Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (Reference Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru and Oesterich2017) neglected the “how-to” component of their proposal for increasing humanitarian efforts in the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Implementing change at an earlier point in the education process, through social justice awareness and applied service learning, is likely to lead to a more robust and fruitful shift away from a POSH bias compared to an attempt at persuading those currently in the field to adopt this change after their training (although I would never argue that the latter is utterly irrelevant). I hold an unwavering conviction that a natural route toward change would be to ensure that I-O psychology educators are explicitly focusing on the humanitarian workplace movement within our courses and that I-O professionals in organizations aid this cause by encouraging a humanitarian perspective as they train their newly hired, fresh-faced I-O graduates. The purposeful threading of humanitarian goals into I-O psychology education, in large part through service learning or civic education, is the key to our effectiveness. Without such a focus in the beginning stratum of I-O psychologists’ training, our other well-intentioned attempts at shifting the field's focus toward humanitarian concerns may be in vain. Below, I offer suggestions to reach this goal.
Importance of Service Learning and Civic Education
First, it is pertinent to note that the actual route for rallying I-O psychologists in training around the value of humanitarian efforts matters a great deal. However eloquently and expertly crafted we believe our own lectures are, knowledge disseminated by this means is not conducive to building empathy for people in poverty. Instead, I-O psychologists in training are more likely to take a humanitarian perspective to heart and be more motivated to focus on individuals in desperate need once they are in the workforce if they have had opportunities for deep community involvement. I argue we must purposefully integrate content from our I-O psychology courses into outside-of-the-classroom experiences towards this goal.
Service learning is “the integration of academic material, relevant service activities, and critical reflection in a reciprocal partnership that engages students, faculty, staff, and community members to achieve academic, civic, and personal [growth] learning objectives as well as to advance public purposes” (Bringle & Clayton, Reference Bringle, Clayton, McIlrath, Lyons and Munck2012, p. 105). This definition is verbose, but it does include most of the important “pieces” of why this type of learning is effective and especially relevant for arousing interest in humanitarian workplace psychology. The emotional component is one that is not included in the quote above, however. Anecdotally, I can attest to the creation of students’ emotional connections with individuals/communities in poverty by reading my students’ reflection journal assignments, observing their faces when they present their projects to nonprofit directors, or listening to stories they share after engaging directly with communities in need through service learning efforts. This technique brings to life I-O psychology content by awakening our students to what is happening beyond their classrooms or universities. This is where we will build humanitarian efforts within our field.
Increasing civic education, which is reciprocal learning between students and those they are working with during service learning, within college-level curriculum has been promoted across numerous disciplines (The National Taskforce on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012) because it allows for students to be both the providers of information as well as the receivers of knowledge from those facing the difficult obstacles of oppression and poverty. Such applied learning is the best route for internalizing information because it forces those that have never lived the reality of great need to view the world with a different lens, with which they can utilize I-O psychology-related knowledge to assist such communities. For students without such prior experiences, this can create meaning far beyond what is possible solely in any classroom.
The first specific strategy I found to be effective for generating I-O psychology students’ greater understanding and passion for humanitarian work is to start courses by including readings revolving around how I-O psychologists should utilize their KSAOs (knowledge, skills, abilities, and others) to assist communities in need. This sets the stage for the expectations of the field. Building time into classes to actively engage in reading works that have strong calls to action places importance on ethics and social justice. As educators for the next generation of our field, we set the tone regarding the expectations we have for ourselves and future I-O psychologists. Foster et al.’s (Reference Foster, Scott, Rupp, Saari, Osicki, Charles and Maday2016) work, which calls for the field to partner with communities ravaged by extreme hardship in order to further the United Nation's sustainable development goals, is one such reading that is likely to be beneficial in the education of I-O psychologists. Foster et al. (Reference Foster, Scott, Rupp, Saari, Osicki, Charles and Maday2016) argue we have a responsibility to aid these causes, as we are trained in skills that are useful in furthering them. After such activities and discussions, students often pose numerous justice-related questions and project ideas that focus on those in need as opposed to ideas that are specifically directed toward for-profit organizations.
The second strategy I use to create a sense that I-O psychology and humanitarian efforts are naturally intertwined is to actually get students involved in nonprofits in order to have them apply their skills. This type of experience provides opportunities for students to speak to and learn from struggling and oppressed persons as well as those from other cultures, as my students often work with nonprofits that serve refugees and individuals below the poverty line. These learning opportunities also create situations in which students can engage with one another meaningfully and take ownership over their learning. Including project-based learning, service learning, and civic education in our I-O psychology courses where students can practice utilizing what they have learned in order to assist those in need fosters an environment conducive to empathy development. This is the essence of answering how we can initiate change in our field and minimize the POSH bias.
