GCEd | Transformative engagement

Skills

(glocal) participatory action 

Rubric
Civic engagement is about making a difference by promoting the quality of life in the communities through political and non-political processes. The activities that the individuals engage in are personally life enriching and socially beneficial to the community (https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value-initiative/value-rubrics/value-rubrics-inquiry-and-analysis). The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU, 2005) created a value rubric to evaluate student’s learning. The civic engagement value rubric is used to assess knowledge, attitudes and skills from benchmark to capstone level. The rubric captures the six criteria: Diversity of communities and cultures, analysis of knowledge, civic identity and commitment, civic communication, civic action and reflection, and civic contexts/structures. As an example of the civic contexts/structures criterion students that reach the benchmark level experiment with civic contexts/structures by trying them out to see what fits. Students reaching the milestone level demonstrate the ability to work actively in community contexts. At the capstone level the student “demonstrates ability and commitment to collaboratively work across and within community contexts and structures to achieve a civic aim” (Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2009))

Teaching examples

• Service Learning
• Design Project Based Interventions
• Learning teaching activities | (glocal) participatory action

References

• Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2009). Civic engagement VALUE rubric. https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value-initiative/value-rubrics/value-rubrics-inquiry-and-analysis
• Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2005). Liberal education outcomes: A preliminary report on student achievement in college. https://www.aacu.org/leap 
• Sklad, M., Friedman, J., Park, E., & Oomen, B. (2016). ‘Going Glocal’: a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global citizenship education at a Dutch liberal arts and sciences college. Higher Education, 72, 323-340.

Change agency

A change agent is a person or group that works on a change programme and/or that encourages people to change their behaviour or opinions. Universities can encourage their students to become a change agent by providing them the opportunity to take on a leadership role and conducting their own research.

Kay and colleagues (2010) define students as change agents as actively engaged with the process of change by taking on a leadership role. Furthermore, they are engaged with the institution and their subject areas, Students build change on evidence-based foundations.

The Global Institute for Lifelong Empowerment (GiLE) defines Students as Change Agents as allies in making necessary changes both in the academic environment and in society at large. It encourages students to think and be more active and by creating and innovating and they become the change they demand to see. https://www.gile-edu.org/articles/ethics-and-responsibility/involved-engaged-constructive-students-as-change-agents-today/#

Rubric
Goal 3.3 of the APA Goals for Undergraduate Major in Psychology is described as adopting values that build community at local, national, and global levels. The rubric lists basic (foundation) indicators and advanced (baccalaureate) indicators for each of the six aspects from goal 3.3. At the foundational level of goal 3.3b students are expected to “recognize potential for prejudice and discrimination in oneself and others” whereas students will “develop psychology-based strategies to facilitate social change to diminish discriminatory practices” at the baccalaureate level (Halonen et al., 2020). “Applying psychological principles to a public policy issue and describing the anticipated institutional benefit or societal change” as well as “seeking opportunity to serve others through volunteer service, practica, and apprenticeship experiences” are baccalaureate indicators of goals 3.3e and 3.3 (Halonen et al., 2020).

Teaching examples

• Collaborative online intercultural learning
• Service learning
• Work-integrated experiential learning
• Improv theatre for character strengths
• Design projectbased interventions
• Students as Change Agents
• Teaching learning activities | Change agency
• Honours+ | Faculty of Law

References

• Cambridge University. (2022). change agent. In Cambridge Business English Dictionary.
• Kay, J., Dunne, E., & Hutchinson, J. (2010). Rethinking the values of higher education-students as change agents?.
• Halonen, J. S., Nolan, S. A., Frantz, S., Hoss, R. A., McCarthy, M. A., Pusateri, T., & Wickes, K. (2020). The challenge of assessing character: measuring apa goal 3 student learning outcomes. Teaching of Psychology, 47(4), 285–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320945119

Connecting and collaborating

Rubric
The boundary crossing rubric by Gulikers and Oonk, (2019) can be used to assess interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning. It lists several aspects for the categories identification, coordination, perspective-making and learning from each other, and transformation. At the lowest level of perspective making and learning from each other the student “shows no action in stimulating other people to learn from each other”. At the C level the student reflects with team members on roles, contributions and development during the project, but does not actively transfer the results into improved performance of other people during the projects”. At the B level the student “initiates reflective actions between people involved in the project aimed at learning from the project (both process and content-wise)”. If a student reaches the highest A level he/she additionally “actively encourages other people’s learning in light of the project” (Gulikers & Oonk, 2019).

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU, 2005) created a value rubric to evaluate student’s learning. The team work value rubric is used to assess knowledge, attitudes and skills from benchmark to capstone level. If a student reaches the capstone level of the contributing to team meetings criterion then he/she “Helps the team move forward by articulating the merits of alternative ideas or proposals” whereas the student “shares ideas but does not advance the work of the group” at the benchmark level (https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value-initiative/value-rubrics/value-rubrics-teamwork)

Teaching examples

• Mini-internship
• Learning teaching activities | Connecting and collaborating
• Honours+ | Faculty of Law

References

• Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2005). Liberal education outcomes: A preliminary report on student achievement in college. https://www.aacu.org/leap
• Gulikers, J., & Oonk, C. (2019). Towards a rubric for stimulating and evaluating sustainable learning. Sustainability, 11(4), 969.

