 recorded this key workshop a couple of days ago. Enjoy taking part in it, although I won't be able to be live together with you and facilitate it. I hope you had a nice day yesterday in the student voices symposium's first day. I looked at the program and it seemed to include a lot of interesting sessions regarding this very important and broader topic. So this key workshop I've named or me and my colleague Ulrike Schnas and me have named Building Alliances for Democratic Sustainable Futures. And the idea behind this workshop is to see whether it's possible to build an alliance or a closer collaboration between student voices work, active student participation work, and student engagement work that is done in higher education and the work that is done in the field of democratic education and education for sustainable development. I will be the one holding this workshop or presenting this workshop my colleague Dr Ulrike Schnas she's been involved in writing the abstract for this and also she has brought in a lot of interesting reflections and knowledge to this material but unfortunately she couldn't record this together with me. So you will only have me for this time and I hope it will be great. Okay so a little thing or some things about me just to give you a bit of a background of me myself and I. I'm currently working at the unit for academic teaching and learning at Uppsala University in Sweden. Uppsala is the fourth biggest town in Sweden or fourth biggest city in Sweden and it's a student town many many would say. I think the student population in Uppsala is about one-fifth of the whole population. So that's quite a big number so during summers when all the students are away or visiting their families or friends and so on on holidays the the city is quite empty and very calm. Apart from working at the unit for academic teaching with the field of active student participation which is also why I participate in this symposium. I also study a master's degree in ESD or education for sustainable development so I'm really interested in pedagogies for sustainable development for democratic education and so on. So that is also some background to why I've recently come to think that active student participation and this these practices in these fields of work could really benefit from joining forces together in higher education. Okay so that was a little bit about me and just wanted to also start off with some some pictures that I really like. So the first picture to the left here is a picture of Uppsala in in the autumn and it almost looks like this in Sweden and in Uppsala at the moment. The trees are turning orange and yellow and this is the little little river that runs through the city of Uppsala. So this is a little little picture for you to just to sit to to get you understand or to just for you to see where I'm situated at the moment when I'm recording this also and the picture to the right here is a picture of me with the same background as you see the the the lemons the wallpaper lemons and my and my child Ruben who was born in October 2021. So at the moment I'm on parental leave with him and we're enjoying nature together playing and he's he's soon about to walk I think also so it's a really fun and intensive period at the moment. So some personal things for you to get to know me a little bit better and I will hopefully get to know you a little bit better when I read your discussions and possible questions that appear after this key workshop. So what will happen today during this key workshop is that first I will briefly go through a little bit of the context and history of active student participation at Uppsala University. The work that has been done here and where it originated from and so on and how active student participate participation is defined in the Uppsala setting and this is important an important background to give in in order to also move on to the next topic that will be part of the workshop and that is that ties into the to the title of the workshop as well very much and so active student participation's potential role in relation to societal sustainable and democratic development and potential alliance building between these theories and practices and then we will have an interactive interactive finale I think and the reason why I have structured the workshop in this way is because I think it's easier if you first since this is not done live together with you it's really hard to have like live discussions and so on me facilitating them and you engaging in a you know in a workshoppy way during the presentation so I think it was easier actually to to have the workshop things moved to the end so you will get time for that in the end to work with that together and then I will try to and get back to you in some form probably in a written format and I will I will go go in and check your discussions probably in the morning after you've had them to see what has come up and if there are any questions regarding the presentation and and what you have thought about the content of this key workshop and also the topic of the key workshop if it's possible to build a kind of alliance between student voices work active student participation work and education for sustainable development and how these can benefit each other so I'm really looking forward to to the morning of the of the 29th of September it will be for me when I go through the padlets that you will be working in okay so this is what we will do today and just to give you some foundations of the of the workshop first and there are different foundations to to it first there is the theme of this year's symposium we're on the student voices australian website it says that the symposium bring together staff and students from australian higher education institutions to examine the positionality and roles of students as essential partners in decision-making and governance now and into the future so if we look then at positionality and roles part of this key workshop will touch upon the question of what positions and roles are possible for students in higher education in higher education and and I will go through some of the positions and roles that students have had in the Uppsala context so those are roles that are possible as an example and also important for this symposium's theme is decision-making and governance and I look at decision-making and governance when it comes to student voices as being both the way students can influence and be part of decision-making and the way the universities and higher education institutions are run in in the universities and in the higher education