Led by Dr Alison Purvis @DrAlisonPurvis

Compassionate, positive, and caring interactions in learning and teaching are important because they can create psychological safety, encourage engagement, and develop a sense of belonging for everyone (Burke & Lemar, 2021).  Thoughtful staff-student interactions allow students to develop the skills and confidence to make them successful in life. Where there is compassion, mistakes can be made as necessary for learning and without fear of judgement (Brown, 2016).  Demonstrably person-centred approaches can help to mitigate the challenges some students experience.  However, do we have the skills and confidence to support students in a way that is more human and compassionate, and which requires more openness and vulnerability? How can we ensure that students feel cared for yet challenged to achieve their best? Asking academic colleagues to adopt compassionate pedagogy alone is unlikely to produce a transformational change in their interactions with students. Colleagues must be supported to do so, leaders must role-model the behaviours of care and compassion, and courageous leadership needs to be visible (Della-Latta & Burkett, 2021).

The role of staff in creating the conditions for compassion, empathy, care, kindness, and concern is evidenced as a core requirement for a student experience that allows students to thrive (Waddington, 2017).   Compassionate pedagogy contributes to positive interactions between students and tutors which build confidence and competence leading to a more positive experience and potentially a greater commitment to life-long learning.  Being in a state of contentment, safety, and connection allows for students to be driven to engage in their learning (Waddington, 2017).

A related aspect of being a compassionate practitioner is that of carrying out culturally responsive teaching (CRT) where tutors actively adopt inclusive practices which recognise the diverse backgrounds of their students and provide diverse learning environments (Sanger, 2020). When student diversity is understood and valued, the learning environment becomes richer for everyone. Humanising teaching in online environments is even more important when minoritised students of colour are shown to be less likely to achieve compared to their white or Asian counterparts (Pacansky-Brock et al, 2020). There is clearly a need to develop the knowledge and confidence to adopt inclusive practices in all types of learning environments. 

There are some simple guideposts that can be used to ensure compassion and inclusion are at the forefront of our approaches to learning, teaching, and assessment, and our approaches to working with each other:

• Avoid assumptions apart from the assumption that everyone is experiencing unseen challenges and deserves our compassion
• Operate from a place of abundance, there is space for everyone to thrive
• Give opportunities for collaborative reflection – what went well, what could be done differently
• Seek to learn about differences and think about how diversity can be appreciated
• Offer mutual respect and authenticity for genuine learning relationships

Compassionate and inclusive pedagogy does not exclude or diminish any individual and gives everyone the opportunity to learn, thrive and succeed.

References

Brown, B. (2016). Brené Brown encourages educators to normalize the discomfort of learning and reframe failure as learning. About Campus, 20(6), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1002/abc.21224

Burke, K. & Larmar, S. (2021) Acknowledging another face in the virtual crowd: Reimagining the online experience in higher education through an online pedagogy of care, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(5), 601-615, https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2020.1804536

Della-Latta, J., & Burkett, K. (2021). From popular theory to practical application: How Brené Brown’s theories of courageous leadership inform the fields of international education. Adult Education, and Online Education. In B. Kutsyuruba, S. Cherkowski, & KD Walker (Eds.), Leadership for Flourishing in Educational Contexts, 163-176.

Pacansky-Brock, M., Smedshammer, M., & Vincent-Layton, K. (2020). Humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education. Current Issues in Education, 21(2). Retrieved from https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1905

Sanger, C.S. (2020). Inclusive Pedagogy and Universal Design Approaches for Diverse Learning Environments. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1628-3_2

Waddington, Kathryn. (2017). Creating Conditions for Compassion. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57783-8_4.

Biography

Alison is an Associate Dean Teaching and Learning at Sheffield Hallam University and has over 25 years of experience in higher education. She is a teaching and learning specialist with research interests in higher education practice, digitally enhanced learning, inclusive practice, physiology of exercise, and public health.