Building hopeful futures

At a recent professional development conference, educational psychology professor Denise Larsen fielded a question from a Jasper teacher wanting to know how she could help her students find hope as their community strives to recover from last summer’s devastating wildfire. 

It’s a common query for experts like Larsen and Rebecca Hudson Breen, who co-direct the Hope Studies Central research unit in the Faculty of Education: how do we continue to access hope in times that feel overwhelmingly hopeless?

Larsen, who was able to help the teacher identify a number of strategies to take back to her classroom, explains that the ability to mobilize hope is one of its most profound aspects. 

“Hope is a very active verb. People are mobilized by hope,” she says. “When we become active and engaged,  there’s a lot more reason to be hopeful, isn’t there? Because there’s a likelihood that something can change.”

“Being hopeful doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge the challenges that exist in the world,” adds Hudson Breen. “It just means that we’re also choosing to actively look for the hopeful possibilities.”

A world leader in hope studies

Larsen has spent much of her career advancing hope research and helping it grow into the well-recognized field it is today.

Following in the footsteps of her colleague and dissertation supervisor Ronna Jevne, Larsen has been director of Hope Studies Central since 2003, with Hudson Breen joining her as co-director last year. 

Together, they have the distinction of leading the only research unit in the world devoted to the study of hope in applied professions — and one whose work has helped establish the U of A as a leader in the study of hope. 

Their applied research focus investigates the beneficial role of hope in areas such as counselling psychology, education and health. 

For example, Larsen and Hudson Breen are co-investigators on the Strengths Hope and Resourcefulness Program for School Mental Health (SHARP-SMH) that helps teachers incorporate classroom activities that are designed to teach and grow hope.

They are also in the process of surveying Alberta teachers in order to develop multidimensional hope scales for educators. The scales will identify where hope exists for teachers and school leaders and where it is threatened, allowing targeted interventions in challenging professional roles and educational systems.

Larsen and colleagues previously developed hope scales for counseling psychology, publishing the Multidimensional Hope in Counseling and Psychotherapy Scale in 2021 to offer direction for therapeutic hope interventions in mental health contexts. 

Moving forward together

Another exciting project currently underway is the SSHRC-funded “Building hopeful futures: Climate aware career development through participatory action research,” led by Hudson Breen with Larsen and Breanna Lawrence from University of Victoria as co-investigators. 

Drawing on Hudson Breen’s past research in career development, this two-year project works collaboratively with Grade 9 students in Alberta to understand how they feel about climate change and its relation to their future. 

“The definition of hope from hope studies is that it is the ability to envision a future we want to be part of,” says Hudson Breen. “That’s exactly what this research is about: understanding what helps youth to envision a future they want to be part of, and to help work alongside them in implementing that.”

Larsen points out that this type of research is particularly important since much of the focus in hope studies has been on adults. She explains that young people help us to better understand “other-oriented hope” — hoping not just for ourselves but for other people — which in turn helps us to understand the ways in which hope can build community. 

“This is why Rebecca’s study is so critical right now as we face the climate crisis,” she adds. “If children and youth understand that this work is a way of moving forward in the world together, they don’t just learn it for Grade 9 — they can take it with them. That gives me a lot of hope for the future.”