10 minute read
Challenging the status quo in PDHPE
Madeleine Gardiner Deep learning and social justice in Personal Development, Health and Physical Education
How can we encourage our students to change the world, without them having first developed an understanding of their place within it? In Term 3, 2021, Year 10 PDHPE students were challenged with the driving question ‘More than words; How can we contribute to social justice?’; a stimulus inspired by the 2021 National Reconciliation Week theme to inspire braver and more impactful action. In response, students inquired into the experiences of diverse population groups that make up Australian society, proposed ways that individuals and communities could be proactive in promoting social justice and considered the ways they can offer support to those experiencing marginalisation. Through a series of teacher and student-led learning experiences, underpinned by New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (Fullan et al., 2017), this unit supported students’ development into active and empathetic global citizens by empowering them to become advocates and critical allies in their communities. The intention was that students walk away from this unit feeling confident in their ability to fight for causes about which they are passionate, call out injustices, find solutions and, ultimately, become the changemakers they seek in their world.
DEEP LEARNING IN COMPLEX TIMES
Deep Learning pedagogies encourage students to develop competencies in the six Cs – Character, Citizenship, Critical thinking, Collaboration, Creativity and Communication. This is learning which: • looks at the world from many different perspectives, • cuts across key subject areas (after all, we live in a trans-disciplinary world, not in a mono-disciplinary one), • is relevant to the real-world interests, needs and challenges of students; and, • concentrates on developing the capabilities that count not only for today but for a sustainable future (Fullan & Scott, 2014).
If we want learners who, as stated by Fullan et al. (2017, p.21), can ‘thrive in turbulent, complex times, apply thinking to new situations, and change the world, we must reimagine learning: what’s important to be learned, how learning is fostered, where learning happens, and how we measure success. This means creating environments that challenge, provoke, stimulate and celebrate learning’. This conceptualisation of the learning process is ‘Deep Learning’ and is loosely defined as the course of acquiring the aforementioned competencies through a series of tasks
encompassing “compassion, empathy, socio-emotional learning, entrepreneurialism, and relational skills required for high functioning in a complex universe” (Fullan et al., p. 25).
A Deep Learning lens, therefore, was well suited to the teaching of social justice as, for students to grapple with and look critically at contentious topics including poverty, discrimination, racism, civil rights, and humanitarian issues, they had to be challenged to think beyond the how and consider the why and what next, an integral tenet of Deep Learning. This type of thinking further engaged students’ affirmative response to the promotion of social justice and, concurrently, development of positive intellectual and attitudinal dispositions toward the creation of new knowledge and doing things with it in the world (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014).
To achieve this end of ‘creating’ and ‘doing with’ knowledge, students were introduced to social justice principles through an exploration of injustice and privilege and encouraged to make connections between their own lived experiences and those of others. In doing so, they were challenged to actively negotiate their own social position in relation to community outcomes. This is where consideration toward students’ holistic wellbeing is pertinent and paramount. In her chapter, “The efficacy paradox; teaching about structural inequalities keeping students hope alive”, Brown (2021) highlights the difficulties teachers face in reconciling raising students’ consciousness of social justice through exploration of the pervasive, enduring, and intractable nature of social injustice.
Similar roadblocks were faced by Pymble teachers in delivering this unit. As students were progressively exposed to concepts of inequity, disadvantage, and marginalisation, with examples ranging from experiences of casual racism to global human rights violations, so to came increasing reports of guilt, frustration, and hopelessness amongst students. According to Myers and Diener (1995, cited in Brown, 2021), wellbeing, among most people socialised in individualistic cultures, correlates with viewing oneself as efficacious, while perceiving oneself as inefficacious evokes negative emotions that people often want to avoid. Thus, for this unit to be of benefit to students, teachers were encouraged to stress the importance of fostering a supporting classroom environment and drawing upon strengths-based approaches to balance feelings of reproach with optimism. Examples included relevant and successful social movements leading to change, including the School Strike for Climate Change (inspired by the actions of school student and activist Greta Thunberg) and ‘Racism, it stops with me’. This was not to ‘shield’ students, nor make the unit more ‘palatable’, but to raise awareness and empower them to strive for a better world. Fortunately, much previous research concurs that experiences with diversity (including learning about social injustice) in school foster a variety of positive outcomes, including greater intentions for civic participation (Gurin et al., 2004, cited in Brown, 2021).
Arguably, wellbeing and self-efficacy are also intrinsically linked with notions of self-concept and identity, and thus students’ responses to this unit were not only centred around the stories of others, but tangible to their own lived experience (or inexperience). The social structures amongst which young people are growing up are increasingly complex and require students to think critically about the world in which they live and their place within it.
Identity formation is, as a result, a fraught process forged across multiple contemporary experiences imbued in technological, virtual, and practical worlds. Such experiences lend young people to come to understand themselves, and each other, at the intersections of multiple identities that amalgamate in the formation of their own self-concept. For example, in a discussion asking how various facets of identity influenced the lives of students, one student stated, “as a multiracial, 16-year-old, well-educated woman, I acknowledge the privileges I experience every day…I am also aware of the barriers that I and others face… Who I see myself as and who others see me as depends a lot on their own ideas of identity, and this would be the same if I were looking at someone else”. This comment then led to a conversation contrasting students’ online identities to their ‘real life’ selves, and the role of social media influencers in this space.
