reflection

Uncomfortable Conversations: A Pedagogy Of Discomfort Within Environmental And Sustainability Education For Future Wellbeing

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Menusha DE SILVA 

Department of Geography
Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS), NUS

geokmds@nus.edu.sg 

De Silva, M. (2024). Uncomfortable conversations: A pedagogy of discomfort within environmental and sustainability education for future wellbeing [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-mdsilva/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Wellbeing 

KEYWORDS

Discomfort, environmental and sustainability education, emotions, interdisciplinarity, reflection  

CATEGORY

Lightning Talk

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Interdisciplinary courses (IDCs) under the College of Humanities and Sciences’ (CHS) Common Curriculum aim to equip students with skills required to navigate a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) (Tan, 2022). Through cross-disciplinary conversations with instructors and peers, students are expected to improve their skills in solving complex problems and real-world issues such as climate change—the contextual focus of this presentation. Ideally, these courses will nurture in students traits of adaptability, resilience, and empathy in order to ensure their wellbeing when transitioning to work life and facing challenges in their everyday lives (CHS, n.d).  

 

Yet, pedagogical work on environmental and sustainability education show that learning about the environmental crisis and climate change may cause some students to experience eco-anxiety (Sims et al., 2020).  Pfautsch and Gray (2017) argue that since a large proportion of people are aware but unengaged about the environmental crisis, feelings of disempowerment and fear can also be productive. In addition, I posit that discussing sustainable solutions could also lead to negative emotions since students would have to grapple with contradictions within discourses on how to best address these environmental issues, i.e. the lack of evidence undergirding prevalent policies.  

 

Since environmental and sustainability education can be an emotionally wrought process, through the case of the proposed IDC “Restoring Human-Nature Connections”, I examine how the classroom can be a safe space for students to develop skills that would contribute to their wellbeing in the future. I propose an assessment structure that recreates a real life decision-making process where students would have to confront the ambiguities and complexities surrounding real-world initiatives and the uncertain outcomes generated through them. Students will have to rank their peers’ proposed solutions to an environmental problem while explaining the trade-offs they made as a group when deciding the optimal solution. This teaching approach is informed by Boler’s (1999) concept “a pedagogy of discomfort” (cited in Ojala, 2021), which recognises that unpleasant emotions would be generated when learning about sensitive and controversial societal issues, and that students need to critically reflect on their emotional responses to uncover how they relate to the issue. 

 

I suggest that this process of negotiating with peers from different disciplinary backgrounds require students to experience the difficulties of having conversations with individuals with different ideological and/or subject positions, and acknowledge the challenges of seeking sustainable and equitable solutions. I argue that the discomfort experienced through this learning exercise can potentially lead to better emotional resilience outside of the classroom, and develop the skill to handle conflict of opinions constructively. As such, the classroom can be a safe space for students to experience some level of discomfort in order to facilitate their future wellbeing. 

REFERENCES

College of Humanities and Sciences (n.d.) CHS Common Curriculum. https://chs.nus.edu.sg/programmes/common-curriculum/  

Ojala, M. (2021). Safe spaces or a pedagogy of discomfort? Senior high-school teachers’ meta-emotion philosophies and climate change education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 52(1), 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1845589

Pfautsch, S., & Gray, T. (2017). Low factual understanding and high anxiety about climate warming impedes university students to become sustainability stewards: An Australian case study. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18(7), 1157-1175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2016-0179

Sims, L., Rocque, R., & Desmarais, M. É. (2020). Enabling students to face the environmental crisis and climate change with resilience: inclusive environmental and sustainability education approaches and strategies for coping with eco-anxiety. International Journal of Higher Education and Sustainability, 3(2), 112-131. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJHES.2020.113059

Tan, E. C. (2022, 5 November) The Half-life of Knowledge. https://chs.nus.edu.sg/2022/11/05/half-life-of-knowledge/

Experience and Reflection: The Bases of a Successful Diversity and Inclusion Course

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Tania Nagpaul* and Vivien SHAN Wen

Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) 

*tanianagpaul@suss.edu.sg 

Nagpaul, T., & Shan, V. W. (2024). Experience and reflection: The bases of a successful diversity and inclusion course [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-tnagpaul-vshan/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Wellbeing 

KEYWORDS

diversity education, inclusion, multicultural attitudes, experiential learning, reflection