Conflict resolution

One key aspects within transformative engagement, is to work towards a peaceful word in a non-violet way. Furthermore, conflict resolution education also supports developing social competencies as cooperation, empathy, creative problem solving, social cognitive skills, and relationship skills.

UM Teaching examples and assessment

• Moot Court
• Improv theatre for character strengths
• Honours+ | Faculty of Law
• Client Consultation Competition | Faculty of Law
• ICC Mediation Competition | Faculty of Law

References

• https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/The+Handbook+of+Conflict+Resolution+Education:+A+Guide+to+Building+Quality+Programs+in+Schools-p-9780787910969
   

Design thinking 

Related constructs/concepts

• innovation,
• unlearning,
• evaluation and feedback-seeking,
• resourcefulness,
• future mindedness,
• creating new value

UM Teaching examples and assessment

• Community-based learning
• Mini-internship
• Design projectbased interventions

Attitudes/Values

Courage

Courage is the ability to meet a difficult challenge despite the physical, psychological, or moral risk involved in doing so (‘Courage’, 2020). Courage is the voluntary willingness to act, with or without varying levels of fear, in response to a threat to achieve an important, perhaps moral, outcome or goal.  The two generally agreed upon components of courage: threat and worthy or important outcome. Courageous actions are an amalgamation of character strengths to include bravery, persistence, integrity, and vitality (Peterson and Seligman, 2004). There are different types of courage, which are  still under debate. Overall is agreed upon at least two types: Physical courage and moral courage.

Teaching examples

• Improv theatre for character strengths | PSY3383 | Improv(e) your Soft Skills
• Service learning | ECA | Maastricht Mediation Clinic
• Honours+ | Faculty of Law

Resilience

Resilience is the ‘process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences’ (“Resilience”, 2020). Literature has indicated resilience reflects three attributes: resistance, as the ability to maintain functionality in an adverse situation; recovery, the process to return to the pre-situation state, and robustness the capacity to withstand perturbations (Grafton et al., 2019).

Measurement
A possible measurement scale for individual resilience is the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) with 25 items or the Brief CD-RISC scale (Campbell‐Sills & Stein, 2007) with 10 items. Example items of the scales are, “able to adapt to change”, “coping with stress can strengthen me”, and “can handle unpleasant feelings” (Campbell‐Sills & Stein, 2007; Connor & Davidson, 2003).

Another scale to consider is the Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008). “I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times” and “it does not take me long to recover from a stressful event” are two items of the scale (Smith et al., 2008).

Teaching examples

• Improv theatre for character strengths | PSY3383 | Improv(e) your Soft Skills
• Learning teaching activities | Resilience
• Honours+ | Faculty of Law

References

• Connor, K.M., Davidson, J.R., (2003).Development of a new resilience scale: the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depress Anxiety, 18(2), 76-82.
• Grafton, R.Q., Doyen, L., Béné, C.,Borgomeo, E.,Brooks, K., Chu, L., Cumming, G.,Dixon, J., Dovers, S., Garrick, D., Helfgott, A., Jiang, Q., Katic, P., Kompas, T., Little, L., Matthews, N., Ringler, C., Squires, D., Steinshamn, S., Villasante, S., Wheeler, S. ,Williams, J., P.R. Wyrwoll, P.R. (2019). Realizing resilience for decision-making. Nature Sustainability, 2, 907-913
• Resilience. (2020). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/resilience
• Smith, B.W., Dalen, J., Wiggins, K., Tooley, E., Christopher, P. & Bernard, J. (2008). The Brief Resilience Scale: Assessing the Ability to Bounce Back. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine,15,

Trust

A belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something (cf. interpersonal trust which relates to confidence between two persons and a willingness to be vulnerable to each other).

Critical hope

Being optimistic and future-oriented while having the ability to realistically assess one's environment through a lens of equity and justice while also envisioning the possibility of a better future. It differs from traditional concepts of hope, which cannot create the type of change that is needed in society because they lack the necessary critique and understanding of inequities. Critical hope means critically engaging in the past and present while simultaneously thinking about how to collectively impact communities through praxis. It is a continuous and

cyclical process of reflection and action. Educators have an important role in cultivating critical hope by navigating systems with a dual lens of attempting to contribute to positive social change while also orienting youth to the painful realities of the world and still seeing the possibilities for progress. Critical hope provides a resource to stay in these struggles in ways that are healthy and sustainable. Practicing critical hope requires an acknowledgement of the various ways in which hope has been used to both advance democracy, equity, and justice as well as to maintain the status quo (Bishundat, Phillip & Gore, 2018).

Scale/Measurement
The adult hope scale with its subscales agency (i.e., goal-directed energy) and pathways (i.e., planning to accomplish goals) can be used to evaluate the respondent’s level of hope (Snyder et al., 1991). Example items are “I energetically pursue my goals”, “there are lots of ways around any problem”, and “even when others get discouraged, I know I can find a way to solve the problem” (Snyder et al., 1991).

References

• Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., et al.(1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 570-585.
• Duncan-Andrade, J. (2009). Note to educators: Hope required when growing roses in concrete. Harvard Educational Review, 79, 181–194
• Bishundat, D., Phillip, D. V., & Gore, W. (2018). Cultivating critical hope: The too often forgotten dimension of critical leadership development. New directions for student leadership, 2018(159), 91-102.