contexts themselves but this is also about students roles as citizens I believe if we extend this further and look at apart from being involved in decision-making and governance at the university what could be students roles as as citizens and what is it important that you perhaps practice in in higher education to be able to seriously take on the role as a citizen in a democratic society or in other societies as well of course and when it comes to the now and into the future of the symposium's theme I think of this as what students do during their education at university or other higher education institutions and how this can contribute to the betterment of higher education and the improvement of the way education is run but also into the future so the what students bring from from higher education into their future lives then as citizens or as important contributors to sustainable development and the tackling of sustainable development issues and also in developing democracies using different capacities that they develop in higher education in development of democracy later on also what has inspired this this keynote presentation is our issues that are affecting democracy and foundational to to democracy and the democratic debate in in many countries at the moment so the role of higher education in relation to populism and anti-immigrant discourses Sweden recently had the election for the parliament and an anti-immigrant party called the swedish democrats they gained 20% of the votes from swedes you see here the the leader of the party Jimmy Åkesson and this is a commercial or an ad that they have used in the campaign before the election it says Sweden should be good and this is a spin-off of Donald Trump's campaign that he used make america great again so swedish should be good again is translated is the english translation of that is Sweden has to become better again and then the guardian has written about the swedish election and they write that in the wake of the financial crash and the wave of refugees in the mid 2010 this strategy of combining anti-immigrant sentiment with welfare nativism is allowing the radical right to make headway through europe so the guardian writes that progressive politicians and parties need to find a better and more creative response than that of pale imitation of these parties so progressive politicians and the parties they have to be more creative when it comes to responding to these discourses that have appeared in many many countries and we could also ask the questions then what is the role of higher education here what is the role of education in relation to populism and anti-immigrant discourses how should education be run in order to to respond to these discourses is transmission based pedagogy or more science-based pedagogy the answer to this some say that this is the answer to populist forces and anti-immigrant discourses because this is not this is just you know connected to fake news this is not real science we have to have more real science science debates and education should be based on on science but is this what will help us in combating or try to yeah to do something about these discourses or to to give another response how can responsibility for and engagement with these issues be fostered among students so this could also be seen as a foundation to why to why this key workshop has been developed and a foundation to to the discussion on how active student participation and democratic education and ESD education could could could that be an answer to populism and anti-immigrant discourses for example the third foundation I would call the world's wickedness so many say that the world is becoming increasingly you know entangled we we live in a global world with global flows of of money of goods of of people also and and many of the big societal issues today that is up to citizens politicians and society at large and also universities to solve our wicked issues and I you've probably heard of wicked issues it's been quite it's a term that has been quite heavily used the last the last years but it refers to problems that are really complex and that there are no real or clear solutions to these problems and solutions that you that you that you try to use and then apply to the problems might generate new problems and so on so scholars are asking and are arguing for for a change in the way pedagogy and higher education is is run and also what the learning objectives in different courses in higher education should be to prepare students to to during their time in higher education and also after higher education deal with these wicked issues can we use the same pedagogical methods that we've that we're familiar with and have used traditionally or is it something else that is needed okay so that was that was some things on the foundations of this workshop just to for you to see where I'm coming from how my thinking has developed around this workshop and where it stems from basically so I think it's important for you to get that context and to get that background in order for you to to yeah hopefully better understand why I say the things I say or discuss these things in the way I do so active student participation in Uppsala a short history about that work first so the ASP work at Uppsala University it grew out of a center that's called CMOS it's the Center for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University and that center has a long or not a long history but it started in 1992 with a course that was named Männichan and Männichan och naturen man and nature translated into English and it was it was on upon the initiative of students that this course was started because these students that started this course they they thought that their education wasn't dealing enough with the pressing issues of society at that time so it didn't include knowledge and the development of skills to to deal with wicked issues one could say so they thought that their education was lacking quite a bit so they they talked to the vice chancellor of Uppsala University and also some employees of the university that they trusted and asked how the university could improve on this matter and then the answer from the university was and this doesn't happen very often so it's fun to to describe this history was that why don't you start with developing this course these courses yourselves it seems like you have have knowledge about it you see what is missing so it seems like you could be really great course creators here and so they they did they started developing the first course at CMOS and since that time the center has developed