially chapters 4 and 5) and implies not only that we are inseparable from our physical environment but also that our ways of thinking and being grow out of that environment as well. That idea might infuse writing pedagogy so that we are not only asking students to write about places but to re-imagine themselves as of a place in a way that highlights connectedness and nonduality.
          David Orr distinguishes between a resident, who is "a temporary occupant," and an inhabitant, "who dwells [. . .] in an intimate, organic, and mutually nurturing relationship with a place" (130). He continues, "Good inhabitance is an art requiring detailed knowledge of a place, the capacity for observation, and a sense of care and rootedness" (130). This is more than just an attachment to your home or place of birth. To examine our places of inhabitance in this sense is to engage in a rigorous kind of inquiry that can deepen a sense of connection to place but also lead to insight into who we are as beings in a fundamentally inter-connected world.

Literacy Practices that are Consistent with a Sustainable Lifestyle:

Such questions should routinely be posed about all the writing and reading we ask students to do. The purpose of such questioning is to construct a pedagogy that itself reflects the value of sustainability and practices it.
          Such a purpose amounts to broadening the scope of what counts as "real" or acceptable kinds of writing in the composition classroom and in the curriculum generally. It means challenging the dominance of agonistic models of academic discourse and examining the consequences of common academic discourse practices for our understanding of ourselves as beings-in-the-world and for others in the communities of which we are part.
          This may in fact be the most difficult of these principles to put into practice, because it means challenging conventional assumptions about the purposes of composition courses and about the nature of writing in the academy and beyond. We also have few models for such practices. Still, for a pedagogy that is informed by nonduality and that seeks to promote sustainability to be effective, we must develop practices for writing and for using technology that reflect these goals and values – which means, in a sense, re-imagining what writing is and what it is for.

A Restructured Classroom:
This principle is an extension of the previous one, and like the previous one, it may also prove difficult to put into practice, largely because institutional structures, conventional curricula, and common pedagogical practices, which tend to work against what Donald A. McAndrew calls "heterarchy" in classrooms (379), are so deeply entrenched in institutionalized education. Nevertheless, we have many models to guide us in creating classroom communities characterized by equitable and just relations. The "student-centered" approach promoted for decades by writing-process advocates as well as the "de-centered" classrooms envisioned by critical pedagogues are two such models that can be used to create classrooms defined by connectedness. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this webtext, feminist and ecofeminist models of teaching also offer important and useful models for restructured classrooms.
          What is important in addressing this principle is keeping in view the first principle listed above, for power-sharing, de-centering authority, identifying and valuing difference, and critiquing existing power relations in the classroom – all of which are advocated by feminist and critical teachers – do not necessarily enact a re-imagined self such as I have defined in this webtext. Models of classroom community must be informed by and promote this nondualist sense of self. That can be done, I believe, by incorporating the kind of self-reflexiveness I refer to above in classroom activities as well as in reading and writing assignments. The goal is to make students aware not only of how relationships function in the classroom – and outside it – but also of how their sense of self shapes those relationships and affects others.

Integrating the Idea of Sustainability into Our Teaching:
This principle is perhaps the most straightforward one. It implies making environmental issues and both the idea and practice of sustainability the topic of a writing course, although, as Derek Owens suggests, sustainability need not be the overt focus of a composition course in order for a course to foster environmental awareness. Owens describes seven writing assignments designed "to bring sustainability, directly and indirectly, into the classroom arena" (30). He believes – and I agree – that "it is not hard to create a classroom environment where all of us can reflect on issues directly and indirectly related to sustainability: what makes a neighborhood good or bad; what makes jobs desirable or miserable; and what it means to preserve a culture, whether or not our prospects for the short-term future look hopeful or scary" (30). Owens' own writing assignments constitute perhaps the best starting place for such a pedagogy, and other examples of entire curricula based on ecological awareness exist as well, such as the "Common Roots" curriculum.

Teaching With Technology for a Sustainable Future | Works Cited