The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of a low stakes class exercise and theroetical framework for leveraging student experiences of difference for sustainability problem solving. Acquiring problem-solving competencies entails situating diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) as a lens for understanding systems and anticipating alternative futures. DEI must be facilitated for students. Concerned with a lack of training to navigate what can be sensitive topics, instructors are hesitant to teach DEI themselves. One route is to start with “less charged” forms of difference to foster learning environments where students feel they can and want to participate.
This paper demonstrates how to engage students with DEI competencies to unravel issues of equity and differentiated privilege via a practical DEI exercise others can use in their environmental science and sustainability courses. Leveraging paired discussions in a large lecture class on sustainability, this paper offers an assignment for reflecting about how students encounter difference in these discussions and how these encounters are occasionally transformational.
The authors analyze three years of reflection essays (n = 269) using Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014 privilege as practice framework to show how responses recognize the self, recognize others, understand systems and processes of power and cultivate skills to contribute and collaborate. Students’ articulation of self-reflexivity is remarkable, yet a lack of explicit discussion on race in students’ reflections is noteworthy.
Scholars call for integrating DEI into sustainability curricula, yet few adaptable assignments are available to actualize such calls. This low-stakes exercise – for students and instructors – offers a route for teachers to catalyze the learner benefits of diversity in a classroom in STEM and sustainability courses. The assignment description, teaching notes and a grading rubric are included.
1. Introduction
Managing complex sustainability challenges, like climate change and biodiversity loss, requires new ways of thinking, norms and capacities that formed today’s social systems. Transforming how structural speciesism, sexism, racism, white supremacy and classism prohibit our ability to address collective-action problems is vital for living within our biological limits. To transition social systems to a safe operating space for humanity on Earth, we need each other. Specifically, we need collaborative problem-solving from teams of experts and citizens working together (Clark et al., 2016; Hall et al., 2017; Fiore et al., 2018; Gilbertz and Hall, 2022; He et al., 2023) representing different community perspectives (Perdrial et al., 2023) with leadership roles for stakeholders who are disproportionately marginalized and underrepresented in science-policy institutions. It is vital for Higher Education to place diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) central in their curriculum to enhance creative problem-solving capacities for sustainability (SDG 4; Boone, 2015; Puritty et al., 2017; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2020).
That DEI issues are supplemental rather than integral in sustainability-related fields, with instruction typically left to the humanities, perpetuates outmoded and pathological worldviews. Learning to appreciate, engender and uphold spaces of DEI is inherently part of a systems perspective (Cooke et al., 2020; Larkins, 2024). In natural systems, phylogenetic and functional diversity increases species’ fitness, offering more resources to draw upon for survival (Tilman et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2023). In social-ecological systems, difference enhances capacities to adapt to new circumstances, increasing system resilience (Brunn et al., 2024). In social systems, higher heterogeneity enhances creativity and innovation (Settles et al., 2019). Groups that encompass a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds often outperform groups composed of like-minded individuals from the same discipline (Hong and Page, 2004; He et al., 2023). Although the specific relationship between diversity and resilience is complex and nonlinear, greater diversity “often correlates to a more healthy, resilient, and flexible ecosystem” (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 2). DEI is undoubtably relevant in environmental education and sustainability-related curricula (Klemow et al., 2019; Cronin et al., 2021; Gale et al., 2022).