into giving many more courses they are giving I think at least 15 plus courses as an amount and then for example as you can see here to the to the right in the bottom there's one course called sustainable economic futures nature equity and community and another course that's called critical perspectives on sustainable development in Sweden and what is really I think quite original to these courses is that the the center is still to a high degree influenced and run by students so students are are hired at the center to develop these courses together with professors and PhD students and higher other staff at CMOS in course work groups so they develop these courses together and the students have an unusual amount of influence over these courses apart from that so as you could say that as the ASP work at Uppsala University really has a foundation in this work it grew out of this work but Uppsala also has a long history of student voice work through unions and different student associations and so on it's a very old university it was founded in 1477 and as I said in the beginning one fifth of the population of the city are students so it's really a student town really vibrating of students one could say and so that is also important for the history of active student participation I think that there really has been a long history of work through unions and associations and student voice work basically the ASP project that grew out of this was funded by the the vice chancellor of Uppsala University also so that's important to to mention how is then ASP defined at Uppsala University so ASP is defined as students that support and power and challenge each other's learning as well as students as co-creators in the planning implementation and evaluation of higher education so it's one could say that active student participation at Uppsala University is both seen as how students work together in peer-to-peer learning activities but also how students are co-creators together with their peers but also with teachers in developing courses at the at the university through all the phases of course planning so it rests on two legs one could say this is another way of defining active student participation trying to visualize it a little bit and one could say that ASP belongs to the broader field of student engagement students being engaged in higher education in different ways but then it differs a bit from what one could call activating learning methods which is more about different methods that teachers have prepared for classes in order to activate students during their courses and student representation that is more about perhaps student voice work i'm not really sure how you define it in the australian context but in the swedish context student voice work would be more that students are giving feedback in different ways to materials or two courses after they have been and after they have been given or so they are not really part of the process of creating them they are not essential partners in the creation of the courses but more being represented in different in different groups at the university on different levels that then work with different questions regarding courses or complaints and so on so it's more about a representative function i would say than a creative or co-creation function because this is what active student participation is i would argue active student participation is more about the the roles the different roles that students that we can imagine for students in higher education different roles that are possible for students in higher education is it only roles that are roles that that are tied to taking in taking in information and digesting information that is given from from teachers and then do the examination and so on or is it is it also possible to see whether students can be included in in in other aspects of higher education work that is done and then in the work at Uppsala University on active student participation we found that it both has potential but it's also already taking place within courses within programs and in an interdisciplinary manner also outside scheduled class time so extracurricular activities and also in in the planning evaluation and examination of of higher education so in the work on active student participation it was both mapped what activities that are that are done at the moment and also and and also it was imagined what could be done future wise when it comes to this area i realized that you will probably see if i took a little pause during the recording of the presentation because there might be a slight difference in the angle of the camera or so on but i'm sure you're fine with that i just needed to take a a glass of water and and a little break so that is fine of course okay so um what i wanted to um to continue with is a great quote by Dunn and Sanstra that have been quite actively researching student engagement because they uh i know the quote is quite long but they really capture in this quote i think what uh we at Uppsala University regard as active student participation work because they write that there's a subtle but extremely important difference between an institution that listens to students and responds accordingly and an institution that gives students the opportunity to explore areas that they believe to be significant to recommend solutions and to bring about the required changes there's a subtle but extremely important difference here they say and i think that not all institutions uh see that difference or regard that as an important difference uh continuously then the concept of listening to the student voice implicitly if not deliberately supports the perspective of students as consumer whereas students as change agents explicitly supports a view of the student as active collaborator and co-producer with the potential of transformation so i won't say anything more about this quote but really captures uh the very important difference that is that exists between listening and taking in feedback from students through course evaluation or such methods and to really actively support students to to um uh to um active collaborate actively collaborating with uh the development of courses for example okay so that was a little bit of a background to the active student participation work at Uppsala University and the way we define it a little bit on how the work was done this could be read about more extensively if one is interested in in it in the active student participation companion that is where the figures come from there that i showed you earlier and also it's listed in the references at