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Embracing relational pedagogy in higher education

I’m an unabashed advocate for relational pedagogy in higher education. Almost every session I deliver, I try to incorporate the idea of students as partners, as an ethic for higher education. I see students as partners as an extension of the values associated with relational pedagogy. The idea I tend to guard a bit more is that students do not need to be perfect learners to be worthy of an instructor’s respect, empathy, and care for their experience as learners. Students do not have to be dazzling stars to be worthy of receiving an instructor’s curiosity and interest in their success and well-being. I recognize that this stance might be challenging for some educators, so I’m careful about how vocal I am without suggesting some pathways for educators to practice relational pedagogy.

Kindness as part of relational pedagogy

As I’m developing a September session on kindness in higher education, I’m encouraged by the recent publications dedicated to the topic. It’s not about an instructor being sugar and spice and everything nice. Kindness and relational pedagogy align more with critical pedagogy, trauma-informed pedagogy, and the commitment to removing barriers to student success. There’s also the implicit effect of not re-traumatizing students who have complex struggles. For instructors committed to similar approaches and providing scaffolding to help students meet their goals, relational pedagogy implies relationship building. Relational pedagogy can’t always be decided before getting to know students, but there are some things that can be done in advance of a lesson or meeting students.

Consider punitive language in course outlines or assignment directives. Punitive language is so normative that one might not see any harm in it. I’ll admit there was a time when I thought of punitive language as necessary in order to be firm with students. Now, I’ll ask – is it possible to be firm as an instructor without the harsh tone of penalties in statements such as: Students will receive zero if assignments are not submitted by the deadline. How about reframing the statement?

Assignments must be submitted by the stated deadline to receive meaningful feedback and credit. If you experience extenuating circumstances (e.g., illness, emergency), please contact me before the deadline to discuss options.

In my experience, when students have options to address emergencies or life events that interfere with their ability to meet deadlines, more often than not, they do not want unnecessary extensions. I recall a student needing an extra day for a very valid life event. I suggested even an additional day and they declined, insistent that they only needed one day. A student team member who was present for the conversation (I think there to give moral support), whispered to them, “take it, take it” (meaning the extra 2 days) but they were not interested in exploiting the extension. I have not forgotten that interaction and the mutual benefit – an extension for the student’s wellbeing and a renewal in my optimism that students are genuinely trying. Years later, Denial’s discourse on kindness pedagogy makes sense to me. Denial says it is a practice of “believing students” who express struggle, even though there is always the risk that some students try to exploit kindness.

I would rather take that risk, and deal with exceptions as they arise, than make life more difficult for students struggling with grief or illness or even an overpacked schedule or faulty electronics.

(Denial, 2024, p. 9)
A book titled 'A Pedagogy of Kindness' by Catherine J. Denial is resting on a wooden table with an ink pen placed on top.

Relational pedagogy and kindess come from the social justice premise – beneficial for all and necessary for some. Another way to foster this is by having conversations about educational and administrative processes and addressing gaps in understanding. Are there other times in the course to have conversations about how institutional deadlines influence some course deadlines? Are there other phrases that can be welcoming and suggestive that the instructor sees the students as apprentices and eventually colleagues in the field? That’s the mindset that crept up on me when I decided that my postsecondary teaching should be helping students to excel beyond my current expertise.

Why we do education or what education is for me has always been to support the evolution of our humanity to support students in developing the capacities to contribute to the world in ways that affirm relationships of love and compassion and solidarity…we don’t just learn how to do relationships. Antonia Darder (2022)

(McNutt, 2022)

Think about it, wouldn’t you want your current students to be exceptional in their field by the time you’re ready to step away? Perhaps that’s the inching toward relational pedagogy that is possible for those who are on the fence about kindness in relational practice. Seeing students as future colleagues and leaders might just shift how we relate to them and how we plan powerful and empowering teaching and learning experiences.

*Note relational pedagogy is not strictly anthropocentric, but that’s for another conversation.

Inspirations

Clegg S., & Rowland S. (2010). Kindness in pedagogical practice and academic life. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(6), 719–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2010.515102

Denial, C. J. (2024). A pedagogy of kindness. University of Oklahoma Press.

Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. Jhu Press.