A healthy and productive system of diversity must be facilitated. Instructors need more practical ways to help students not only learn to work in spaces of diversity but also enjoy them and seek to build them outside of the classroom. While there are many calls for DEI in sustainability curricula and perceptions of DEI among sustainability-related majors, to date, there is limited applied scholarship on ways to promote diversity in the context of undergraduate classrooms in sustainability fields (Kaplowitz et al., 2025). Available scholarship points to the importance of reflection and frequent and sustained social learning (King et al., 2013; Guevara-Herrero et al., 2024), both of which help students position themselves within major challenges of sustainability while also improving their ability to work with others to catalyze holistic solutions (Herrington et al., 2014; De La Sienra Servin et al., 2017). Standalone DEI courses from departments outside of students’ core degree programs are valuable, but sustainability curriculum can also be learned throughDEI (Castillo-Montoya, 2019), whereby DEI concepts are situated in sustainability studies as a part of the practice of environmental problem-solving necessary for understanding systems and anticipating futures. Because DEI is vital to creative problem-solving, activating the diversity in a classroom to advance student learning of sustainability should be the aim. Achieving this shift requires overcoming several barriers, including lack of instructor DEI training, lack of credibility, uncertainty on how to navigate sensitive topics, fear of inciting triggering events, concern of lower course evaluations or fear of losing control of a class in a discussion (Sue et al., 2009). Understandably, instructors are concerned that implementing an assignment outside of their expertise might not be well received by students. Furthermore, sustainability content is overwhelming enough – learning how everyday socially accepted, celebrated and seemingly benign behaviors contribute to the decline of planetary systems is cognitively and emotionally tough. The dissonance experienced by students (and instructors) can make adding DEI as a lens a weighty undertaking.
In this paper, we share a replicable DEI course assignment that leverages a classroom’s heterogeneity to focus on the power of difference for sustainability problem-solving: Learning sustainability through DEI. It leverages a semester’s worth of think-pair-share exercises, which are interpersonal in-class discussions between pairs of students. In these exercises, students reflect individually on a prompt about the week’s core content for one minute, then pair with a neighbor to discuss for 3–5 min, then share their reflections with the entire class (the last step is optional). Students are encouraged to sit in a new spot each class so that they meet different partners. In the final weeks of the class, students are assigned to write a 600-word essay reflecting on a particular discussion with another student where they encountered a different worldview that had a lasting impact on them. Students recount the details of the conversation, then reflect upon the transformative experience of encountering difference. The writing assignment constitutes a low-stakes means for students to reflect on the value of DEI in the context of their field and the particular course’s content. For the instructor, expressing the criticality of DEI occurs throughout the course and in the description of the assignment rather than a mini-lecture. It keeps discussions of DEI in a safe, private space of reflection. The reflective nature of the assignment allows for there to be no wrong answer. The largest investment for the instructor is in time spent grading (grading rubric in Supplemental files).
The overarching objective of this paper is to share with readers attributes of the assignment that might be used in their classes to introduce DEI reflection in the context of sustainability-related course content and to reflect on the value of doing so from our experience. Below, we describe this assignment and its context in detail. We also describe the topics students chose to write about, which may help readers identify potential topics for implementing similar assignments in their own classes. Then, we share some excerpts of what was written from three years of assignments. Finally, we key in on how these reflections demonstrate entry points to development of key competencies in DEI.
2. Methods
We used Kolan and TwoTrees’s (2014) privilege as practice framework to analyze student responses to the reflection assignment, exploring how their descriptions of a transformative interaction helped them develop competencies reflecting the framework’s goals. We used a hybrid coding method (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006) in the QSR NVivo 12.0 software to analyze three years of student reflections (n = 269).
For this analysis, we sought to identify which attributes of the privilege as practice framework were present in student responses and the value that students attributed to these attributes and which sustainability themes promoted the encounters that students chose to write about, which helps the transferability of these insights to other course topics. We conducted a second round of analysis using deductive coding to apply the conceptual privilege as practice framework to assess how these themes helped students build competencies in diversity, equity and inclusion, which informs practical takeaways for other undergraduate STEM courses in sustainability.
2.1 Building diversity, equity and inclusivity competencies: Privilege as practice framework
Despite university initiatives expressing the importance of inclusive curricula that engage difference, few have written about which competencies are demonstrative of diversity, equity and inclusion. A few examples come from fields of microbiology (Brancaccio-Taras et al., 2022), biology (Tanner, 2013) and medicine (Corsino and Fuller, 2021), fewer for sustainability and the environmental sciences. Noting this absence, Kolan and TwoTrees developed a conceptual framework to serve as a learning tool and analytical system to cultivate “our collective ability to engage with difference to strengthen relationships and improve the health of the systems that we inhabit” (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 2).