the end of the presentation so colleagues of mine wrote that book and please have a look at it if you're if you're interested in this further so now the idea is that um i will try to um discuss this what i've been naming alliance building between um practices and theories of education for sustainable development and democratic education and active student participation and um how they can benefit benefiting from um uh joining forces to build more sustainable and democratic futures so how this can potentially influence society in these directions this is uh a topic that i've been thinking about quite a lot but i haven't really put it into a presentation or into text earlier before this symposium so bear with me these are these are just um um preliminary thoughts and i'm really interested in starting a conversation together with you on this topic that is really important um so this is me uh thinking out loud this would be a quote from from from me then thinking out loud and with the active student participation approach student develop competencies knowledge and learn new perspectives that are equally important for building sustainable democratic societies as they are for studying in a higher education context so we see that there are great benefits um working in this way for students in their studies in higher education they develop different skills that are important for being a student and studying but these skills are also important uh i would argue them for building democratic societies and more sustainable democratic societies these skills many ways go in many ways go hand in hand and uh and are equally equally important for both of these strands of theories and practices hmm okay so thus there's a great potential in stronger collaboration between the academic field and practice of democratic education and education for sustainable development with that of active student participation um and this collaboration i haven't really seen that much of in literature or in practices it might exist but it haven't really been um explicitly described or uh or researched that much so that's why i'm interested that's why i'm particularly interested in in this i would say okay so why can these two um strands then that are that are existing at the moment in quite separate silos doing their own practices and work what are the commonalities between them um so active student participation um research says it leads to more motivation among students it promotes deep oriented learning it promotes active learning and responsibility over studying it uh ties into uh often it's often used during problem solving and application of knowledge so using these practices are particularly good and beneficial when you're working with these with these types of um content in courses it improves study skills such as critical thinking information search and argumentation and it improves into personal skills such as empathy and respect and these are just some things that research have found um on these types of practices and also uh what practitioners and students have said that um that this way of working has um has led to and um if we looked at and on some aspects of democratic education and ESD um there has been a lot of discussion on what competencies uh do we do we want to see students develop in order to tackle sustainability issues and here um researchers have been defining competencies such as normative competence interpersonal competence strategic competence anticipatory and system thinking and i think that you can already see for yourselves how this can connect to active student participation and already in 1916 uh the quite famous theorist and philosopher John Dewey that has been really influential um when it comes to the field of democratic education and he said that student participation is really important in the classroom students won't learn that much if they're not participating in different ways we have to um the teacher have to structure structure the content and structure the course more attached to the experiences of students going into the experiences of students so student participation in and outside the classroom is really important and these two also connect to each other what happens in the classroom has an effect on societal life and democratic societal life we also have um critical theory is quite an important um foundation of both democratic education but maybe most prominently education for sustainable development uh one famous author to mention there paula freire as probably many of you know of wrote the pedagogy of the oppressed in the 1970s about challenging power inequalities increasing literacy and he was also very much against the banking idea of education and i would argue that active student participation practices have also grown grown out of a critique against the banking idea of education transmissive based pedagogy and so on um some swedish scholars of education for sustainable development have discussed the democratic dimension of ec so environment and sustainability education they have combined these two and and they argue that in that type of educational practices students develop into well-informed members of society and actively participating in education and in society so that is the whole idea with that type of education the whole purpose one could say then uh educational scholar arjen ballz discusses post normal science as a concept and where they argue that science in the future and also education in the future has to be more about managing of different societal problems rather than controlling different societal problems that has been the traditional way of approaching problems let's try to control these problems in different ways but he argues that all of these problems many problems of today are really complex and especially environmental and sustainability problems so these has to be managed instead of controlled and this managing it really requires participation and deliberation of various sorts of people and also in the classroom when you work with these type of issues um and lastly another um um some other terms that is mentioned in the work by ballz is the emancipatory approach to education versus the instrumental approach to education so in the emancipatory approach to education teachers are trying to strengthen in capacities of students whereas in an instrumental approach it's more about influencing students in a predetermined way there is an idea that this is what students should learn so this is that that is why we structure education the way we do we predetermine what what students should learn for example we decide that this