McNutt, C. (Host). (2022, October 22). A pedagogy of love w/ Antonia Darder (No. 120) [Audio podcast episode}. In Human Restoration Project. https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/podcasts/120-a-pedagogy-of-love-w-antonia-darder

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On the promise of the new academic year

As students get ready to begin the academic year and return to post-secondary, or begin a new program, I imagine there’s some questioning around “is this the right choice for me” and “this is definitely the right choice for me” in light of the options that are not post-secondary. For me, even when it was the expected path after secondary school, the question of “is this the right major for me?” was my internal musing about the right choice. 

Now, in the last weeks of August, while I appreciate the quieter corridors during the summer weeks, I look forward to the first week of September. I have an unparalleled vicarious enjoyment of the first week of the semester and the buzz of students trying to find their way, figuring out the weeks and months ahead. That buzz is a reminder of the promise and hope of what it means to be in post-secondary schooling and the possibilities this type of educational experience can offer.

There is no competing with other types of educational experiences, be they the learning done through life, or intentional pursuits of other kinds of development, such as learning on the job. Post-secondary can be a bubble, a temporary insulation, or conversely, a mirror of the other challenging educational experiences. 

Side thought: One of my favourite authors, Erna Brodber, uses the metaphor of the kumbla in the novel Jane and Lousia will Soon Come Home. The kumbla is the protection and insulation of family, with strict regulations enforced on girl children to ensure that they are prepared to handle life on the outside of the cocoon. But if one stays in the kumbla too long, growth can be stunted and the child becomes weak and ill-equipped to survive outside of the bubble. I think the kumbla concept can tell us something about post-secondary too.

Educators can choose to curate distinctive educational experiences that are meaningful and enriching. While there are constraints in the design of post-secondary learning contexts, there are also possibilities! I’m surprised that I still have this excitement for the start of the academic year. It’s different from when I was a child, or a teen, or a young adult, or a new teacher. But the enthusiasm that bubbles up, it’s the one constant that reinvigorates my optimism in the value of what we offer in post-secondary institutions. I don’t know specifically what happened throughout my schooling that continuously reaffirmed my optimism in what happens here, but my excitement has not waned. Maybe it is because I have this unwavering hope captured in Maxine Greene’s words:

In many respects, teaching and learning are matters of breaking through barriers—of expectation, of boredom, of predefinition. To teach, at least in one dimension, is to provide persons with the knacks and know-how they need in order to teach themselves.

(Greene, 1995, p. 14)

Where do I come in, in the lives that pass through these corridors, maybe with whispered hopes and dreams for a self that will be different by graduation? I’m committed to working with educators as they curate these distinctive educational experiences for their students, with possibilities upon possibilities for being, becoming, and blossoming.

Inspirations

  • Brodber, E. (1980). Jane and Louisa will soon come home. New Beacon Books.
  • Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and
    social change    . Jossey-Bass.

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Working and writing in a generative AI time

How did I get back here?

As a higher education professional, I spend a significant amount of time writing. Generative AI has certainly helped, especially for brainstorming, creating outlines, rearranging my original material, and creating accompanying visuals. I’ll admit, there are areas where I’d like to make greater use of gen AI. But my selective use is not from dissatisfaction or trepidation with its outputs. I lean heavily into its use for topics that I feel comfortable speaking about, because I trust that I can spot its shortfalls. However, as an educational researcher, when I’m exploring something relatively unfamiliar, I turn to reputable, trusted scholars and databases.

I’m not sure how relatable this is, but some of my output slows down in the rewriting and polishing stage. I can see why a sentence or a word does not work, but I sometimes stumble over the fix. That’s why human editors are so valuable in producing quality work. I trust feedback from my colleagues far more more than I would a machine editor. Even as I am writing this, the built-in AI grammar tool is overexuberant with its suggestions for my post, but its suggestions don’t work for what I want to say and how I want to say it. With the advent of generative AI, I have become more forgiving of the flaws in my writing. A hiccupy, stuttering human-generated sentence does not always have to be fixed.

