How relational learning can disrupt the scientific cultural status quo: lessons from astronomy
Kathryne J. Daniel and Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz
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I am watching waves on the ocean. There are tiny ripples dancing on the surface. Transient waves the size of my hand that peak and melt back into the surface of the water. Every so often, the currents under the water collaborate with the wind to grow a wave large enough to break under its own enthusiasm to reach the shore. The sound is rhythmic, but it is not a metronome. Our Universe is filled with patterns like these as a network of intricate interactions conspire to shape the Universe on all scales, in physical space and in time. So, I ask myself, “how do I fit in? How do my actions and interactions contribute to patterns, repeat patterns, and create new patterns in the ocean of the human Universe?”
The narrative of the Western world is that scientists are born through training that begins in the classroom. In these classrooms, students are subordinate to the instructor. The instructor is subordinate to the literature and to the institution of education. Dismantling hierarchies in the classroom requires a shift in how we conceptualize and value knowledge so that we include an open recognition that students come into our classrooms and research spaces with an astounding wealth of wisdom. Despite the great undulating waves of creativity and curiosity that brought each of us to the classroom, despite our ripples of desire to connect to the world, and despite deep wisdom welling up from the generations before us, we subordinate ourselves and each other to the writ and rigid ways of knowing the world passed to us from the dawn of Western civilization. What would happen should we step outside this paradigm? Would the chaos of the world wash away all our efforts to extrapolate patterns that describe and predict how the physical world works? Or would our collective knowing become something much more complex, like an ocean?
My view of this vast ocean is minuscule and I am contemplating how the potential scale of transformation from relatively small interactions can be tremendous, provided that they are intentionally emanating from adaptive ways of being with others and self. Adrienne Maree Brown writes, “emergence is fractal – the health of the cell is the health of the species of the planet.” The beautiful thing about fractals is that they are not unidirectional. Each pattern is not subordinate to a pattern on a larger scale. It is a mother of additional patterns in their own right and works in symphony with patterns on the same scale. Fractals, born of chaos, are collaborative communities of patterns. One could focus on a single manifestation of the pattern – an instructor, yourself; but to do so would be to miss out on the richness that is the fractal itself. To focus on individual scientific breakthroughs is to ignore the underlying truth of collaborative knowledge building and the sorts of understanding that are gifted to us through the human experience.
Stationed on our minute planet tucked away in the exurbia of the universe, we can be acquitted for taking a parochial view, believing that the world we experience is customary in the Universe; whereas it is the contrary. So, as astrophysicists we are struck with awe by what we discover and the growing awareness of what we don’t know and embrace the idea that a singular perspective may inherently impose severe limitations upon what we can ever know. In such a way we come to comprehend more about ourselves, our world and our Universe.
OUTREACH FROM THE IVORY TOWER: LESSONS FROM ASTRONOMY
Huitzilopochtli is a deity central to the Aztec way of knowing the world. His name is a cognate of the Nahuatl words huitzilin, “hummingbird,” and opochtli, “left.” The word Huitzilopochtli, or hummingbird on the left, can be interpreted to signify “acting from the heart.” How can we listen, support, collaborate, merge and grow our learning communities if we are not able to act from the heart? I assert that it is not feasible.
Astronomy is distinctively positioned as both a humbling and breathtaking science. It is unbecoming to believe we have locked ourselves in the ivory tower. So, many of us have a small section of our résumés devoted to outreach. Sharing the “wonders of the Universe” with a local high school or at an annual science festival is enjoyable. It is a delight to see the reflection of my past self sparkle in someone’s eyes.
The ugly truth is that “outreach” is the scientific community’s rewording for “educational charity” and a vague invitation to assimilation in practice. It does not come with guidance for the alien explorer; it does not provide support in case of failure at self-assimilation; and it does not offer any means to find your way back home if you change your mind. Outreach is unidirectional from the astronomer to the “charitable case,” and without support and guidance for the inspired it is often an illusory hope.
This underbelly to inspiration is more than a small shame. The many gates of assimilation into scientific culture ensure that all the gifts of a chaotic world do not enter. Each complex mind must be ironed out or turned away. Not only does this crush the inquisitive spirit, it disconnects the ivory tower from the world. Time and again the Western world has witnessed how a disconnected elite leads to their downfall. Names like Pharaoh Akhenaten, Marie Antoinette, and Tsar Nicholas II come to mind. At the time of this writing, the field of astronomy is facing its own reckoning but, unlike that of King Louis XVI, the outcome is not yet known.
In 2000, the astronomy community named the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) a top priority for the future of the field. The incredible power of this observatory would usher in the new millennium, inspiring generations of astronomers to come. It was a beautiful vision on the scale of the Western pursuit of knowledge alone. It was beautiful so long as one could ignore the growing gatherings of Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous people of Hawai’i) peacefully obstructing the access road to the summit of Maunakea where the TMT would be built. In the worldview of the astronomical community, this began in 2019 – or possibly 2014 when kia’i (protectors) disrupted the groundbreaking ceremony for the TMT. This astronomical ivory tower was so disconnected from the world that it did not recognize its role in the forced occupation of the Kanaka Maoli’s most sacred mountain, Maunakea. It did not see the historical context, the greater pattern, within which the TMT could be constructed; nor did it recognize the failing integrity upon which scientific discovery would be realized. It did not understand that the strength of our field is in the health of our relationships, which could only be assessed by their depth.
This is more than a canary in the coal mine. It is a catastrophic failure to stay connected or even to inspire. Enormous sums of money are spent on outreach, but outreach does not include the simple act of listening. It is unidirectional. It does not include the principle of reciprocity and fails to engage in ethical practices that build trust and fundamentally acknowledge personhood. The construct of the ivory tower is a stone disrupting the symphony of currents in the ocean. But the water around a stone has the memory of its unobstructed, native patterns written in its being. Eventually, the ocean will turn stones into sand. We can learn from the water and build a complex way of knowing the Universe. It naturally follows that the production and validation of knowledge about the Universe can only be achieved by ensuring belonging for all and authentic relational connection between communities. When a community is actively engaged, ethically and with integrity, trust in science is strengthened. There is currently an operating division between the professional scientific culture, which reflects the culture of the dominant demographics, and those that have identities that are scarce within it. If we scientists, as a community, aim to know the Universe in all its complexity, then we must deconstruct the ivory tower and rebuild our community to be multicultural and multiculturally literate, and to reflect the values of our common humanity.
RELATIONAL LEARNING AND COMMUNITY CULTURAL WEALTH IN LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
How, then, do we reframe the pursuit of scientific knowledge in order to reclaim our birthright as curious beings, each gifted with a unique ability to know, question, and contribute? What would happen if, rather than a linear, unidirectional, hierarchical flow of knowledge from and to isolated beings, we adopted collaborative knowledge building? What if, rather than an ivory tower, we allowed our network of intricate interactions to reshape our approach to scientific knowing on all scales? Fractals have no start point, or even a direction. So, begin with the scale and position you inhabit and choose the greater pattern you wish to make.
Relational learning is an antidote to the culturally emphasized, hierarchical approach to teaching. It focuses energies around the principle that students are legitimate co-creators and agents of knowledge. Each student’s personal, cultural and disciplinary backgrounds are perceived as precious assets. Most learning programs prioritize technical resources to produce the best science. This resource prioritization includes the implicit values that have historically guided the culture of astronomy and are manifest in its composition, behaviors, and rituals. This has disproportionately favored those with pre-existing notions of these habits. It has been challenging and rewarding work to proactively relinquish some of these practices in order to increase opportunities for equitable participation and hopefully lay the foundation for lasting change. Relational learning allows every person to bring all of themselves to the process, which for me is informed by my ancestral wisdom to “lead from the heart.”
In the Lamat research training program, for example, we have re-envisioned research training through the creation of a mentoring program designed for both mentors and mentees. Effective mentoring emphasizes a network approach of sharing resources and presumes that all participants possess distinctive assets to contribute to one another’s growth. Each person’s personal, cultural, professional, and disciplinary-based background is viewed as an asset. Relational mentoring practices open conversations around shared interests and collaborative research. Such undertakings can generate new lines of inquiry and scholarship. Community members can help one another be strategic about developing innovative approaches to research that contribute to an impactful and creative agenda. In Lamat, we teach and learn from one another the practice and value of self-reflexivity, and engage in dialogues about our approaches to learning and how we relate to one another. Through this modeling we aim to motivate individuals to restructure their own learning environments in order to allow for the development of relational communities of scholars in all our locations and scales of influence.