This framework outlines concrete goals for developing competencies in DEI for students, practitioners and professionals in the field of sustainability. They are:
deepening and expanding our capacity for self-awareness;
furthering our ability to understand our own uniqueness to better understand how we each flourish and thrive;
learning to recognize how systemic structures, norms and processes preference certain differences over others;
learning to identify degrees of privilege and recognize how multiple identities interact (intersectionality) in different social systems; and
building capacity to use our privilege and power to benefit the health and well-being of the systems that we inhabit (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 3).
Just putting different people in a room does not foster the benefits of diversity in a system. Kolan and TwoTrees (2014) name three core approaches to mobilize these competencies in groups: working from the inside out, engaging with tension and emphasizing reciprocal relationships. The first, working from the inside out, underscores the importance of creating environments where everyone feels comfortable to participate by using entry points that draw from each person’s direct experience and are lower risk. The authors recommend having group members use self-reflection to engage in individual internal differences, laying a foundation for further engagement with more emotionally charged, controversial topics and patterns of privilege of power. This process builds competencies in self-awareness and understanding that each person is unique and an essential part of a system.
Facilitators must also carefully, but proactively, engage with tension rather than shutting it down. Kolan and TwoTrees note that when tension arises in discussions about difference, attempts to diffuse the tension can perpetuate the silencing of non-dominant perspectives: “This only has to happen once in a group setting before individuals internalize that difference is not welcome” (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 9). If group members surmise that tension around discussing difference is discouraged, then the group loses the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships and learn from varied perspectives.
The third approach underscores the importance of encouraging – rather than stifling – reciprocal relationships in a system. Building strong relationships creates relational trust (Schneider and Bryk, 2002), where group members feel mutual respect for their peers and feel safe to “take risks, make mistakes, and explore new territory” within the group setting (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 10).
2.2 Course and assignment description
The origin of this assignment is from a large (around 135 students) sophomore-level lecture course on sustainability at the University of Missouri, a public Land Grant university of 34k students in the center of the USA. The course is a general elective environmental science undergraduate course entitled Sustainability Foundations: An Introduction to Sustainability. It is cross-listed between the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources and the College of Engineering. The course is open to all majors with no prerequisites and convenes students from a variety of fields across all colleges on campus; the most common majors are from Environmental Sciences, Plant Sciences, Animal Sciences, Natural Resources, Engineering, Anthropology, Communication and Journalism. Each week, students are introduced to fundamental concepts of sustainability – from sustainable development to sustainability science – through a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and frameworks. The course is divided into three modules that focus on human–environment system functioning, the characteristics of these systems and patterns of change. Building upon a foundation of Earth System Science, economics and social-behavioral sciences, the course surveys the oeuvre of sustainability topics each week – from energy, renewable energy, food systems, urban planning and the built environment, waste and recycling, biodiversity loss and conservation, products and design and water resources – and highlights interactions between human and environmental systems and efforts to transition systems toward sustainability. Among the learning outcomes, students are tasked to consider what sustainability means for their respective fields, professional ambitions and lives.
2.3 Daily discussions
Learning is both a personal and social practice. In the course, daily ungraded small-group class discussions on sustainability topics are a prominent mechanism of learning. Sustainability topics are ubiquitous and personal, and discussion on the principles of sustainability can implicate students’ household norms, cultural practices and livelihoods. To capitalize on the diversity of students in the course and counteract the increased interpersonal isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we culled content to devote more time to daily peer-to-peer discussion exercises. Each class meeting contains time for paired discussion with prompts to tie that week’s new course concept to students’ life experiences. The discussions serve community building and interrupt unconscious or implicit bias by allowing classmates to get to know each other better. Importantly, the discussions improve learning: students learn and improve their memory of material when they put new content into their own words and in the context of their life experiences (Brown et al., 2014).