My current position (and this is subject to change) is that if a sentence sounds clunky, then I am going to release the temptation to agonize over how to rearrange it. I am certainly going to try to fix it, but I will resist the temptation to make it as flawless as possible. It may mean sitting with sentences or expressions that do not sound polished. I’m speaking specifically about writing as inquiry (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) or writing as discovery. For me, the flow of discovery is stunted when I am caught up in the imperfections of a first draft.

And that’s why I’ve found myself returning to academic blogging in an age of generative AI. There is an abundance of content and output created and shaped by generative AI, and this has made some processes easier for me. Generating images to illustrate my text, I lean heavily into that. But I don’t want my writing as inquiry voice to be cleaned up by gen AI. Just as I love reading work that sounds like there is a person who composed it, with a style and cadence that evokes a living, breathing, imperfect human on the other side, I want to embrace that imperfection in flow and expression, especially in the inquiry stage of a project.

The following is the gen AI rewriting my post to make it pithy:

  • In my current position, I’m working in a time where generative AI is becoming more and more common and useful. Gen AI is great for brainstorming and creative exercises, and its outputs are so diverse. It has been very helpful for my writing, especially for brainstorming, creating outlines, rearranging my original material, and creating accompanying visuals. There’s been some trepidation from some people because of the high potential for misuse of this kind of technology, but so far it seems mostly trustworthy and I like the results.

I can say I definitely do not like the results. It’s not what I sought to say. At all. For writing as inquiry, exploring and understanding, a run-on sentence, a sentence fragment, faulty parallelism, and misplaced commas, I’ll make a welcome peace with the imperfections of the first draft outputs and try to obsess less over the clunky mess.

Inspiration

Richardson, L. & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Sage.

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Silence in higher education classrooms

This is about invitations. Invitations to how we hold space for student identities (plural), intersectionalities, developmental stages, and imagined trajectories. I’d like to invite educators to reframe silence as a sign of difficulty with course material.

When teachers invite students to verbally participate in classroom interactions, student silence is most often assumed to indicate disengagement or a failure to participate.

(Schultz, 2009, p. 11)

Imagine visiting a new planet and you’re in your first class for interplanetary collaborations. The journey to the planet was a little unsettling. You had to get used to zero gravity, among other things. Your classmates from across the galaxy seem to be doing just fine (at least that’s what it looks like to you). The orientation classes have started, and your audio translator from your instructor’s guidelines sounds like there’s a bit of static, but you can make it out. Then comes the directive, “please share your …”

And then you wonder, is your tech working as it should? Is your translator driver up to date? What if your response is too elementary? What if it’s just plain wrong? Maybe you need to hear a few responses to get into expressing yours. But what if someone says exactly what you have? Is that even possible? Maybe you should go first?

Before a student is comfortable enough to feel ready to contribute, these intrusive thoughts are just the surface. And they don’t necessarily mean that there’s difficulty with the task per se or that there’s disengagement. Student silence is an easy target for profiling student behaviour. I’d like to challenge instructors to consider that there may be a range of actions occurring within silence and invite them to rethink their instinctive response to decide what silences mean.

Inspirations

Schultz, K. (2009). Rethinking classroom participation: Listening to silent voices. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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About my research on silence

Scholars have argued that silence is important for learning. Some even go as far to say,

Silence… appears suspended between an experience of something–often a sense of comfort and relative belonging–that is “no longer” and a second possibility that is “not yet” –the prospect of having something to say. In this sense, in its temporal structure, silence, its uncertainty and indeterminacy, appears to be remarkably similar to the experience of learning itself. (Hamelock & Friesen, 2012, p. 8)

…silence also can be a form of agency. …The choice of enacting silence for beneficial purposes in academic settings can be rich with meaning. (San Pedro, 2015, p. 513)

Literacy cannot exist without the reflection that fills silence. (Belanoff, 2001, pp. 414-416)

Silence is an active human performance…it cannot be an act of unmitigated autonomy…involves a yielding following upon the awareness of finitude and awe….it is a yielding which binds and joins. (Dauenhauer, 1980, p. 79)

Thus every word, as the event of a moment, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by responding and summoning. (Gadamer, 2013, p. 454)

Teachers can interpret the silence of students or a class of students as a lack of knowledge or understanding, or they can listen to what is communicated through the silence. Rather than a failure to understand, silence might indicate the need for more time to reflect or that ideas may be difficult to put into words. (Schultz, 2010, p. 2845)

And I leave you with the thoughts of Ted Aoki:

…an authentic person is no mere individual, an island unto oneself, but is a being-in-relation-with-others, and hence is, at core, an ethical being. Such a person knows that being an educated person is more than possessing knowledge or acquiring intellectual or practical skills, and that basically, it is being concerned with dwelling aright in thoughtful living with others. (Aoki, 2012, p. 624)

References

Aoki, T. T. (2012). Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki. London: Routledge.

