Student Involvement

The unique pedagogy that shaped the student and faculty experience

As part of Brackish Water Los Angeles, project co-directors Debra Scacco and Aandrea Stang co-taught two semesters of a course on art and water, aiming to lateralize knowledge by directly engaging student voices as a source of expertise. Students were a part of the research team, and a sounding board and microcosm of the community, providing critical local input throughout exhibition planning. 

Students were encouraged to embrace process thinking. Students researched in ways different from traditional art history scholarship.
Course research was dedicatedly cross-disciplinary and introduced experts from specific and disparate fields, such as faculty
from the CSUDH Earth Sciences Department. Assignments included sociology and history texts, on topics such as the concept of Kuuyam, the Tongva (First Peoples) word for guest. The
classes also participated in on-the-ground site visits, going directly to the spaces that we sought to investigate.

Through the course, students were challenged to examine structures of learning and hierarchies that determine the consideration of information as knowledge, to support lifelong critical thinking and curiosity. Following Jacques Ranciere’s pedagogical notion of the ignorant schoolmaster, Scacco and Stang positioned themselves as learners alongside the students, considering complex scientific and cultural material. Their roles as co-teachers were intentional, as the presence of two individuals moves away from the traditional notion of a singular dispensation of absolute certainty. 

Central to the coursework was envisioning the classroom space as a laboratory of future thought. The notion of material curiosity as research was modeled, facilitating a process of co-learning and co-exploration, where students were part of the educational logic, and students and faculty developed new understandings in tandem.