2.4 The assignment
Three weeks before the end of the semester, students are assigned to write a minimum 600-word reflection asking them to critically reflect on an interpersonal interaction they had in class and how it provided a new way of seeing an issue (assignment description in Supplemental files). Critical reflection is the process of analyzing, questioning and reframing an experience to make an assessment of it for the purposes of learning (reflective learning) and improving practice (reflective practice) (Aronson, 2011; Mezirow, 1998). Because writing is thinking (Greenstein, 2013), this critical reflection assignment offers a guided way to reflect on and process the value of those tense moments for addressing sustainability problems.
3. Findings
Below, we provide examples drawn from student personal reflections that illustrate how engaging with sustainability themes through peer interactions helps students build capacities in the DEI competencies identified in the goals of the privilege as practice framework (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014). Analysis of student reflections shows that attributes of the privilege as practice framework are present in various ways. We offer paths that students use to illustrate these competencies. Identifying these pathways will, we hope, help instructors provide guidance to their students on reflection strategies when contemplating issues of sustainability.
To start, we present the sustainability topics that students elected to write about when asked to recall a specific interpersonal interaction from the course where they encountered a different perspective or viewpoint that changed how they saw a sustainability challenge, a familiar system or familiar topic. Table 1 describes topic areas and their top key words that emerged from these topics. Figure 1 illustrates the degree to which students elected to write about the different sustainability topics in their reflections. These topics were not necessarily distinct. The topics selected were the impetus for students’ reflections on the value of difference.
3.1 Drawing out diversity, equity and inclusivity competencies from sustainability topics
Next, we demonstrate how students’ reflections of a personal interaction on one or more of these sustainability topics illustrated their development of DEI capacities from the privilege as practice framework (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014). We present examples of reflections that demonstrate competencies from the framework’s goals.
3.1.1 Deepening and expanding our capacity for self-awareness.
Reflection on how a personal interaction changed the ways they view a sustainability topic helps students develop their capacities for self-awareness (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014; Goal 1). To guide students through this process of developing self-awareness, instructors can prompt students through the following questions:
How did the interaction make you think differently about your own background and experiences as they relate to the sustainability challenge?
Think back on how you acted during the interaction. Why do you think that talking to this person about this sustainability challenge led you to act as you did?
Reflecting on the interaction, what did you learn about yourself?
In their reflections, some students demonstrated this increased self-awareness by thinking back on their upbringing and positioning their experiences alongside those described by their partner in the exercise. Others self-interrogated, writing about “how I acted” during the interaction, as exemplified here:
(My classmate) made a comment on the use of straws; I proudly explained that straws were in fact, not the main issue and most oceanic plastic pollution came from the fishing industry. After rambling over greenwashing and how people waste time and energy on the “wrong” issues, I barely noticed she was looking at her feet. She was oddly quiet the rest of class. I was confident in the ideals I established and was convinced it was my duty to properly educate individuals, especially people who I deemed to be “misled.” I was so focused on the information I wanted to share; I did not realize the words I said not only alienated my peer but eliminated her initial passion to share the issues she cared about.
Another way that students expand their capacity for self-awareness is by describing “what I learned about myself” through an interaction. In discussing waste and recycling with a classmate, one student reflected:
What I learned about myself was that I have been living in a bubble. I wake up every day and waste tons of things, like food and water, without thinking twice about it. I noticed that I never thought twice about it because no one has really told me the harmful effects of it. Until this class, I never watched how much food I eat or what kinds of materials is being used while I am eating.
3.1.2 Furthering our ability to understand our own particular uniqueness to better understand how we each flourish and thrive.
As important as it is for students to expand their capacity for self-awareness, we as educators also want them to recognize their own value and the unique perspectives that they bring to sustainability issues. The second goal helps students ground themselves in a situation or issue by recognizing their own uniqueness (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014). The following prompts can help instructors guide students toward recognizing their uniqueness:
How did the interaction make you see yourself in a new light?