Skills Developed
Through civic education and service learning, I-O psychology students can develop essential skills far beyond learning specific content. Bringle, Reeb, Brown, and Ruiz (Reference Bringle, Reeb, Brown and Ruiz2016) state that service learning is useful for creating self-efficacy and building knowledge about nonprofits and current social issues, as well as developing skills such as those related to fostering communication, valuing diversity, and building consensus. Furthermore, they advocate for the expanded intentional use of service learning as a tool within higher education to help create citizens who contribute meaningfully to our society or other societies. Research also indicates that service learning increases students’ civic dispositions, critical thinking, and actual learning of course content (e.g., Gallagher, Reference Gallagher2011), as well as global awareness (Bhattacharya & Scheraga, Reference Bhattacharya and Scheraga2015). These learning experiences are also especially conducive to the development of listening, problem solving, teamwork, and leadership-related skills. My own students overwhelmingly describe having “been changed” by their service-learning experiences, growing in self-discovery, and learning about other cultures, which hopefully will lead to a life-long valuing of social responsibility practices when they are in the workforce.
By encouraging civic education and service learning, students comprehend that all I-O psychologists are capable of contributing to humanitarian efforts and are also expected to do so. The idea of educating ourselves first and then using what was learned to help others is an alluring idea to students. Because college students typically have an overwhelmingly positive response to civic education, it seems that if our field adopts this view within the training of our future generation, we may (a) attract a greater number of student candidates with prior experience in other social service-related fields, resulting in a richer interdisciplinary perspective; and we may (b) simultaneously increase the number of current I-O psychologists in training who want to assist those who are oppressed and/or in poverty. Being clear about the overlapping values of I-O psychology and humanitarian efforts is likely to be more useful in minimizing POSH biases than traditional I-O psychology training. How about the idea of motivating students to learn I-O psychology relevant skills so they may still want to work for company X or Y but are also eager to apply these skills in pro bono work by partnering with communities in need? By brazenly assuming that most of us want a larger focus on humanitarian efforts, I argue that service learning and civic education is how we can make this agenda happen.
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Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (Reference Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru and Oesterich2017) neglected the “how-to” component of their proposal for increasing humanitarian efforts in the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Implementing change at an earlier point in the education process, through social justice awareness and applied service learning, is likely to lead to a more robust and fruitful shift away from a POSH bias compared to an attempt at persuading those currently in the field to adopt this change after their training (although I would never argue that the latter is utterly irrelevant). I hold an unwavering conviction that a natural route toward change would be to ensure that I-O psychology educators are explicitly focusing on the humanitarian workplace movement within our courses and that I-O professionals in organizations aid this cause by encouraging a humanitarian perspective as they train their newly hired, fresh-faced I-O graduates. The purposeful threading of humanitarian goals into I-O psychology education, in large part through service learning or civic education, is the key to our effectiveness. Without such a focus in the beginning stratum of I-O psychologists’ training, our other well-intentioned attempts at shifting the field's focus toward humanitarian concerns may be in vain. Below, I offer suggestions to reach this goal.
Importance of Service Learning and Civic Education
First, it is pertinent to note that the actual route for rallying I-O psychologists in training around the value of humanitarian efforts matters a great deal. However eloquently and expertly crafted we believe our own lectures are, knowledge disseminated by this means is not conducive to building empathy for people in poverty. Instead, I-O psychologists in training are more likely to take a humanitarian perspective to heart and be more motivated to focus on individuals in desperate need once they are in the workforce if they have had opportunities for deep community involvement. I argue we must purposefully integrate content from our I-O psychology courses into outside-of-the-classroom experiences towards this goal.
Service learning is “the integration of academic material, relevant service activities, and critical reflection in a reciprocal partnership that engages students, faculty, staff, and community members to achieve academic, civic, and personal [growth] learning objectives as well as to advance public purposes” (Bringle & Clayton, Reference Bringle, Clayton, McIlrath, Lyons and Munck2012, p. 105). This definition is verbose, but it does include most of the important “pieces” of why this type of learning is effective and especially relevant for arousing interest in humanitarian workplace psychology. The emotional component is one that is not included in the quote above, however. Anecdotally, I can attest to the creation of students’ emotional connections with individuals/communities in poverty by reading my students’ reflection journal assignments, observing their faces when they present their projects to nonprofit directors, or listening to stories they share after engaging directly with communities in need through service learning efforts. This technique brings to life I-O psychology content by awakening our students to what is happening beyond their classrooms or universities. This is where we will build humanitarian efforts within our field.
