How to practice hope in our education amidst a planetary crisis?
When dystopic images about environmental collapse and the urgency for transformative change are at the forefront of our understanding of the climate crisis, it is not so strange that we recognize an increase in climate- and ecoanxiety amongst our students. This increase in anxiety creates a complex challenge for our higher education: how can we best engage our students with these issues? Therefore, this action research project, led by Kelly Streekstra, explores how higher education concerning the climate crisis might draw inspiration from the literature and societal practices of hope. We’re inspired by how Rebecca Solnit describes how hope can become an ‘electrifying force in the present’ (Solnit, 2016), thereby, defining a kind of hope that might help us transform our current systems. This research explores how we might characterize a type of hope that might aid us in times of the planetary crisis- and explores how such a practice of hope might come to be practised within higher education.
Publications
The potential of ‘didactic mixing’ in lifelong learning Streekstra, K., Wessels, K., Pelzer, P., Hoffman, J. & Chambers, J. (2023)
How does hope work?
Visit any event covering the tremendous sustainability challenges of our time, and you’re likely to encounter a frequently asked question for the presenter: “Do you have hope?”
The thing is- hope is a word any of us might use multiple times a day, yet the meaning of this concept is not easily pinned down. In fact, understanding the power- and the dangers of hope, and the many ways people can practice hope, is a topic of vivid academic discussion. A concern of this research, therefore, is to understand the myriad ways in which hope is practiced- and to articulate what kind of hope might serve us during the planetary crisis. Rather than to ‘have hope’ - we’re approaching hope thereby as the verb- to hope. It involves an active practice of engaging with change, during which one might experience both the positive sense of hopefulness- as well as hopelessness. Therefore, we might be able to understand better how we could answer this question.
How might ‘hope’ contribute to higher education?
Also, in the classroom, and thus in our higher education at Utrecht University, this question is sometimes asked by students to their teachers. It seems there is a demand for hope amongst our students. How we respond- and have been responding to this demand, is a fundamental question regarding the role we perceive our education to have amidst the planetary crisis.
This research seeks to contribute to the collective search for the role our education might take – by studying courses of the master's level, offered by the Copernicus Institute. We thereby see ourselves as a part of the many colleagues and students who wish to part ways with the standard ‘deficit’ model and transmission model that is inherent to many forms of education. We recognize a rich movement of responses, that create transdisciplinary, interactive, and activating approaches to education.
By reflecting on courses, as a teacher and as a critical friend to teachers, this research tries to create rich pictures of the education that is offered, to understand whether- and what hope is practiced here. For instance, we consider the pedagogical intentions of the teachers, the experience of students, the settings of the classrooms, the type of ‘knowledges’ the classes adopt, and the dynamics between students and society. These practices are compared to the practices of hope described above; to ask- where might education foster hope - and where might it hinder it?
The approach of this research
As a first step in this project, UFS colleagues reflected together on two courses UFS offered in 2022-2023. We sought to articulate how we made choices regarding the didactics of the courses, and why. This paper has been published in the EUCEN Journal of Lifelong Learning (see 'publications' above). At present, this research is exploring the different ‘modes of hoping’ and attempts to articulate what modes of hoping might suit transformative action with regard to the climate crisis. Furthermore, we’re exploring what educational practices might best fit this kind of hope. In the next phase, this research will explore other courses offered by the Copernicus Institute, to understand whether- and how we might practice hope in the classroom, and to see whether the mode of hoping articulated in the prior research might be able to contribute to these educational settings.
This project runs from June 2024 to December 2026 and will bundle four research papers. The project is funded by the Higher Education Award of the Dutch Ministry of Education.