is the best sustainability behavior and we have to influence students ways of thinking norms values and help them learn the knowledges for the best best way of being sustainable for example or contributing to more sustainable society but he argues for the emancipatory approach to education which is more about strengthening different capacities because sustainability problems are as we said earlier really complex they are wicked they are ever-changing we don't what is the sustainability problem of today might not be a problem of of tomorrow or at least the problem has changed a lot so we can't approach it in the same way so if we then have a too much of an instrumental approach to to uh to content and to education this won't help students we have to develop these more generic or generic skills or capabilities that uh that students can can can use and apply on all sorts of problems and where they are also prepared to to adapt because capacities you can use in on on on different problems and you also become more adaptable through that type of through that type of education or when you when you're educated in that way so as we can see um there are a lot of commonalities between these different fields but I think that things that we've learned through researching asp through practicing asp could really be beneficial for contributing to solving big societal global problems of today these are skills that are not only super important being a student at university they are also important in your life as a citizens which you a citizen which you live simultaneously of course as you as you are also studying or as you have the role of a student you have these two roles simultaneously and I think we have to more explicitly argue for the benefit of these these approaches this approach and in this these skills for being a competent uh contributor in society after education however it's not that uh that easy because it can also be argued to be a bit uh maybe steering students or be a bit uh normative and not not everyone in in higher education uh or in society as at large is interested in um in developing in letting students develop skills that can contribute to the solving of of these types of problems but I believe it's important so that is the stand that I take and I I look forward to hear what you what you think about this when we have the interactive finale okay lastly then I just want to touch upon some challenges that is connected to the work of active student participation and potentially also the work of building alliances between these fields that I've been talking about sorry for the the coughing um and I've already talked a little bit too much so I will just briefly go through these challenges and um if you have any question about them if you want me to clarify them or so on um you can contact me afterwards or you could also add questions to the padlet that we will be using towards the end of this workshop so first a challenge is the instrumental instrumentalization of higher education that um higher education is used as uh as something to lead towards something it's a specific uh you get a specific um um a title uh after studying in higher education for example um and doing ASP work doesn't really fit with this instrumentalization of of higher education um it's quite time-consuming to work in this way I'm sure you've all experienced it already in your own words how does active student participation fit with the trends of quality measurements and quality assurance in higher education that are increasingly important aspects of higher education and they are also really promoted and a question related to that is maybe what is quality according to students we also have as always when people work together we have the the issue or the fact that there's a power present so how is power distributed in in these different active student participation settings which roles are different people giving given how do teachers relate to to potential new roles that they will be approaching or given when working like this and how does the institutionalized culture how can we reshape that culture is it possible to do it even we also have the aspect of engagement from the student side or students uh the larger student group really interested in in working in this way is this what they want from their education do they want to be this active uh uh responsibility taking responsibility and um or what do they want from their education what is their goal and purpose with education there's also the risk that um universities teachers higher education is blindly adapting and changing after student critique because of financial reasons and expectations on throughput that is increasingly put on universities from the governmental side and that is a challenge and related to the question of power of course who participate and is engaged in these activities and how can these activities be broadened so they appeal to the larger student group and not only the good students that some authors have argued that they that they do currently okay so I will just introduce this interactive finale for you and then you will go on doing it together yourselves um so first we have a discussion debate dialogue it depends on how you approach it five to eight minutes the idea is you that you're discussing groups how can active student participation contribute to the development of sustainable democratic societies or should it even add it to padlet and to start this important conversation the second thing that you do together then is that you're trying out a real active student participation exercise called the missing perspective you do this for five minutes or as much time as you as you have here you reflect individually what was missing what was the missing perspective in this key workshop that wasn't touched upon think of theories challenges perspectives but also maybe the delivery of of this workshop I realized that it's really hard to to make a workshop as a recorded presentation or as a record in a recorded format so I'd really like to have your input on that how one can make it better because I realize now that this isn't really that workshoppy maybe so how can one do workshops recorded workshops in a good way add it to padlet and Loisa will happily hear about it for continuous improvement of her workshop skills okay thank you very much for listening and participating in this and I hope you have a nice rest of the symposium and see you on padlet tomorrow morning maybe or I would be there at least answering and reading some of your thoughts and comments thank you very much and have a great rest of the day