By Anne Michiels van Kessenich, PhD candidate, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

As a happy consequences of my ongoing research into ways to educate children about the use of the concepts of risk and uncertainty in their decision-making (Michiels van Kessenich & Geerts, 2017), I met Rebekah Tauritz.  Who then introduced me to your wonderful website. As I was browsing the site, I clicked on the article by Prof. Mertens in the Guardian,

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/jul/02/how-researchers-can-help-the-world-face-up-to-its-wicked-problems?CMP=share_btn_tw

and was thus reminded of one of the many troubles that befall us when we want to discuss the uncertainty that surrounds so many of the wicked problems we face today.

Placed in a conspicuous position above Prof. Mertens’ excellent article about ways in which scientists can inform the climate change debater was an ad inviting me to consider Dubai for my next holidays. Visiting this website again just now, I am enticed by a different but just as visible ad to buy jeans.

In other words, an article devoted to the need to slow down climate change was surrounded by invitations to perform the very behaviours that cause climate change: air-travel and conspicuous consumption. This accurately reflects the reality of the political arena: every political discussion that I join will include people whose views staunchly oppose mine. Consensus is not waiting around the corner.

This illustrates the point that Rebekah mentions in her blog; one which I agree with. Indeed, one of the hitherto underestimated needs in dealing with uncertainty is precisely the ability to tolerate ambiguity in the debate and the divergence of political opinions. People have different outlooks on life and they are often prepared to defend these with vigour. This divergence carries over into the political arena: one generally does not engage in politics to make friends, but rather to promote one’s own ideas about a good society. To promote these ideas is often putting one’s welfare at risk, as Hannah Arendt (2011) wrote. Firstly, because for the good of the community you may have to forgo benefits for yourself or for you own group. As an illustration: by paying taxes I lose money that I might want to spend otherwise. Forgoing this pleasure and giving up this freedom for the wellbeing of others therefore constitutes a loss, and that loss feels negative (see Slovic, 2010).

Secondly, acting on behalf of the political good, and going against prevailing opinions and power structures may literally be life-threatening, as many activists protesting commercial logging in South- America have discovered (see: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/). But, even when the contest is fought with words only, emotions can run high when people defend their positions and a negative atmosphere can result.

In addition to forgoing personal benefits and engaging in dangerous disputes, this call for tolerating ambiguity in a political dialogue may seem rather pointless. For if I favour shutting down commercial air-travel and you don’t, we seem destined for a dead-lock. This seeming deadlock, however, stems from looking at a political decision as a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser. But political decisions are never taken in isolation: we meet in the same arena again and again discussing many different topics. So rather than addressing one topic, we are actually engaged in a permanent dialogue about many political issues. Looking at political decision-making as an ongoing conversation offers a way to re-conceptualise the desired outcome of what constitutes good decision-making.

A good political decision-making process, in which the interests of diverse groups of actors must be taken into consideration, differs considerably from one in which a problem caused by a knowledge–deficit is to be resolved. The latter can be informed by scientific knowledge: we agree on what needs to be done, we just don’t know how to do it. The next step is obvious: invest in research. A truly contested decision however does not pivot around missing or incomplete knowledge, but rather around a profound disagreement over the desired outcome.

In such a situation we need to look for not one, but for two totally different outcomes. The produced decisions are but one of them. In addition to those decisions we also need to strive to maintain a healthy political atmosphere. In such an atmosphere, it is the decision-making process itself that adds an additional layer of meaning and value. This meaning is shaped by the participants. Does the dialogue still offer them enough recognition of their points of view to wish to remain part of the dialogue? Do they feel that although there are instances where their views are not completely taken into account in the decision taken, it is still in their interest to remain included? In this way the most important result of an inclusive political decision-making process may be a sustained belief that the system, although it contains many ambiguities and uncertainties, continues to provide an arena in which everybody included will see some of his interests served.