Belanoff, P. (2001). Silence: Reflection, literacy, learning, and teaching. College Composition and Communication, 52(3), 399-428. doi:10.2307/358625

Dauenhauer, B. P. (1980). Silence: The phenomenon and its ontological significance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hamelock, M., & Friesen, N. (2012). One student’s experience of silence in the classroom. Retrieved from http://learningspaces.org/2012/07/13/silence/

San Pedro, T. (2015). Silence as weapons: Transformative praxis among Native American Students in the urban southwest. Equity and Excellence in Education, 48(4), 511–528. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2015.1083915

Schultz, K. (2010). After the blackbird whistles: Listening to silence in classrooms. Teachers College Record, 112(11), 2833-2849.

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The charisma of prose that gives you pause

Without being overly sentimental, I have to declare my unwavering love of Caribbean literature. I was enchanted with Caribbean literature while I lived there and now that I’m away sometimes I swoon with chagwen* and tabanca* at the lyricism. I’m currently reading The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller. I have wanted to read it from the very first time I heard Miller read an extract, when the novel was in its infancy as a manuscript. I am reading it in small bites because it is an unparalleled Epicurean experience. For example, the following image is absolutely beautiful:

The fish-women gather around concrete sinks and run metal files up and down the bodies of snappers and mackerel; bright silver scales jump into the air and land softly on the women’s heads like confetti.

(Miller, 2010, p. 7)

It evokes all kinds of nostalgia for me, an island village girl. It stirs memories of days where I would scale fish in the outdoor sink at home, and the scales would fly everywhere. It might have been a household chore, especially the cleaning after, but I enjoyed it. To have it described as confetti indeed captures the strange beauty of preparing fresh fish to eat. And by fresh, I mean fish that had not been frozen. I also used to enjoy practicing the delicate technique of parting the stomach, at the right tender spot and reaching up with my thumb and forefinger to grasp the gills and tug firmly so that all the entrails would come away in one swoop. If it was done well all that was left to be done was rinse out the fish and lay it aside for the next level of preparation for dining. Depending on the type of fish, there would be the added pleasure of the treasure of eggs. And the smell of cleaning fresh fish…it lingers, it frustrates, but it is the scent of vitality and sustenance. It is, for me, a pungent homely scent.
In some vegan circles I imagine this description is disconcerting. But I can’t apologize for the beauty and necessity of these ways of sustenance. A big part of me has chagwen which goes beyond my distance from my island home. To enjoy healthy fresh fish and that way of life already feels so remote with climate change. I think to love how animals feed us does not mean that we should harvest indiscriminately. To love how they sustain us, or just love how they are requires us to take better care of their homes. This wasn’t meant to be an eco-political meditation. But guess what, there’s no predicting where the lyricism of beautiful prose takes you; how it gives you pause. Isn’t that part of what good literature does?

*Caribbean vernacular terms which mean something along the lines of poignant heartbreak, longing, yearning for something dearly loved.

Reference: Miller, K. (2010). The last warner woman. UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; UK

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Not a book review

This is more like a book break. Generally I spend a significant amount of time reading—casual, study, academic (across several disciplines), that sometimes, even though I want to get to that highly recommended book—you know the one that all the connosieurs say is a must-read, I prefer something light. I just finished reading Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones and it was ideal for what I needed to read for leisure: an uncomplicated storyline about a complicated scenario, a bigamist juggling his two families. But it’s not quite about the bigamist. It’s more about his daughters and how they come to know each other. I suppose it might be categorized as YA literature.

A book break is an old habit I have. How best to explain it? During undergrad, sometimes right before exams, I’d pick up a novel far removed from my syllabus or related material to cleanse my mental palate. And I’m still doing it—having a book break ever so often.