How did that change the way you thought about the sustainability challenge?
By reflecting on their interactions, students may recognize (some with surprise) that their peers are interested in their unique experiences and perspectives. The topics of rural/urban living were particularly fruitful, as the following excerpts illustrate:
Coming into this class I expected to feel like the outcast. Growing up in a rural community and being more right winged politically, I expected to be ridiculed for my beliefs and practices in life […] I was completely wrong in thinking so […] Instead, having a different background than most of the suburban and urban classmates made them want to hear my side of the story more.
A few students described how their peer helped them recognize and appreciate who they were and where they came from, helping them reframe the way they thought about a sustainability issue and consider other options to approach the issue. Reflecting on the topic of food and diets – and specifically vegetarianism – one student wrote about the following peer interaction:
[…] I have tried going vegetarian multiple times in which each attempt lasted for all of two weeks. It is hard to feel connected to my Chinese heritage without eating cultural foods, many of which contain pork. I expressed my desire to eat more sustainably while still eating the foods of my homeland to the classmate. She proceeded to tell me how my efforts towards leading a sustainable lifestyle are not discounted by wanting to continue connecting with people of my ethnicity through traditional meat dishes. There are certainly still ways to make such food sustainably, like buying local beef for that beef and broccoli platter, or making my own tea-soaked eggs – normally a pre-packaged favorite of mine – by buying local eggs and soaking them in tea that I brewed myself. To be fully honest, these were both simple solutions that I was subconsciously aware of beforehand but had never been motivated to do without someone else recommending it.
3.1.3 Learning to recognize how systemic structures, norms and processes preference certain differences over others.
In the first two goals, students grow awareness of their peers, themselves and their uniqueness, resulting in a better understanding that differences exist. But as Kolan and TwoTrees underscore, at this point, these differences are “value-free.” In the third goal, students reckon with how systematic structures, cultural and societal norms and processes preference certain differences over others. To help students critically engage with how systemic structures, norms and processes preference certain differences over others, the following prompts may be useful:
How did the interaction change your perspectives about a systemic structure or norm that preferences certain differences over others?
How did that change the way you thought about the sustainability challenge?
Recognizing how certain processes – like social media posts – have invisible impacts was articulated in several reflections. One student used the starting point of a conversation on banning plastic straws to reflect on this issue:
I realized that I had been allowing my beliefs to be shaped by what I saw on social media and tv without thinking critically and doing my own research […]
This student went on to further reflect on systematic structures:
I became more aware of the fact that companies can oftentimes use sustainability issues as a method to improve their brand image without making real change, and in doing so place more blame on consumers.
Reflecting on her own identified difference, one student wrestled with the cultural norms that allowed “abled” people to better participate in certain environmental activities:
The way that our current society has formed has forced those with disabilities to be reliant on environmentally harmful industries. Our cities are not walkable, so one is forced to drive if they don’t have the energy to bike. Many of the products that help disabled people to live, such as straws, don’t have good alternatives outside of plastic […] The values our society has adopted have simply made it impossible for many disabled people to make sustainable modifications to their lives.
3.1.4 Learning to identify degrees of privilege and recognize how multiple identities interact (intersectionality) in different social systems.
Reflecting on personal interactions can also help students evaluate how preferences perpetuated through social norms, processes and systematic structures are mainstreamed and can converge to create systems that deliver unearned privilege to those that fit the preferred attributes (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, Goal 4). These privileges translate to increased advantages, opportunities and choices. The reflection activities are powerful venues for students to recognize areas where they benefit in ways that others do not. To help students identify degrees of privilege and how multiple identities interact (intersectionality) in different social systems, instructors can use the following prompts:
What did you learn about how your personal characteristics, such as your age (or generation), where you grew up, your gender, ethnicity or race influence the way you think about the sustainability challenge?
