Reflecting on Boundaries: Who is Teaching and Who is Learning?

By looking at the boundaries of a system, we can identify some of the challenges and opportunities to transform that system. As a faculty member I find the practice of “blurring the boundaries” to be transformative for myself and my students—or, rather, if I’m going to blur the boundaries, my co-learners since they are adult learners coming to learn with me more than from me.  Teaching by learning with them involves an exercise in empathy: if I were to investigate their research questions or if I were to work in their professional context, how would I go about it? What resources I know that would be helpful in that inquiry? And, most importantly, what other questions would I be asking myself? From this empathic connection, a collaborative relationship emerges: we are not teacher and student in the traditional sense, but learning partners working together on the same project. The notion of “experts” as individuals who know all the knowledge required to solve a problem is becoming a myth. The field of sustainability is an example of an inquiry where knowledge is been produced by collaborative learning and exploration.

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