ABSTRACT

As the global community strives for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly, the first goal of ‘ending poverty in all its forms everywhere’, university students’ learning experiences and understanding about global poverty remain comparatively unexplored. This in-depth qualitative study examines how university students in the USA understand global poverty and what it means to ‘help the poor’ in a year-long international interdisciplinary experiential education program at a Midwestern American university. The program is dedicated to teaching students about global poverty and to problem-solve for people living in subsistence contexts in the USA, India, Uganda, Tanzania and Argentina, through experiential learning projects such as sustainable product, services and business design. The study shows, despite students’ expressed intention to help the poor, they draw upon a variety of understandings of global poverty and what it means to help the poor. Contrasting these different understandings, I suggest a dialogic pedagogy with some conceptual tools and theoretical resources for students to better understand their bottom-up experiential learning experience.

摘要

随着国际社会努力实现 2030 年可持续发展目标，特别是“消除世界各地一切形式的贫困”的第一个目标，大学生对全球贫困的学习经验和理解仍然相对未被探索。这项深入的定性研究考察了美国大学生如何理解全球贫困，以及在美国中西部大学为期一年的国际跨学科体验式教育计划中“帮助贫困者”意味着什么。该计划致力于通过可持续产品、服务和商业设计等体验式学习项目，向学生教授全球贫困问题，并为生活在美国、印度、乌干达、坦桑尼亚和阿根廷的人们解决问题。研究表明，尽管学生表达了帮助穷人的意图，但他们对全球贫困以及帮助穷人意味着什么有着不同的理解。对比这些不同的理解，我建议采用带有一些概念工具和理论资源的对话式教学法，让学生更好地理解他们自下而上的体验式学习体验。