Judith Green of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School presents work on Thematic School at UC 21st Century Conference

Dr. Judith Green of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School delivered the presentation “Thematic Schools: Using Technology to Bring Together Interdisciplinary Groups of Scholars and Students” at the UC 21st Century Conference in Davis on June 20. The conference, subtitled “Teaching, Learning and Technology: Past, Present and Future” was an opportunity for faculty, students and staff from across the UC system to come together to share experiences and ideas about how technology is, and can be, strategically used for teaching and learning.

Green presented about The Thematic School on Ethnography & Education: Language, Culture and Complex Dynamic Systems, suggesting the School as a model for other UC campuses. The School was a transdisciplinary colloquium, linking faculty and students across universities and fields in a series of dynamic and interactive videoconferences. Participants in this Thematic School explored conceptual and theoretical perspectives on how complexity theory can be used to frame ethnographic research in education and other institutional settings (e.g., health care system, organizations) with anthropologist Michael Agar, Fulbright Senior Specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Graduate and undergraduate students and faculty in Education, Communication, Anthropology, and Linguistics across universities interactively discussed and raised questions for each other and for Dr. Agar, based on his presentations. The presentations and discussions were the center of a dynamic and dialogic series of videoconferences, simultaneous web-casts and a web-based discussion Forum. The Thematic School explored the concept and application of ethnography as a complex system and its potential to contribute to the study of education as a complex phenomenon.

[Judith Green is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
– end –

School-wide Links
Courses Apply	Computing Contact

News

Judith Green of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School presents work on Thematic School at UC 21st Century Conference