Edubytes – Critical hope as a pedagogical framework for university teaching

By Remy Corbet on January 29, 2026

This month, our guest editor is Dr. Kari Grain, author of Critical Hope and the lecturer-coordinator of the Adult Learning and Global Change Master’s Program in UBC’s Department of Educational Studies. She presents the foundations of critical hope as a framework in higher education teaching and learning, and offers some specific examples of how university instructors are taking up this framework in their own classrooms.

“You never miss the water till the well runs dry” – This proverb and nineteenth century song lyric might offer insight as to why hope has recently become a renewed topic of interest among educators. In an era marked by global destabilization and uncertainty, university educators are being asked to do more than transmit knowledge and teach the core curriculum; we are also, increasingly, being asked to help students (and ourselves) navigate a drought of hopefulness. In my travels to speak on critical hope at campuses across the US and Canada over the past three years, university faculty and staff have shared their desire to cultivate ethical leaders, engaged citizens, and critical thinkers who can navigate complex knowledges (and despair-inducing data) without falling into cynicism, inaction, or naive optimism. Critical hope offers a pedagogical framework that supports this work, and enables learners and educators to engage with difficult knowledges while still affirming the possibilities of transformation.

The roots of critical hope can be traced to Brazilian activist-educator, Paulo Freire, who insisted that hope is not a naïve or passive disposition, but a necessary condition for meaningful educational practice and active transformation (Freire, P. (1970/1994)). For Freire, hope must be tethered to “conscientization” (conscientização), or the process of naming injustices and inequalities, understanding their systemic causes, and taking action toward a more desirable collective future (Freire, P. (1974/2021)). Without critique and critical consciousness, hope becomes hollow. But without hope, critique can collapse into despair and inaction.

Building on Freire’s work, and the critically oriented hope research of scholars across education, psychology, and sociology (and beyond), my book Critical Hope conceptualizes the idea not as something one possesses, but rather something one practices through a continuous process of grappling and uncomfortable navigation. I developed a set of pedagogical commitments – seven principles that resist simplistic narratives of progress and instead dwell in tension, contradiction and uncertainty:

  1. Hope is necessary but hope alone is not enough.
  2. Critical hope is not something you have; it’s something you practice.
  3. Critical hope is messy, uncomfortable, and full of contradictions.
  4. Critical hope is intimately entangled with the body and the land.
  5. Critical hope requires bearing witness to social and historical trauma.
  6. Critical hope requires interruptions and invitations.
  7. Anger and grief have a seat at the table.

How might critical hope and its principles show up in one’s teaching practice, and is critical hope pedagogically effective? Climate scientist and professor Dr. Rebecca Williams examined these questions through a scholarship of teaching and learning study in Michigan, where she developed a semester-long class project in which her students worked toward developing a personal praxis of critical hope. She analyzed the findings from a case study on an upper-level undergraduate course, Wicked Problems of Sustainability. Although the course curriculum centered on typical sustainability content, it was pedagogically designed using the principles of critical hope. Ultimately, the students reported a transformative change in their relationship with hope, particularly in terms of the polycrisis; their assignments and reflections demonstrated the importance of cultivating a praxis of critical hope within environmental sustainability related fields (See Williams & Grain, 2025).

Here at UBC, the Sustainability Hub and the UBC Wellness Office are also applying critical hope as a framework for supporting faculty and students with course contents related to climate and sustainability. As part of a Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund project, they have developed and are currently piloting a teaching tool, Applying Critical Hope in the Classroom, with interested faculty members. While such examples are prevalent in climate and sustainability related courses, a praxis of critical hope can be broadly useful across any discipline or curricular content that brings students face to face with knowledge that invokes a sense of despair or grief (a broad range of disciplines, to be sure). Even in times when the well feels particularly dry, critical hope affirms that how we teach hope matters – not because it guarantees desired outcomes, but because our pedagogical approach shapes how our students meet the world, and how they choose to transform and sustain it.

Additional resources

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The CTLT is located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ - speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples. These lands have long been a place of learning for Musqueam, with cultural and traditional knowledge passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.