Teaching to Transform: From Volatility to Solidarity in an Interdisciplinary Family Studies Classroom*

• Author: Katherine R. Allen,Stacey M. Floyd‐Thomas,Laura Gillman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2001.00317.x
• Published date: 01 October 2001
• Date: 01 October 2001

2001, Vol. 50, No. 4 317

innovat ive strategies &t echniques

innovative strategies &techniques

Teaching to Transform: From Volatility to Solidarity in an

Interdisciplinary Family Studies Classroom*

Katherine R. Allen,** Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Laura Gillman

Teaching about multicultural families and the xenophobia (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism) they experience can be volatile. We

describe a transformative experience in an interdisciplinary course on families that we team taught. We deconstruct student reactions

to the course content and grading and describe the pedagogy of possibility we created to encourage students’ ability to embrace our

social justice goal. We offer four pedagogical implications regarding interdisciplinary perspectives, collaborative teaching teams,

reconstructing authority, and enacting social justice.

In this article, we analyze the content and process of an in-

terdisciplinary team-taught course, ‘‘Interdisciplinary Study

of Families: Facing the Challenges of the New Millennium,’’

to reveal the pedagogy of possibility (Simon, 1992) we created

in collaboration with our students. Throughout the course, our

aim was to achieve a more authentic teaching–learning experi-

ence for our students and ourselves (hooks, 1994), facilitating a

learning environment that would look and feel different from the

traditional college classroom. We discovered that within this en-

vironment, even explosively confrontive experiences could be

transformed into possibilities of growth and change for ourselves

and our students, enabling all of us to delve into the issues raised

when difference is actively addressed. We share the evolution of

our pedagogy of possibility and offer suggestions for practition-

ers who teach courses about families and who wish to transform

potentially volatile subject matter into reflexive, conscious ideas

and practice.

Overview of the Course

The course was a joint offering in the College of Arts and

Sciences and the College of Human Resources and Education.

The three teachers were from the home disciplines of family

studies (Katherine Allen), religious studies (Stacey Floyd-Thom-

as), and foreign languages and literatures (Laura Gillman) and

shared an affiliation with the Women’s Studies program housed

in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Our study of families

spanned the 20th century and focused on various family cultures

including those in which we had both an empirical and personal

interest: lesbian and gay families (Katherine), African American

families (Stacey), and Hispanic families (Laura).

Our objectives for student learning in this course were to

(a) approach the study of families critically and experientially

*This research was supported by an Instructional Enhancement Grant to the authors

from the Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at VirginiaTech.

**Address correspondence to: Katherine R. Allen, Department of Human Develop-

ment (0416), 401C Wallace Hall, VirginiaPolytechnic Institute and State University, Blacks-

burg, VA 24061; e-mail: kallen@vt.edu

Key Words: conscientization, feminist pedagogy, interdisciplinarity, reflexivity, teach-

ing, xenophobia.

(Family Relations, 2001, 50, 317–325)

through shifting interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., religious,

feminist, family, ethnic); (b) scrutinize how the private institu-

tion of the family acts as a microcosm of public institutions

historically, politically, socially, spiritually, and economically;

(c) deal with multicultural voices in their own contexts and in-

tegrity without imposing an overarching, one-dimensional frame-

work; (d) discover the areas in which dialogue can happen be-

tween these diverse groups as we simultaneously respect the

points at which each perspective differs; and (e) examine the

identity politics configuring one’s own family dynamics, taking

into account social stratification such as race, class, gender, eth-

nicity, and sexual orientation.

We organized the 15-week course around the following key

themes: Part I was about families and their histories; Part II

focused on theories of power; Part III addressed religion and

spirituality; and Part IV was concerned with structures and pro-

cesses in postmodern families. The teachers were individually

responsible for organizing class lectures and activities and dis-

cussions for four lectures; we also conducted three classes to-

gether. When one of the teachers was in charge of the class, the

other two attended, participated, or evaluated the activities of the

class. Our areas of expertise as scholars determined the lectures

we each gave. For example, in the first part of the course, Kath-

erine prepared a lecture on ‘‘The conventional family as a his-

torical phenomenon,’’ Laura prepared a lecture on ‘‘Generational

waves within families,’’ and Stacey prepared a lecture on ‘‘Fam-

ilies, poverty, and wealth.’’ During Part II, Laura lectured on

‘‘Women and families: Feminist deconstruction and reconstruc-

tion,’’ Stacey colectured with a male professor on ‘‘The sexual

construction of race,’’ and Katherine lectured on ‘‘Public policy

and the family.’’ Subsequent topics in Parts III and IV were

‘‘Christianity in Black and White,’’ ‘‘Hispanic experience and

Catholic cultures,’’ ‘‘Families and communities,’’ ‘‘Gay andles-

bian families,’’ ‘‘Media constructions of the family,’’ and ‘‘In-

terdisciplinary family studies in the 21st century.’’

Students were required to attend class and participate in dis-

cussions both in class and on-line; read all the assignments be-

fore class met; maintain a dialogical notebook consisting of

weekly response papers to the readings; take two examinations;

and submit three class reports. The class reports were written

papers: a book review, a movie critique, and a social strata in-

ventory. Twenty-four students (sophomores, juniors, and se-