What did you learn about how personal characteristics of the person you interacted with influences the way they think about the sustainability challenge?
How did the interaction change how you think about the sustainability challenge?
In reflections, students grappled with the impacts of differentiated privilege in relation to their own intersection of identities, in addition to those of their peers and others in the world. One student contended with their background in contrast with their peers’ background to think through how some people are better positioned to participate in environmental advocacy than others:
I started by explaining that my parents are quite known in our town for planting rain gardens and pollinator gardens around the neighborhood and donating to small plant stores that provide garden areas around the town […]. She thought it was interesting. Then she talked about in high school how she wanted to make a club that would go around creating gardens that would benefit the community around them and she could not get funding, so she never got to do it.
The student went on to reflect on their own privilege and the impact of differentiated privilege as it relates to environmental work:
After that discussion I realized one, I have the opportunities that this girl tried to make […] Two, I got lucky, I have a wealthy family that can afford a lifestyle of planting gardens for people and while this girl would have jumped at an opportunity. Three, to be environmentally friendly is far more costly and much more work, which makes sense why more people are not.
Another avenue that students took in their reflections was to consider how privilege could enable people to disengage with issues of sustainability. Several students saw these as generational differences, wherein “older” people use their privilege to opt out of making decisions based on sustainability:
I’ve found in discussions with my parents and older generations that to them, sustainability is a good idea in theory, but they often don’t consider it a problem for them to deal with. This line of thinking is obviously dangerous, as many generations of people haven’t wanted to take accountability for themselves and their actions which has led future generations to pay the price. I’ve often found through discussions with older generations that people want there to be a solution to our climate crisis but assume that it’s not their prerogative (or their countries) to find a solution.
The topic of rural/urban living also provided opportunities for reflection on how multiple intersecting identities can interact in different social systems. One student reflected on a series of interactions with her grandfather that highlighted the differences in their ages and rural/urban living environments:
I grew up in an urban area and was constantly surrounded by peers who carried similar passions about climate change, sustainability, recycling etc. Because of these interactions I have grown up around, I live my life constantly attempting to decrease my own personal/household waste […] However, my grandfather, as well as the rest of my extended family, grew up either on a farm, or in a disconnected, rural area. They grew up and continue to live around the idea that climate change and sustainability are either not real, or are not threats to themselves as they, “will not see the repercussions of their own actions within their lifetimes.”
Other students reflected on how differentiated privilege exists at the level of institutions, governments and countries. At that level, privilege translates to increased power and decision-making, sometimes at the cost of other entities. One student’s reflections on renewable energy and climate change described their impressions of this high-level privilege:
I never considered how it is unfair for the countries that used nonrenewable energy for many years to get ahead economically and then when developing countries begin to make progress, the big countries cut them off.
I thought about how this one country named Tuvalu will be swallowed by the ocean soon due to the max altitude of the island is only a little over four and a half meters. Living in that country must be so scary since they are not one of the big emitters and rarely get much of a say in big decisions for world policies on climate change.
3.1.5 Building capacity to use our privilege and power to benefit the health and well-being of the systems that we inhabit.
In the first four goals, students positioned themselves and others within issues of sustainability. Through these goals, students grow their capacities to critically self-reflect, develop observational skills and learn to recognize patterns in people and systems that perpetuate differentiated privileges. The fifth goal aims to harness these capacities and to cultivate courage to disrupt the processes of power (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014). Here, students contend with how they can use their privilege and power in positive ways to catalyze the changes they want to see for our world.
A few strategies emerged for this goal. A common general realization was that they can make small changes. One student described how they wanted to dig deeper into how to sustain rural towns and cities and were planning to create:
This class has encouraged me to do my own research on how I can mitigate and adapt to climate change. It is all about the small impacts people make to show what they’re capable of and to inspire others to realize the same. I have learned that it is possible to put up my own fight against climate change, no matter how small it is, it still makes an impact, and that’s what matters in this seemingly overwhelming war.