The classroom is another place where we can begin forming a pattern of relational learning and trust on the scale of tens of people. Learning feels risky and students often enter a physics classroom afraid of being exposed as unworthy. Mutual curiosity tends to empower learners rather than invoke these feelings of vulnerability. As such, we aspire to dissolve the stigma that one’s ability to understand physics is solely a gift, which is often interpreted by students to mean understood without effort. We emphasize thoughtfulness and the process of learning, not the immediate outcome. We want to teach students to embrace mistakes as an integral part of understanding the subject. Mistakes made in the context of wondering do not feel shameful since the question at hand simply continues to exist, and possibly becomes more enticing. It is in these moments of curiosity that we push our students to try harder, explore new methods and ask their own questions. Much of our pedagogy is designed to build a crescendo of curiosity; but right before the class begins to bend under the weight of defeat, we offer them hints and tools to satiate their open minds. Each time this happens, we build a foundation of trust. They learn to trust that we will not leave them to flounder and that their minds are worthy of pondering profound questions.
Physics provides an ideal environment in which to engage in critical thinking and practice problem solving skills, in addition to learning to work collaboratively with peers. Problem solving within this framework is inherently a means to acquire cooperative skills through group tasks that require students to contribute ideas, ask questions, justify their reasoning, and negotiate to reach a consensus. Encouraging peer discussion and group problem solving in class also leads students to form productive collaborations outside class. This approach can thus be difficult for some students and it is important for us to give them enough scaffolding and positive feedback so that they do not become disillusioned by frustration while seeking the solution. The more intellectually open each of us is, the more we realize that everyone around us is struggling with similar concepts as well. For students this is especially important, since it is an important avenue to build confidence and to inspire positive collaboration.
A key to learning physics is persistence. Concepts in physics can be difficult and often require repeated trials and failures before they can be integrated into our approach to knowing. An effective course creates many opportunities for these cycles of problem solving, accompanied with constructive feedback to students. Our pedagogies place us, the instructors, in the role of a facilitative guide and encourage significant student engagement. In practice, class time is organized around problem solving in small groups, where students prepare by taking notes on assigned readings, experiments, or videos before arriving at class. At the beginning of the day, we set up a framework. We discuss major takeaways from our notes and how they fit into the larger context of the course, physics as a whole, their experiences of the world, and the Universe. Then we begin the doing. Throughout class time we check in with each group to assist when necessary and gauge each class’s particular struggles and strengths. When they get stuck, we talk about the particular concept or method. What’s the idea here? How would you identify the need to use a particular method here? How can you effectively apply the method? Then they plow on. A silent benefit is that they see everyone struggling. They are not alone and they are supported by each other and by us. By the end of class, they have solved the problem(s) as a collective; but we don’t stop there. That evening, they write up the solutions with a full explanation. Then they meet as a group and give each other feedback before writing a final copy of their solutions. We use some version of these methods with varying degrees of scaffolding for every course we teach.
Across this approach, every person practices relational learning. It is multidirectional. It is connected. Learning is deep and happens on the timescale of trust. The work is demanding but each scientist does it because they remain curious and they care for their collaborators.
CONCLUSION: DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO WITH A NEW PATTERN
By building learning efforts and relationships around the principle of relational learning, a traditional hierarchical, retributive, and grooming approach to teaching and mentoring is naturally displaced.
Students who have learned to learn this way seek it out and build strong communities of care. They bring additional people into the fold. They teach others how to repeat this pattern. And the pattern magnifies. Each year a new wave of relationally informed scientists graduates and crashes onto the stone of the ivory tower.
Imagine scientific culture informed by these principles, astronomers who listen to the ways and needs of those they hope to inspire, and scientists who are in conversation with the world, discovering collaboratively at the rate of deep learning and mutual trust. Imagine an astronomy that is connected and that operates in relation with the communities it intersects, led by students who recognize and value the inherent wisdom of Indigenous peoples who have been in relation to the land for time immemorial. In such a world, how would the story of Maunakea be different? What would outreach look like if it were informed by these principles? This future needs people who embrace this way of being, teach it, and lead by it.