Problem-Based Simulations and Human Rights: Exploring Secondary Students’ Actions and Negotiations in a Model UN Summer Camp Regarding the Ukrainian-Russian Conflict

This paper examines student deliberation of complex global issues through a global education framework. Participants include 30 rising 10th through 12th grade students from across the country per year who attended a Model UN-style Global Affairs camp on the ways in which they could engage with and discuss world issues, specifically the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, over a 2-year period. We analyze multiple data sources, including open-ended surveys, field notes, and artifact collections, through inductive coding and triangulation to evaluate the depth of student understanding of the conflict. We find that students garnered immediate support for Ukraine while learning about the human rights transgressions and implications of the conflict in addition to gaining understandings of the world. By focusing on the impact of deliberation, we close by shifting our focus to supporting educators in our mission of teaching students how to deliberate complex global issues in traditional classroom settings.