The system that Prof. Merton alludes to is very much larger than just interacting political and economic institutions, and, in an important sense, now contains us all. Traditionally, institutions like political parties were put in place as ways to reduce uncertainty and address value disparity in decision-making. But in today’s world the acceptance of influence via representation is decreasing. Ever more people are dropping out as party members whilst at the same time becoming single-issue activists. The old, relatively predictable, political landscape in the Netherlands, for instance, is breaking up as increasing numbers of political parties vie for power. These trends cause the total amount of ambiguity and value disparity contained in the political system to increase. This means that the ability to tolerate uncertainty and the negative feelings that can accompany ambiguity becomes extremely important. So important in fact that the lack thereof threatens to tear the political system apart. Political dialogue was, is and will continue to be the difficult search for a harmonious balance between different points of view; it is not intended as a search for the one superior outcome.

Summing up: We need to look at the deliberative process with new eyes. This process should not just aim at producing decisions quickly and efficiently. It is not like winning a race. It should also be inclusive and slow-moving, expressly to enable everybody to participate. People should feel free to join and express their wishes and values, however much these differ from those of others. And the outcome is never just the decision under discussion. The trust that the dialogue will in the long run balance all interests as harmoniously as possible is at least as important a result in an era that is becoming ever more pluriform. To exhibit this kind of trust in the future decision-making dialogue is to take a risk. But if this risk is not taken, the system cannot hold.

Helping children to understand and welcome this diversity of views and the associated ambiguity as essential elements in deciding about common interests is one of the goals of the Dutch risk education initiative now under way.

On November 16^th 2018, Marion Brady wrote an article in the Washington Post which paints a powerful picture of the urgent need for a different way of teaching to prepare learners for dealing with wicked problems. Brady gives an example of how something as mundane as buying socks may contribute to global warming, destruction of infrastructure, decline of healthcare and even an increase in mortality. Understanding such complex and uncertain problems, he emphasises, requires the ability to generate new knowledge rather than the ability to simply recall existing, often second-hand, information. He also explains that it is essential that learners learn how to relate information. Instead of focusing on individual pieces of the puzzle learners require an understanding of how all the pieces fit together. Perhaps this may sound obvious, however, formal education often still compartmentalises knowledge even though messy real world problems cannot be compartmentalised. Brady writes: “Preparing to put a jigsaw puzzle together, we study the picture on the lid of the box. It’s the grasp of the big picture—the whole—that helps us make sense of the individual pieces” (Brady, 2018).

Two weeks ago I attended a 5-day workshop ‘Risk Science and Decision Science for children and teenagers’ at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. The aim of the workshop was to develop ideas about risk education in the upper primary and secondary years. The event was initiated by a group of international scholars with expertise in risk science and decision making in higher education and was attended by a mixture of participants, some of whom also brought expertise from within the field of primary and secondary education with them. We explored what each of our fields might contribute to a joint conceptualisation of what risk education could look like.

One of the things that struck me was that when participants talked about teaching teenagers sound decision-making, for example, regarding risky behaviour involving sex and drugs, they  seemed to assume that sound decision-making would lead to their own take on the obvious right decision or behaviour. In other words, it would lead to what they considered to be safe behaviour. I see a new risk being created when risk education is predominantly focused on the sort of dilemma’s in regard to which educators want the target group, in this case teenagers, to arrive at a predetermined right decision. Such a strategy could block the development of independent critical, creative and lateral thinking skills that would in addition enable (1) formulation of personally relevant questions; (2) gathering and systematic assessment of information; (3) consideration of personal values and trade-offs. To avoid impeding this development requires of educators the willingness to accept the risk that the right decision as they have conceived it will not be made.

When I consider teaching about how to deal with wicked problems, I would emphasise that wicked problems are typically characterised as messy, uncertain and difficult to define (Rittel & Webber, 1973). They have no single right answer, require creative interdisciplinary problem solving and decision making and bring together multiple stakeholders with diverse points of view and values (Barrett, 2012; Conklin, 2006). My research explores the need to equip learners with uncertainty competences that will enable them to manage these wickedly uncertain and risky problems (Tauritz, 2016). In my opinion, autonomy and independent thought are in themselves risky, but they are also exactly what we need to be able to deal with our rapidly changing and uncertain world. This suggests to me the need for a very different learning environment for risk education that not only teaches students how to reduce and tolerate risk and uncertainty, but also how to cherish uncertainty.

