Designing an Undergraduate Course Focused on Empathy to Empower Scientific Identity and Support Diversity in Earth and Space Sciences
Abstract
Education has the potential to provide students with a perspective of self, belonging, and community. When these perspectives are founded on a strong moral and ethical compass, we are able to build communities that are just, equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible and subsequently address systemic issues. However, curriculum and classes are not always structured intentionally to prioritize core values through which students' identities can be empowered to support diversity. In an effort to intentionally and actively work on developing values-based perspective in a classroom while maintaining a focus on discipline-specific learning objectives and skills, an Earth and space science course centered on the core value of empathy was designed. The Grandeur of You and The Universe introduced students to the fundamental concepts in Earth, planetary, and space science and trained students to develop their creative and science communication skills having digested the class material, all the while integrating components that highlight and let students explore empathy. We present how all components of the class, i.e. pre-class and lecture material, class discussions, student projects, and all class interactions, were designed to resonate with empathy. We share how such intentional design can help empower scientific identity and support diversity, especially in Earth and Space Sciences, welcoming a discussion on how similar core-value-based teaching and learning approaches may be applied to designing other courses, across education levels and disciplines, and the importance of future research to gauge the effectiveness of this approach.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFMED43B..02A