Increasing civic education, which is reciprocal learning between students and those they are working with during service learning, within college-level curriculum has been promoted across numerous disciplines (The National Taskforce on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012) because it allows for students to be both the providers of information as well as the receivers of knowledge from those facing the difficult obstacles of oppression and poverty. Such applied learning is the best route for internalizing information because it forces those that have never lived the reality of great need to view the world with a different lens, with which they can utilize I-O psychology-related knowledge to assist such communities. For students without such prior experiences, this can create meaning far beyond what is possible solely in any classroom.
The first specific strategy I found to be effective for generating I-O psychology students’ greater understanding and passion for humanitarian work is to start courses by including readings revolving around how I-O psychologists should utilize their KSAOs (knowledge, skills, abilities, and others) to assist communities in need. This sets the stage for the expectations of the field. Building time into classes to actively engage in reading works that have strong calls to action places importance on ethics and social justice. As educators for the next generation of our field, we set the tone regarding the expectations we have for ourselves and future I-O psychologists. Foster et al.’s (Reference Foster, Scott, Rupp, Saari, Osicki, Charles and Maday2016) work, which calls for the field to partner with communities ravaged by extreme hardship in order to further the United Nation's sustainable development goals, is one such reading that is likely to be beneficial in the education of I-O psychologists. Foster et al. (Reference Foster, Scott, Rupp, Saari, Osicki, Charles and Maday2016) argue we have a responsibility to aid these causes, as we are trained in skills that are useful in furthering them. After such activities and discussions, students often pose numerous justice-related questions and project ideas that focus on those in need as opposed to ideas that are specifically directed toward for-profit organizations.
The second strategy I use to create a sense that I-O psychology and humanitarian efforts are naturally intertwined is to actually get students involved in nonprofits in order to have them apply their skills. This type of experience provides opportunities for students to speak to and learn from struggling and oppressed persons as well as those from other cultures, as my students often work with nonprofits that serve refugees and individuals below the poverty line. These learning opportunities also create situations in which students can engage with one another meaningfully and take ownership over their learning. Including project-based learning, service learning, and civic education in our I-O psychology courses where students can practice utilizing what they have learned in order to assist those in need fosters an environment conducive to empathy development. This is the essence of answering how we can initiate change in our field and minimize the POSH bias.
Skills Developed
Through civic education and service learning, I-O psychology students can develop essential skills far beyond learning specific content. Bringle, Reeb, Brown, and Ruiz (Reference Bringle, Reeb, Brown and Ruiz2016) state that service learning is useful for creating self-efficacy and building knowledge about nonprofits and current social issues, as well as developing skills such as those related to fostering communication, valuing diversity, and building consensus. Furthermore, they advocate for the expanded intentional use of service learning as a tool within higher education to help create citizens who contribute meaningfully to our society or other societies. Research also indicates that service learning increases students’ civic dispositions, critical thinking, and actual learning of course content (e.g., Gallagher, Reference Gallagher2011), as well as global awareness (Bhattacharya & Scheraga, Reference Bhattacharya and Scheraga2015). These learning experiences are also especially conducive to the development of listening, problem solving, teamwork, and leadership-related skills. My own students overwhelmingly describe having “been changed” by their service-learning experiences, growing in self-discovery, and learning about other cultures, which hopefully will lead to a life-long valuing of social responsibility practices when they are in the workforce.
By encouraging civic education and service learning, students comprehend that all I-O psychologists are capable of contributing to humanitarian efforts and are also expected to do so. The idea of educating ourselves first and then using what was learned to help others is an alluring idea to students. Because college students typically have an overwhelmingly positive response to civic education, it seems that if our field adopts this view within the training of our future generation, we may (a) attract a greater number of student candidates with prior experience in other social service-related fields, resulting in a richer interdisciplinary perspective; and we may (b) simultaneously increase the number of current I-O psychologists in training who want to assist those who are oppressed and/or in poverty. Being clear about the overlapping values of I-O psychology and humanitarian efforts is likely to be more useful in minimizing POSH biases than traditional I-O psychology training. How about the idea of motivating students to learn I-O psychology relevant skills so they may still want to work for company X or Y but are also eager to apply these skills in pro bono work by partnering with communities in need? By brazenly assuming that most of us want a larger focus on humanitarian efforts, I argue that service learning and civic education is how we can make this agenda happen.