For some, the key lesson was learning how to be more open minded, a better listener and a more thoughtful communicator. One student said:
(Reflecting on this conversation) I realized I need to be more open to other people’s lives outside of mine and broaden my mind to not think just in my little bubble. By doing this, I could get insight and learn about things I may never even have thought of that could help me out somehow.
After this conversation, my view of a lot of the information in this class changed, and I wanted to commit to being more open-minded and be willing to listen to others’ perspectives, not to just defend my viewpoint, but to truly understand others and the course concepts, to ultimately stand clearly by what I believe. And if there were areas that I did not know well or could not explain clearly, then I wanted to be someone who was humble enough to research both sides of the sustainability problem at hand to be confident in what I would speak over one day.
The student went on to describe how they have begun to integrate these new capacities in their life:
My partner’s family sees things differently than I do. They are the kind of people who don’t believe in climate change and think the coronavirus vaccine is dangerous. When I first met them, I didn’t really talk to them about any of that. Because I just disagreed with them, I didn’t want to start a conversation that wouldn’t go anywhere. Now that I have had this epiphany, I have been able to talk to them from a place of understanding. And with that tool, I began to change their minds. Now almost all of them are fully vaccinated because they respect my opinion.
For some, building the capacity to take actions toward sustainability was directly related to their interaction. A few students discussed how a peer either reified an idea they “already knew” or modeled behaviors that inspired and motivated them, as exhibited in the following excerpt:
Seeing someone my age talk about how they use their resources and knowledge to do better for the environment was not only intriguing, it was refreshing. I feel like no one I knew did this before, so it always seemed out of reach for me. An impossible task it was, to be sustainable, [but she was showing how] it was easy changes to everyday life that can contribute so much.
Similarly, several students described how the interaction catalyzed empowering relationships, either with the peer themselves or with others in their world. After describing how one of their peers had helped them self-interrogate, understand their privilege and “want to change,” one student wrote:
I plan to stay connected to this [realization] because I plan to stay actually connected with her. We are good friends now […]. She’s taught me a lot about plants, and we even have an idea for her to visit me in the future and plant gardens around my neighborhood. This time I’ll actively participate and have more appreciation for what my parents do, even if she’s not there.
This excerpt also provides an example of cases where students laid out specific actions they had either started taking or planned to take.
Another important theme emerged of students recognizing their power and how to focus energy. For example, reflecting on the topic of urban/rural living helped the following student frame their focus:
What really helps me is this phrase we often use in class; work on what you can and take it one thing at a time. We cover many issues in class and even though they are all pretty pressing issues, it is important to realize that trying to fix everything together is ineffective and overwhelming. The lack of care and resources in certain communities is something I grew up witnessing, so it is an important issue to fix for me. But it became this idea that I thought was impossible to fix because there are so many other issues that need attention too. Hearing the phrase mentioned above helped me still stay true to my original task to take care of those other communities so that they can eventually be able to take care and maintain themselves.
4. Discussion
We offer this linked think-pair-share and reflection assignment as a valuable technique to help students develop competencies in DEI as they consider key topics of sustainability. The topics students chose to write about (Figure 1) serve as a springboard for topics instructors might introduce through their sustainability coursework. It is important to start students out with “less charged forms of difference” to foster learning environments where students feel they can and want to participate (Kolan and TwoTrees, 2014, 9). The sustainability challenges identified here are, therefore, entry points for both creating that participatory environment while developing DEI competencies as students engage with topics they care about. Further, incorporating activities of peer interactions and personal reflection are key to building these skills.
Through self-reflection and peer-to-peer discussion, students develop appreciation for diversity and difference – both their own unique experiences and identities as well as others. In some cases, reflections focus inward to self-interrogate “how I acted” in a conversation, helping students develop skills necessary to support spaces of inclusion as they reckon with becoming better listeners and communicators. In others, students are surprised by the value that their own difference brings to the group. Recognizing this value is important for building self-confidence, as well as breaking down defensive barriers that are based on assuming how others will react to you. In either situation, students demonstrate a process of learning to deal with tension through the safe entry point of a writing reflection. As students learn how one’s experience, background and components of their identity influence how they feel about a topic, they also start to unravel issues of equity and differentiated privilege.
