Engagement in learning: Innovative teaching for midwifery students in a workshop on sexual violence

• Teaching sensitive topics, such as sexual violence, can be challenging. • The ICAP taxonomy focuses on interaction, active learning, and student motivation. • Our workshop methodology applies to both traditional classroom teaching and Zoom. The pedagogical framework used consists of four types of engagement: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive (ICAP) . ICAP may boost students’ learning and participation in constructing knowledge. To illustrate the application of the ICAP framework in teaching students about sexual violence, we selected a relevant case study on sexual violence and demonstrated how a teaching session was guided by ICAP. We present a workshop about rape, "The Grey Zone." The workshop consisted of students attending a lecture, reading an article, underlining significant sentences, and writing a summary of the article. The teacher scaffolded students’ understanding of gender theories based on patriarchy and concepts of agency. In a group session, students compared their summaries and created one descriptor of these summaries, which were further discussed in the classroom. The ICAP taxonomy is innovative and focuses on interaction with students. The highest level of engagement—the interactive mode—can be reached when the students in a dynamic co-interaction group session expand on each other’s knowledge and knowledge production, increasing student motivation, learning, and empowerment.