Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
2 articlesMarch 2022
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Abstract
This essay provides an overview of my experiences teaching Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) courses with an explicit health justice focus. I ground a discussion of pedagogical possibility by reflecting on my emerging course design, which centers reproductive justice—one example of a justice-oriented framework—as a site of learning and inquiry. In describing my course development and delivery, I suggest that a health justice approach to RHM instruction can be timely, contextually relevant, and challenging. Throughout the essay, I offer specific examples for the purposes of replication or adaptation for differently justice-oriented RHM teaching applications.
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Abstract
Complex health and medical contexts demand not only responsive, mutable research but also responsive, flexible pedagogies. Arguing for a shift from the dominant conception of pedagogy as a pre-planned, linear scaffold, this article proposes instead an approach—called Lego™ Learning—that re-conceptualizes instructional content as self-standing, short-term units or modules, much like Lego™ bricks. Because such modules have self-contained learning objectives and corresponding tasks, they can be shifted within a course or across courses as-needed. This approach allows rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) instructional content to respond to, and prepare students for, the ever-changing exigencies and contexts of RHM-related work. It also encourages collaborations across classes, institutions, and other contexts. In this entry, we frame our discussion around four learning outcomes and teaching practices that can be facilitated through this approach, and we provide an extended example of an ongoing cross-institutional partnership that employs Lego™ Learning.