CATEGORY

Paper Presentation

 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES 

Embracing diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a key competency for successful future-ready young adults. Ample empirical evidence from Western countries suggests that diversity curricula must be part of university education given the salutary effects it has on student outcomes like personal growth, (Booker et al., 2016), moral development (Parker et al., 2016), ethnocultural empathy (Monroe, 2018) and multicultural awareness (Richardson et al., 2020). Yet, in Singapore, very few diversity and inclusion courses for pre-employment students exist, much less any empirical evidence that supports their effectiveness in bringing about intended student outcomes. Hence, this study examines the effectiveness of a diversity & inclusion course offered to undergraduate students to answer the following research questions: 

  1. To what extent is a diversity and inclusion course effective in influencing shifts in inclusive attitudes and behaviours?  
  2. What pedagogical elements are most critical in delivering the intended student outcomes of the course?  

 

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 

The pedagogy of the course is based on two teaching approaches of multicultural education. First, is the liberal approach which involves personal and social identity reflection, embracing pluralism and teaching sensitivity and tolerance. This approach forms a stepping stone for deeper reflection in the next critical approach which focuses on matters of power, privilege and equity emphasising social transformation reflection (Gorski & Dalton, 2020). The course incorporates experiential learning activities in each classroom session which include, in-class exercises, speaker panels, videos, storytelling, and small-group processes (Pugh, 2014).  

 

Contrary to the traditional didactic model where students are often passive recipients of knowledge, the experiential pedagogy of this course gets students to reflect on course concepts. Imagine being ‘told’ how sweet a fruit is versus given a chance to taste it! This power of experience is unleashed in each lesson of this course (details of each curated activity available upon request).  

 

METHOD

The curriculum comprises six units covered over a 12-week semester. Sixty-four undergraduate students at an autonomous university in Singapore participated in this study.  

 

Participants were recruited from two sections of the same diversity course offered through the human resource management program. The Munroe and Pearson (2006) 18-item Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire (MASQUE) was administered both at the beginning (pre-test) and end (post-test) of the semester to assess changes in students’ attitudes. Behavioural intentions were assessed by content analysing students’ end-of-semester responses to an open-ended prompt. 

 

KEY FINDINGS 

Results demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in students’ inclusive attitudes and behaviours from pre-test to post-test. By the end of the semester, students were not only more caring and inclusive but also made more bias-interrupting choices in a situational judgment task, indicating a positive shift in their decision-making around diversity issues. Furthermore, by the semester’s end, students showed higher intentions to advocate for gender inclusiveness compared to the beginning. 

 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 

This study has demonstrated the educational value of a reflection and experiential learning–based pedagogy in delivering a course aimed at students’ attitudes and behaviours towards greater inclusivity.

 

ALIGNMENT WITH SUB-THEME: OPPORTUNITIES FOR WELLBEING 

Student wellbeing is a central focus in the learning journey of this course. The instructors take considerable effort to create psychological safety throughout the course, ensuring that reflection and experiences can reap their intended benefits. This study demonstrates that a course with strong pedagogical foundations can fulfil the promise of building students’ competence in navigating the challenges of a diverse social environment. Apart from the immediate benefits it also underscores the critical role of education in shaping future societal interactions and professional landscapes.

 

REFERENCES

Booker, K. C., Merriweather, L., & Campbell-Whatley, G. (2016). The Effects of Diversity Training on Faculty and Students’ Classroom Experiences. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(1), n1. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2016.100103 

Gorski, P. C., & Dalton, K. (2020). Striving for critical reflection in multicultural and social justice teacher education: Introducing a typology of reflection approaches. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(3), 357-368. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487119883545 

Munroe, A., & Pearson, C. (2006). The Munroe multicultural attitude scale questionnaire: A new instrument for multicultural studies. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66(5), 819-834.  

Parker III, E. T., Barnhardt, C. L., Pascarella, E. T., & McCowin, J. A. (2016). The impact of diversity courses on college students’ moral development. Journal of College Student Development, 57(4), 395-410. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2016.0050 

Pugh, G. L. (2014). The experiential learning cycle in undergraduate diversity and social justice education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 34(3), 302-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2014.906531

Richardson, L., Volberding, J., & Zahl, M. L. (2020). The impact of a university approved diversity course on undergraduate students’ multicultural awareness. SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, 35(1), 28-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/1937156X.2020.1720461 

 

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