Assisted Reproductive Technologies in an Inquiry-based Classroom

Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the mainstream English-language press around the world has valorized IVF doctors and alternately sentimentalized and exaggerated the possibilities afforded by assisted reproduction. Countering such views in the classroom can be difficult, especially because students must grasp the details of reproductive technologies before they can begin to assess the veracity of claims made for them and to examine their ramifications.

For the last several years, I‘ve taught a course titled “Rent-a-Wombs and Donor Eggs” for the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of Miami using an inquiry-based pedagogical approach, which has proved especially fruitful in dealing with a topical subject like ARTs. The inquiry approach is effectively the opposite of the stand-and-deliver format that Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire termed the “banking model” of education. Instead of “depositing” information that is subsequently “withdrawn” in the form of tests and papers, inquiry facilitates learning by allowing students to explore open-ended questions--with the aid, in my case, of methods like rhetorical and visual analysis, interviews, surveys, and Web 2.0 applications.

Of course, because...