![]() ![]() As we aspire to move forward and engage our students, it’s important to dig deeper into the complexities and nuances of student disengagement. The relationship between pain and despair can be cyclical, as despair can make it harder to cope with pain, and pain can make feelings of despair worse. When our students are experiencing pain (of loss, of disconnection, of uncertainty), they may also feel despair as they struggle to cope with that discomfort and uncertainty. It is important to remember that behind despair there is pain. A salient question is: What role does higher education have in ameliorating what some scholars have called this “age of despair” ( Grain and Lund, 2016) and improving the human condition? Despair is a feeling of hopelessness, helplessness, and loss of faith in oneself and the future ( Batra and Batra, 2022). On the one hand, we are trying to move forward and meet our institutions’ educational mission and engage our colleagues and students in learning, and on the other hand we are dealing with the trauma, burnout, and mental health struggles of our students, colleagues, and ourselves. Where do we go from here?Īs we plan for the changing landscape of teaching and learning in higher education, we face a wicked problem. No one has an easy answer to why these issues are happening. In the piece by McMurtie (2022), an instructor from Nebraska stated that she was unable to describe the level of student disengagement and was at a loss as to help her students learn. ![]() ![]() In recent years, educators have been reporting increasingly high numbers of students not showing up for class or even turning in their assignments. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece earlier this year underscoring the “Stunning Level of Student Disconnection” ( McMurtie, 2022). Recently, much has been written about the student disengagement crisis and their lack of motivation ( Glazier, 2022). That is, we are asked to consider the societal and human impacts of STEM education and to work toward promoting freedom, autonomy, and empowerment for all students, and especially those from marginalized groups, within STEM fields. In this special issue of Frontiers in Education we are invited to approach STEM education with a critical and liberatory humanistic perspective. Recommendations on how to tackle the challenges associated with humanizing STEM course redesign are provided. Lastly, the findings reveal that educators measure their success through grades, as well as student engagement and feedback. Furthermore, the findings suggest that participants in the course set goals such as increasing student success (grades) in the course, empowering students, and incorporating inclusive material in curricula to humanize their course(s). Findings from this study suggest that student-teacher positionality and inequity in prior knowledge may cause equity challenges for educators. Participants answered three questions at the end of the online course: what are your equity challenges? What are your goals? How do you measure your success? we analyzed responses using grounded theory. Gardner Institute (Gardner Institute) for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. This study presents the findings from the analysis of reflections from 26 STEM faculty at various institutions of higher education across the United States who participated in the online course, The Humanity of Inclusive Practices, part of the Teaching and Learning Academy, offered by the John N. 5Office of the Provost and VP Academic, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada.4Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, AZ, United States.Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and Stony Brook University, Brevard, NC, United States 3Higher Education Administration, John N.2Biology Department, Connecticut College, New London, CT, United States.1Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States.Foote 3 * Joshua Caulkins 4 Brad Wuetherick 5 ![]()
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