Herein lies the importance of situating students’ personal contexts prior to looking outward and toward social justice as, by engaging students in a unit of work though which they considered the wide range of factors contributing to advantage and disadvantage, equity, and discrimination, they were driven to reflect more broadly on how multiple factors including race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality can shape identity, power, and access to resources in the larger social sphere, concurrently developing empathy, social awareness and the potential desire to evoke change.
Religion Gender Identity Culture Education
Sexual Orientation Age Disability/ Ability
Race
Socioeconomic status
My Identity
My Experience
(How I see and interpret the world)
Figure 1 Unpacking social determinants
INTERSECTIONAL IDENTITY
Tantamount to developing an appreciation of the individual factors contributing to identity formation, students were also presented with a foundational understanding of the intersectionality of these factors; how multiple co-constituting axes of difference can shape one’s social positions and lived experience, and thus affect access to power and experiences of oppression and vulnerability (Osborne, 2015). An understanding of diversity here is key, and to emphasise this point students were presented with the image seen in Figure 1 – Unpacking social determinants (adapted from Amnesty International; How to be a genuine ally), a visual representation of the social determinants that give rise to people’s different experiences and ways of thinking, and which are also integral to identity.
After having been introduced to this concept, one student reflected “[Yeah, true…], It’s not enough to just compare the differential treatment of men and women. Women also have cultural, sexual and racial identities (to name a few) that have to be factored into understanding their experience”. Such a response affirms students’ positive engagement and developing understanding of intersectional identity and how this further aligns with an end goal to achieve social justice for all divisions of, and within, communities.
THE PODCAST TASK
Armed with new knowledge and a heightened awareness of social justice causes, students were presented with a formative task to create a podcast that inquired into the experiences of a marginalised population (of their own choosing). The task involved researching social and structural barriers to equality and exploring the ways by which individuals and communities could engage in allyship and activism in their own lives. According to Brown (2021, pp. 112-115), best practice in teaching social justice requires teachers to: • Implement intentional class design • Lay a foundation of hope • Teach about successful collective action
• Have students communicate about social justice, and • Involve students in social justice action.
These last two recommendations are particularly well suited to Deep Learning as they encourage students to action their knowledge and apply it to real world contexts beyond the classroom, hence a podcast was chosen as the most appropriate format of assessment to allow students the freedom to channel their energies into disseminating what they had learned about social justice in their own words. This presented additional opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration across faculties, including the library and IT, as students were provided with semistructured lessons to follow their own line of research and inquiry and produce a professional audio product.
Additional opportunities to engage with social justice activism were also encouraged as extension, further empowering students by letting them determine what form their activism took, who it benefitted and what issue it addressed. Ultimately, students were given choice over the extent to which they bought into the task, but by supporting the development of proactive dispositions towards learning – no matter which path they chose – they gained valuable knowledge and life skills that they may continue to draw upon as they progress through their schooling and beyond.
Teaching social justice through a Deep Learning lens enabled students to grapple with not only the causes of social inequity, but what they can do to address it, empowering them both simultaneously in their learning and social responsibility. The addition of Deep Learning principles ensured all learning activities were tangible to real world experiences and relevant to students’ lived contexts, developing key social and emotional capabilities, including character, citizenship, and empathy. Additionally, attention to student’s holistic wellbeing was integral to the design of this unit so as to promote a sense of efficacy. Learning about social injustice can bring about a range of emotional reactions including outrage, frustration, disappointment or overwhelm. Therefore, regardless of the specific emotion, it was imperative that the unit design and delivery aimed to translate students’ emotions into empowerment that ideally lead to social change. You can listen to some student produced podcasts here: • Abigail Ballhausen – Rural and
Remote Health
LISTEN HERE
• Emma Lau – Immigrant Health in Australia
LISTEN HERE
• Emma Sargeant – Paralympic
Equality
LISTEN HERE
• Bella Zhang – Homelessness in Australia
LISTEN HERE
References
Amnesty International Australia. (n.d.). How to be a genuine ally – Level 2: Fundamental activist skills. Available online at https://www.amnesty.org.au/wp-content/ uploads/2020/02/205-how-to-be-a-genuineally.pdf Brown, L. (2021). The efficacy paradox: Teaching about structural inequality while keeping students’ hope alive. In Kite, M.E., Case, K.A., & Williams, W.R., Navigating difficult moments in teaching diversity and social justice, American Psychological Association; p.105-118. Fullan, M., Quinn, J., & McEachen, J. (2017). New pedagogies for deep learning: Leading transformation in schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks: CA, Corwin. Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2014). A rich seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. London: Pearson. Available online at https://michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2014/01/3897.Rich_Seam_web.pdf Fullan, M., & Scott, G. (2014). ‘New Pedagogies for Deep Learning Whitepaper’, Education Plus. Seattle, Washington: Collaborative Impact SPC. Available online at https:// www.michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2014/09/Education-Plus-AWhitepaper-July-2014-1.pdf Osborne, N. (2015). ‘Intersectionality and kyriarchy: A framework for approaching power and social justice in planning and climate change adaptation’, Planning Theory. Available online at https://researchrepository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/ handle/10072/57232/91869_1.pdf;sequence=1
pymblelc.nsw.edu.au
Avon Road Pymble NSW 2073 PO Box 136 North Ryde BC NSW 1670 +61 2 9855 7799
