Code of Conduct

Pedagogies of Hope in Higher Education brings us together across places, institutions, disciplines, communities and experiences to explore what hope might mean and make possible in higher education.

We hope to create this symposium together: a generous, critically engaged space where many voices can be heard, participation can take different forms, and we can encounter unfamiliar ideas, ask difficult questions, disagree, learn, co-create and grow.

Our three shared commitments—Equity, Inclusion & Diversity; Respect & Care; and Learning, Co-creation & Growth—help us do this. Our Code of Conduct puts these commitments into practice.

The symposium is hosted jointly by Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand and Michigan State University in the United States. As we gather across places, we invite you to recognise the places and relationships that enable your work, and the wider connections on which it depends.

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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Statement

We want Pedagogies of Hope in Higher Education to be a place where people with different identities, experiences, perspectives and ways of knowing can participate meaningfully. We all contribute to creating this collective space.

Equity, Inclusion & Diversity

We value the diversity of people, perspectives and knowledge that participants bring. This includes differences of culture and ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, disability, age, language, nationality and socioeconomic circumstances, among many other dimensions of identity and experience.

We also recognise that we do not participate on equal terms. Academic hierarchy, employment precarity, geography, language, caring responsibilities, disability, digital access, institutional resources and wider social, economic and geopolitical inequalities can shape who participates, whose knowledge is recognised and whose voices are heard.

Equitable participation does not require everyone to participate in the same way. We welcome participation in different forms and at different rhythms. We ask participants to make room for many voices, perspectives, ways of knowing and ways of communicating. Our collective learning, co-creation and growth depend on that plurality.

Respect & Care

Respect and care are our starting points for engagement with everyone. They should not depend on what we can see, what someone chooses to disclose, or assumptions we make about another person’s identity, experience, circumstances or position.

We understand care as an active practice: listening attentively, engaging generously, making room for others, respecting boundaries, and being attentive to how our words and actions affect the conditions in which others participate.

Care supports curiosity, candour and meaningful exchange. It enables us to engage seriously with one another and with ideas that may be difficult, unfamiliar or contested, or produce constructive discomfort.

Care does not require agreement or the avoidance of difficult conversations. Hope itself can be questioned. We welcome thoughtful disagreement, critique and questioning undertaken with respect and care.

Respect also involves intellectual generosity. Ideas shared here may be exploratory, unfinished, culturally situated or expressed outside conventional academic forms. Whose knowledge is heard, credited, questioned or appropriated is shaped by power. We ask participants to acknowledge others’ ideas appropriately and take particular care with Indigenous, community-based and culturally situated knowledges and with contributions made from different positions of institutional power and security.

Maintaining these conditions is a collective practice. We ask participants to practise these commitments in their own interactions and contribute to conditions that enable others to participate. The Hope Collective is responsible for stewarding these shared commitments and responding when support or intervention is needed.

Learning, Co-creation & Growth

We understand learning as something we do with, and through, one another. The symposium is not only about pedagogies of hope; how we create and participate in it is itself pedagogical. We invite participants to contribute to a collective process of inquiry in which knowledge, questions and possibilities can be made and remade through encounter, reflection and exchange.

Different forms of participation can enable different forms of knowledge-making. Images and objects, written and spoken reflections, asynchronous exchanges and live conversations offer different ways of knowing, questioning and contributing. Making room for these forms—and for different cultural, disciplinary and community knowledge traditions—can shape not only who participates, but what we are able to know and create together.

Bringing together different languages, cultures, disciplines, experiences and understandings creates opportunities to encounter other ways of thinking and knowing. It also means that misunderstandings and mistakes can occur.

Co-creation does not require consensus. It can involve uncertainty, difference, mistakes and constructive discomfort. We encourage curiosity, listening and reflection, and ask participants to be willing to reconsider their assumptions. When concerns are raised, we ask participants to listen, reflect on the effects of their words and actions, repair where appropriate, and be willing to change their behaviour.

Learning does not remove accountability. Growth may lie in new understandings, new questions, changed relationships, or new possibilities for thinking and acting.

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Code of Conduct

Our Code of Conduct puts these shared commitments into practice.

It applies to live sessions, discussion forums, submitted symposium material and other official symposium spaces. It also applies to private participant-to-participant interactions within the symposium context, such as contacting someone directly about their symposium contribution.

What we ask of each other

We ask participants to:

• begin from respect and care, without relying on assumptions about another person’s identity, circumstances or needs;
• engage generously with other people, their knowledge and their contributions;
• make room for many voices, perspectives, communication styles and forms of participation;
• disagree with ideas without attacking or demeaning people;
• be attentive to differences in power, privilege and institutional position;
• listen and respond constructively when concerns about language or behaviour are raised;
• respect people’s boundaries and choices about participation and contact;
• appropriately acknowledge the ideas and work of others; and
• respect contributors’ choices about how their material may be used or shared.

What is not acceptable

Conduct that harms, marginalises or undermines others’ ability to participate is not acceptable.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• harassment, discrimination, bullying or intimidation;
• microaggressions and other discriminatory, degrading or demeaning comments or behaviours;
• unwanted sexual attention or sexualised conduct;
• deliberate intimidation or sustained disruption;
• deliberately using language or forms of address that a person has asked you not to use;
• unwanted or persistent contact after someone has asked for it to stop;
• reproducing, recording or redistributing another person’s contribution without their explicit permission; and
• retaliation against someone for raising a concern.

Not every mistake or misunderstanding requires the same response. In responding to concerns, the Hope Collective will consider the nature, severity and impact of what has happened, its context, whether behaviour is repeated, and how a participant responds when a concern is raised.

Sharing ideas and contributions

We want ideas generated through the symposium to travel, while respecting the people who contribute them.

Participants are welcome to engage with and develop ideas encountered through the symposium. Without the contributor’s explicit permission, identifiable quotations, images, screenshots, recordings, creative work or substantive unpublished material must not be reproduced or redistributed. Where permission is given, appropriate attribution is expected.

Permissions concerning research use of contributions are governed separately by the approved research information and consent process.

If something happens

If something happens that leaves you concerned, uncomfortable or unsure, please reach out to us.

You can contact any of the following members of the Hope Collective: