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Research explores ways to address worldview threat
The research project Teacher Education, Diversity, and Worldview Threat explored how preservice and early career teachers from a variety of subject areas might prevent and de-escalate harmful reactions due to worldview threats. Together we explored insights from existential social psychology and co-created strategies and approaches for classrooms when teaching about highly emotional topics like climate change, everyday forms of racism and more.
Forms defenses can take
Some worldview defenses are subtle, such as decreased reading comprehension of worldview-threatening material or sitting closer to those we assume share our culture and farther away from those who do not. Other defensive moves are more extreme and easily observed. Derogation occurs when other views are dismissed as inferior (e.g., insulting those with different worldviews) while assimilation validates our view by converting others to our own view and annihilation (e.g., violence, war, genocide) eliminates the opposing view (and educators might hear expressions of support for annihilation).
Accommodation involves appropriating aspects to diffuse the perceived threat (e.g., a surface-level inclusion of another world-view) instead of engaging with the deeper differences (e.g., with Indigenous and Black History Month content). Drawing inspiration from an article in this magazine by Dwayne Donald, the practice of “infusing” and “incorporating” Indigenous perspectives can hinder deeper engagements that might challenge our worldview because teachers might feel like they’ve engaged with foundational First Nations, Métis and Inuit knowledge even though they have not.
Planning beforehand
Knowing about these defenses, what might we do in our classrooms? The first step is to develop a shared language about the emotionality of worldview threat. We can talk about feeling uncomfortable, angry, frustrated and so on, as well as more complicated processes like wanting to convert others to our view or to withdraw from the conversation. To this end, the research team created a video for classroom use and an infographic poster. Because we know that reading comprehension can suffer when we are in a state of worldview threat, it’s important that we consider the modality of the materials (e.g., avoiding dense readings). A key challenge that lingers is how we might avoid superficial interactions with different perspectives and customs, so we must gently hold ourselves and each other accountable toward deeper encounters with difference.
Immediately before the encounter
Teachers can help students cope with difficult emotions by bolstering their self-esteem and positive aspects of worldviews. Ideally these attempts would be related to the threat (e.g., students privately listing a few of their “good” qualities before discussions about unintentional racism that put them in self-esteem threat), but even unrelated prompts can help.
Priming helpful aspects of worldviews is helpful, although it’s best to tap into the positive aspects of worldviews held by both students and whomever you are talking about; for example, before a lesson about 9/11 in a classroom with Muslims and Christians, mention quotations from the Beatitudes—Matthew 5:1–12—about gentleness, mercy and sympathy for those who have been persecuted as well as a hadith from the Prophet Muhammad—Peace Be Upon Him—such as “kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever is not kind has no faith” (Sahih Muslim). It should be noted that such discussions are not limited to religious worldviews, and perhaps there are local shared values (e.g., from the school community).
When defenses nonetheless bubble up
Even with careful attention to worldview threat, students may still react defensively. We can remind them about the emotionality of the situation and try to de-escalate. If a student utters a hateful comment, we must address it, and then after, we can exercise our professional judgment regarding how to deal with that student (e.g., as a class or individually, the extent to which to involves administration). The hope is that a greater attention to worldview threats will minimize such reactions.
A complete list of references is available upon request by contacting the author at vankesse@ualberta.ca.
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many thanks also to the ATA for granting this project the 2021 Research Award as well as those who helped with this project formally and informally: Nicholas Jacobs, Kimberly Edmondson, Francesca Catena, Rebeka Plots, Melissa McQueen and Kara Boucher.
