An Integral Approach Toward Transcending the Pedagogical Matrix: A Sociology Instructor’s Personal Reflection

Abstract

As a young, second year adjunct who teaches sociology at a City University of New York (CUNY) community college in Brooklyn, I'm happy to say that I've had the good fortune of learning the ropes in my own way and in my own time. Being thrust into a position of instructing college pedagogies in classrooms full of forty students or more wasn't exactly a relaxing day at the beach to start out. Taking on the teacher role was something that was completely foreign to me; which I'm sure is an experience that many other young teachers at all types of institutions are familiar with. There were some rocky moments and, of course, some positive, confidence building moments to be had. However, due to the fact that I had to essentially on the fly, I found myself growing and expanding to levels that I wasn't even necessarily cognizant of. Each semester, my confidence and comfort levels increased, but so did the scope of my pedagogical practice. As I have evolved, so too has the equilibrium of my classroom dynamics in a much more balanced way (as opposed when I first started out). Furthermore, my evolutionary process has taken me to the point where I can observe a correlation between my stage of development and the broader social state of affairs around me at individual, institutional, and societal levels. For that reason, I'd like to specifically share my observations, perspectives, and ideas concerning contemporary educational culture in higher education.In this article, I utilize my sociological lens (among other lenses) to assess the state of educational and pedagogical environments. Specifically, I discuss the neoliberal effect on dominant pedagogies that gets transmitted through educational institutions. Then I discuss how these pedagogies work to severely constrain students' self-awareness and creative possibilities. In response, I cite alternative, integral approaches to education that offer a significantly different way for students to learn about themselves and their social enviromnent; whereby self-definition and self-empowerment are emphasized. Lastly, I divest how my own pedagogical and personal evolution has led me to develop my own effective, integral practices; which I share as an example for all others within higher education to read about in the hopes that they become inspired to potentially develop their own integral pedagogical methods for their specific environment.CONTEXTUALIZING AND UNDERSTANDING THE NEOLIBERAL CONTEXTWe can greatly expand our scope of analysis when discussing the prevailing neoliberal context in which our contemporary American culture has been based by prefacing it within the even larger social context of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These interlocking systems combine to form an overarching matrix of power that works to create and influence social norms, values, belief systems, interaction, and social structure itself.1 In this way, racialized, economic, and gendered parameters and guidelines become set in order for dominant interests to become actualized and maintained. In the process of suiting these dominant interests, the stratified social identities of race, class, and gender (amongst many others) become produced and reproduced as a result. However, if we continue to expand the scope of analysis even farther, and continue to contextualize the social context, we find that the systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are actually based on the illusory premise or assumption of separateness. Understanding this illusory assumption becomes vitally important if we aim to truly realize why our contemporary social structure is set up the way that is; and thus develop ways in which we can genuinely transcend it.Very briefly, developments in quantum mechanics and neuroscience have been revealing that the universe (and everything in it; including social structure) is not actually a material universe of separate objects with matter being made up of solid atoms. …