Exploring Global Challenges through Critical Hope

TILT program: TILT SoTL Project 

Principal Investigator: Sumercan Bozkurt Gungen, adjunct professor, School for International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Project team: Shana Ruess and Brittany Dennett, TILT research assistants

Timeframe: November 2024 to October 2025

TILT Support: Up to 180 hours of TILT research assistant time and up to $475 for participant incentives.

Course addressed: IS 427 -- Globalization, Poverty and Inequality

Final report: View Sumercan Bozkurt Gungen's final report (PDF)

Description:

This project addressed a critical challenge in higher education: how to teach about complex global issues without fostering despair and disengagement among students. The project systematically integrated a "critical hope" framework into a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on globalization, poverty, and inequality, creating a learning environment that balanced critical analysis of structural injustices with hope for transformative change rooted in collective agency.

The course redesign introduced three core components: new thematic modules examining diverse forms and temporalities of change; revised course materials highlighting community-led responses to poverty and inequality from global contexts; and a substantial community-engaged group project (35% of final grade) where students designed and implemented small-scale initiatives in partnership with community organizations. Student groups created awareness campaigns on social media, volunteered with food banks and campus food pantries, and conducted interviews to highlight immigrant experiences and challenges faced by students with neurodiversity and disabilities.

Through mixed-methods analysis including pre- and post-course surveys (100% response rate showing reinforced belief in collective action effectiveness), thematic analysis of group project outputs, classroom observations, and audio recordings of final class discussions, the project demonstrated that critical hope pedagogy significantly enhanced students' perceptions of collective agency, strengthened their self-perception as change agents (particularly at local and national levels), and enabled them to balance critical awareness with hope. Students developed grounded, action-oriented hope rooted in structural understanding rather than naive optimism, with many expressing their commitment to continued community engagement beyond the course.

Questions addressed:

• How can a critical hope perspective be systematically integrated into curricula examining global challenges related to poverty and inequality? 
• What impact does applying a critical hope framework have on students' perceptions of the role of collective agency in addressing global poverty and inequality?
• How does critical hope pedagogy shape students' views of themselves as agents of change? 
• What is the relationship between critical engagement and hope in student learning about structural injustices?

Knowledge sharing: Informal conversations with departmental colleagues with formal presentation scheduled for School for International Studies pedagogy workshop (November 2025). Conference presentation at "Transforming the International: Scholarship and Solidarity in a World of Inequalities" workshop in Newcastle, UK (October 2025). Two journal articles planned focusing on integrating critical hope into curriculum design and its impact on student agency and engagement.

Keywords: Critical hope, critical pedagogy, community-engaged learning, collective agency, global challenges education, poverty and inequality, experiential learning, social justice education, student empowerment, civic engagement