"Thinking Animals" course inspires book and conference presentation

When the American Educational Research Association issued a call for proposals last fall, Dr. Valerie Banschbach, professor and chair of the environmental studies department at Roanoke College, decided the association's annual meeting would be the perfect setting to build buzz for a book she and a colleague have co-edited. The book presents interdisciplinary curricular and teaching practices in environmental education, focusing on new understandings of animals and the ethical/moral obligations of humans to animals. Her engagement in this project began with development of a new course entitled "Thinking Animals" for the Intellectual Inquiry curriculum at Roanoke. 

Titled "Animals in Environmental Education: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Curriculum and Pedagogy," the book- to be released by Palgrave Macmillan in late 2018 or early 2019- contains 12 chapters written by scholars from the United States, Austria, Canada and Australia. Banschbach and Dr. Marwood Larson-Harris, visiting assistant professor of religion at Roanoke, are authors of one chapter in the book about the "Thinking Animals" course, which engages students in considering how scientific knowledge of animal cognition and emotions can inform our ethical reasoning about animals.

Another chapter is by Roanoke College faculty members Dr. DorothyBelle Poli, associate professor of biology, and Dr. Lisa Stoneman, assistant professor of education and a folklorist. The pair write about their work forming the College's Dragon Research Collaborative, a program that asks students to consider the roots of an iconic imaginary animal, the dragon, based on the idea that ancient people might have created stories about dragons, to express their hopes and fears in a fantastical interpretation of their experiences with plant fossils.

"We thought it would be great to pull together the chapter authors to speak at a session and draw a little attention to the book," Banschbach says. Getting in, though, was far from a sure thing. Only about 10 percent of the 13,000 proposals submitted to the conference are selected, according to Banschbach.

In November 2017, Banschbach learned that the proposal had been accepted. She was gratified at the recognition of her work. "It's the largest gathering of scholars in education research, with some 17,000 attendees," she notes.

So on April 16, the fourth day of the AERA annual meeting in New York City, Banschbach and the other scholars: Larson-Harris, Poli, and Stoneman, along with Dr. Teresa Lloro-Bidart, the book's co-editor and an assistant professor of liberal studies at California State Polytechnic University, gathered for the Animals in Environmental Education symposium.

The talks were well received, Banschbach says, adding "My co-organizer and I received some very nice praise for our work in putting together eight great speakers. The ideas the speakers shared were lauded as innovative."

The liberal arts and sciences environment at the College, Banschbach points out, is a key reason why she has been able to successfully develop interdisciplinary approaches in the classroom, publish them, and speak about them at a prestigious national educational research conference.

"That's what is really great about being at a teaching-focused, undergraduate-only, liberal arts and sciences institution," she says. "We really care about teaching, beyond just teaching content, we develop pedagogy that prompts our students to consider the foundations of their beliefs and their values. You have many faculty here at Roanoke who are developing new kinds of educational efforts that engage our students as whole persons."

Those faculty include Banschbach. In the last two years she has been too busy teaching other new offerings for students, such as the Yucatan Semester, and too heavily engaged in professional life (she was just voted President-Elect of the national Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences) to be able to teach a section of the "Thinking Animals" course she introduced in 2015, one she considers a real breakthrough in her teaching career. But other professors have picked up the mantle, and at least one section of the class is offered to students each year.

It is desirable, Banschbach says, to repeatedly offer "Thinking Animals," which combines components of science, religion, ethics, writing and public speaking, because it both features a topic students are highly interested in (animals) and goes a long way towards preparing students for their professional careers. The course counts toward the requirements of Roanoke's Intellectual Inquiry curriculum, a body of classwork that ensures all graduates leave skilled in communications and critical thinking.

"It's fantastic for students to try to put the different pieces together. That's what they have to do in their life's work," Banschbach says. "Life is not separated out into different bins. They won't be in the biology bin and then be in the political science bin and then be in the ethics bin. Interdisciplinary academic work at the undergraduate level is excellent preparation for being successful in life."