Today I’ve been reading a really thoughtful paper by Valentina Tassone and her colleagues about redesigning higher education curricula in the context of the Anthropocene. The authors argue persuasively for a transition in higher education toward more responsible forms of research and learning in relation to wicked problems. They point out how important it is to prepare learners and professionals for the ‘grand challenges’ facing our societies. Taking an action research approach, the authors developed a set of educational design principles and learner competences which can underpin curriculum development in higher education.

I particularly like this point from the paper:

“The challenging conditions of our time call for human values that return us to our basic obligation to care for others and the earth, and to permeate our endeavors with that sense of care, within and beyond the specific role one plays in society at a given point in time.”

I’m delighted that our project has just been featured on the wonderful Teaching Matters blog at the University of Edinburgh.

Looking at the news about hurricane Florence, which is threatening the Carolinas this morning, made me want to find something hopeful to think about. One of the things that really gave me hope about the capacity of our society to respond well to wicked problems has been the amazing teachers we have interviewed for this research project across the University of Edinburgh. I have had the privilege of meeting an incredible group of deeply committed, passionate and thoughtful teachers through this project. They are putting their hearts into preparing students to make a difference in these uncertain and difficult times.

One of the things that really struck me about this group was that they seem to have more coherent academic identities than some of the people I have interviewed for other projects or read about in the literature. In other research, academics often talk about the tensions between their research, teaching and other duties. They feel that they are pulled between different parts of their identities. The participants in the wicked problems project, by contrast, seemed more likely to have identities which cohered around the wicked problem they were considering and saw their teaching, research, activism, and other work as all pulling together to address their wicked problem.

I’ve been enjoying reading some of the interview transcripts from the  project today and one of the things that struck me is that several of our participants seem to be giving students ‘controlled’ experiences of wicked problems. What I mean by that is that students get to work in groups on authentic and complex problems but with a bit more structure and support than they might get outside of higher education. Sometimes the teachers helped the students create some boundaries round a manageable slice of a wicked problem. Other teachers provided students with structured readings or thinking models to help make the wicked problem easier to think about. Sometimes graduated support was provided with the groups which were struggling getting a bit more teacher support. I think all of these are great ways to help students learn about dealing with wicked problems.

The team really enjoyed discussing our preliminary findings with colleagues at the recent University Learning and Teaching Conference and meeting more people who are interested in wicked problems.  We will be getting in touch and adding people to our mailing list soon.

We got lots of useful ideas about what competences students might need to be good at dealing with wicked problems. People suggested:

capacity to engage in ethical debates

being able to cope with ambiguity

being willing to engage when you are not sure you are right

empathy

compassion

listening

adaptability

group work skills

resilience

appreciation of diverse perspectives

confidence and willingness to take risks

being able to take an evidence based approach

being able to do interdisciplinary work

being able to draw on perspectives from the humanities

… and more.

What a great list!

We are currently analysing the first batch of our interviews to present at the University of Edinburgh Learning and Teaching Conference next week. One thing we have been looking at is what the academics we have interviewed do to help students engage with wicked problems. There are lots of rich examples of exciting teaching methods.

Quite a few of our teachers talked about learning experiences where students learn to value diverse perspectives. So valuing other students’ perspectives, perspectives from other academic disciplines and perspectives from outside academia.

There was also lots of emphasis on ‘authentic’ learning experiences where students worked together on real world messy problems.

Our discussions with these teachers also brought up their consideration for students’ feelings. They talked about helping students stay hopeful or supporting students to come to terms with their feelings about wicked problems.

Hello everyone,

Just to let you know we are making good progress with the project.  We have completed 25 out of about 30 interviews and have begun our data analysis. We have also been able to take forward some virtual ethnography. We are going to present some initial themes from our findings at the University’s Learning and Teaching Conference.