The power of the self-reflection exercise and peer-to-peer discussions for learning course content was apparent through the material included in the written reflections; however, what also became apparent was how learning from the differences students encountered in each other was enriching the course content. For example, when paired discussions about urban and rural land use became value-laden and tense, students began to justify positions by saying, “I grew up in the suburbs, I never met anyone who grew up on a farm until this class.” In another class, a rural student said the same, “I’ve never talked with anyone my age who grew up in a big city.” Students’ big feelings and realizations around this relatively benign topic of difference signaled the tip of something larger occurring in these conversations.
Key to the success of this written reflection exercise is the spotlighting on one of the many in-class peer interactions (think-pair-share) prompted in every class meeting. Although students were allowed to write about any recent interpersonal interaction, nearly all written reflections used an in-class interaction with one of their classmates. This provides the opportunity for students to appreciate who they are in the room with. For some, the interaction launched into a friendship that they found valuable. Others noted that they had not talked to the person again but still valued what they learned from the interaction. In a big class, students can easily hide from each other, perhaps feeling that there is no point in developing relationships. Prompting students to engage with each other and then reflect on it helps students internalize the advantages of connecting with their peers in their day-to-day school lives. Encouraging a whole spectrum of relationships is important to fostering the type of environments that students need for reckoning with challenging and sensitive issues.
Illustrated within these reflections are Kolan and TwoTrees’ core approaches to develop group competencies. Addressing issues related to diversity, difference and privilege and the associated processes of power is important, but having these conversations in diverse groups can be vulnerable and sensitive. In these reflections, students are asked to “work from the inside out” (Core Approach 1) by linking their own direct experiences and perspectives with an impactful interaction with a peer. Students chose a sustainability topic they care about, providing a useful entry point to reflect on these more challenging concepts. In many cases, reflections draw out experiences of tension that the student felt during the interaction. Students reflected on a range of tensions, including interpersonal conversation, such as realizing they may had alienated their peer in the discussion as well as intrapersonal tensions, where a conversation helped them unravel some personal assumption (and where that assumption come from). Providing the avenue to independently engage with that tension through an individual essay format allows the student to consider those friction points in a low-stakes way (Core Approach 2). Crucially, this assignment pushes students to value both what they individually as well as their peers bring to the table, identify interconnections and mutualities, appreciate and better understand differences, all which help to build reciprocal relationships (Core Approach 3). Students describe how the experience encouraged them to be more open-minded, less avoidant of opposing opinions and a few even described how the in-class interaction led to deeper, out of class friendships rooted in a shared interest for sustainability. Identifying the advantages of engaging with people different than oneself – or assumed to be – is important to broadening who and how we engage in the future.
5. Conclusion
Students in sustainability-related disciplines are unlikely to receive instruction that develops their DEI competencies in their STEM courses. This assignment provides a low-stake entry point for STEM instructors to incorporate DEI competencies into their coursework, which will better connect and integrate DEI into the next generation of sustainability scientists.
Solving complex sustainability challenges requires teams of experts and citizens working together. Working together requires leveraging past experiences, different backgrounds and diverse ideas to understand, assess, communicate and address problems. Learning how to listen to and honor different ways of knowing is essential for integrating those wisdoms into solutions.
Acknowledgements
The authors want to thank the students of ENV SC 2600/BIOL EN 2600: Sustainability Foundations Fall classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 for their commitment to the course and one another. This work was motivated by the University of Missouri’s 2017 and 2020 “Inclusive Excellence” plan calling for embedding Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) learning objectives into degree programs and the THRIVE Faculty Learning Community supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
References
Further reading
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found online.
