Abstract
Using insights from the changes made to a workshop developed before, but occurring after the pandemic, I describe the usefulness of design thinking activities and approaches to education in the post-COVID teaching era. I argue that design thinking techniques help build awareness around tolerance for ambiguity as an opportunity to inspire creative teaching solutions. This transferable skill is important for our students as soon-to-be graduates, and for faculty looking to build resilience in this uncertain time. Using Boyer’s framework for scholarship, I explore opportunities to connect the teaching and learning goals of students and faculty.
Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment, and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity...
Gilda Radner ( 1989 , p.268)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bowen, J. A. (2016, December 7). Helping students embrace discomfort. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/12/07/educating-students-ambiguity-and-discomfort-essay
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Jossey-Bass.
DeRoma, V. M., Martin, K. M., & Kessler, M. L. (2003). The relationship between tolerance for ambiguity and need for course structure. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 30(2), 104–109.
Du Bois, C. (1963). The curriculum in cultural anthropology. In D. G. Mandelbaum, G. W. Lasker, & E. M. Albert (Eds.), The Teaching of Anthropology (pp. 27–39). University of California Press.
Elisia, F. (2017, August 20). What’s the difference between human-centred design and user experience design? Prototypr.io.https://blog.prototypr.io/whats-the-difference-between-human-centred-design-and-user-experience-design-2f48e5c9be25
Furnham, A., & Marks, J. (2013). Tolerance of ambiguity: A review of the recent literature. Psychology, 4, 717–728. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2013.49102
Huber, N. (2003). An experiential leadership approach for teaching tolerance for ambiguity. Journal of Education for Business, 79(1), 52–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/08832320309599088
Instructional skills network. (2020). Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) network description. https://www.iswnetwork.ca/
Jacobs Institute. (2019, January 13). Respecting our relations: Dori Tunstall on decolonizing design. Medium.https://medium.com/@JacobsDesignCal/respecting-our-relations-dori-tunstall-on-decolonizing-design-d894df4c2ed2
Johnson, H. L., Court, K. L., Roersma, M. H., & Kinnaman, D. (1995). Integration as integration: Tolerance of ambiguity and the integrative process at the undergraduate level. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 23(4), 271–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719502300407
Klugman, C. M., & Beckmann-Mendez, D. (2015). One thousand words: Evaluating an interdisciplinary art education program. Journal of Nursing Education, 54(4), 220–223. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20150318-06
Kubovsky, D. (2019, April 2). Achieving workplace diversity through design thinking. Medium. https://medium.com/@DavidKubovsky/achieving-workplace-diversity-through-design-thinking-866015a17e49
Laurencin, C. T., & McClinton, A. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: A call to action to identify and address racial and ethnic disparities. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 7(3), 398–402. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00756-0
Levine, D. (1985). The flight from ambiguity: Essays in social and cultural theory. University of Chicago Press.
Liu, C. (2015). Relevant researches on tolerance of ambiguity. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 5(9), 1874–1882. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0509.15
Omander, M. (2020). Wheel of names. https://wheelofnames.com/
Radner, G. (1989). It’s always something. Simon and Schuster.
Sklar, J. (2020, April 24). ‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens/#close
The Hofstede Centre. (n.d.-a). National culture: Dimensions. http://geert-hofstede.com/dimensions.html. Accessed on 26 Apr 2014.
The Hofstede Centre. (n.d.-b). Cultural tools: Cultural survey. http://geert-hofstede.com/cultural-survey.html. Accessed on 26 Apr 2014.
Toquero, C. M. (2020). Challenges and opportunities for higher education amid the COVID-19 pandemic: The Philippine context. Pedagogical Research, 5(4), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/7947
Tunstall, D. (2013). Decolonizing design innovation: Design anthropology, critical anthropology, and Indigenous knowledge. In W. Gunn, T. Otto, & R. C. Smith (Eds.), Design anthropology: Theory and practice. Bloomsbury.
United Nations. (2020, March 19). Preventing discrimination against people with disabilities in COVID-19 response. United Nations (UN) News 2020. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059762
Wayne, S., Dellmore, D., & Kalishman, S. (2012). Increasing students’ tolerance of ambiguity: The need for caution. Academic Medicine, 87(7), 835. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e3182586bdd
Wenham, C., Smith, J., Morgan, R., & Gender and COVID-19 Working Group. (2020). COVID-19: The gendered impacts of the outbreak. Lancet, 395(10227), 846–848. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30526-2
World Health Organization. (2020). Mental health and psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 outbreak. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331490/WHO-2019-nCoV-MentalHealth-2020.1-eng.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Long, J. (2021). Teaching a Tolerance for Ambiguity as a Response to Crisis Learning Contexts. In: Fayed, I., Cummings, J. (eds) Teaching in the PostCOVID-19 Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74088-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74088-7_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-74087-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-74088-7
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)