Pedagogical Ecologies to Facilitate Higher Education for Genuinely Meaningful Work

Abstract

Higher education that intentionally fosters genuinely meaningful work remains on the periphery of mainstream educational systems. Despite the abundant evidence of the life-giving impacts of educational practices that support these aspirations, there are few indications that conventional higher education systems offer much attention to this important perspective, Noting that educational explorations of these possibilities are commonly limited to graduation ceremonies, human developmentalist William Damon asks: “How can we expect that young people will find meaning in what they are doing if we so rarely draw their attention to the personal meaning and purpose of what we work at in our daily lives?” Long before the Great Resignation of the 2020s, Damon portrayed a prevailing sense of emptiness—or meaninglessness—as the pressing problem facing these students. In what follows, I introduce several pedagogical ecologies intended to increasingly support college students to engage in genuinely meaningful work post-graduation.