Relational pedagogies in higher education
This exciting instance of the TeLEd Monthly Event Series will feature Karen Gravett, Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of Surrey in the UK. Dr. Gravett is a rising star in the field of teaching and learning in higher education, and it is truly an honor for us to have her join us. Her session will explore the concept of relational pedagogies in higher education, and the implications for educational policy and practice, drawing on the work undertaken for a book entitled, Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education, authored by Karen Gravett and recently published by Bloomsbury. There will be an opportunity to share experiences, discuss the ideas explored, and to ask questions.
Main content
Relational pedagogies involve thinking about relationships, connections and care in higher education. Thinking about connections is not a new idea. But what is new are the pressures upon forging connections in universities (and beyond). For example, there is a plentiful literature on the difficulties of academic life where institutions have been described as environments that are both uncaring and unhealthy. Educators are also still grappling with the impacts of the Covid pandemic, as well as engaging with new and challenging questions regarding how artificial intelligence will reorientate engagement and connection.
This session explores how we engage in meaningful connections with others, and the concept of mattering – how we feel we are valued by others. In doing so, I explore ideas such as student-staff partnerships, vulnerability and authenticity and trust, and how we might think about these thorny concepts and use them in different ways to develop meaningful engagement.
However, a further key argument is that relational pedagogies include thinking about the concept of relationality. In this seminar I engage theoretical approaches, for example posthumanism, affect theory and sociomaterial concepts, to think about relational connections in new ways. For me, theories are exciting as they create openings for thinking differently. I explore how thinking with theory offers us different starting points for education that positions the teacher or student as entangled within a web of relations, that includes nonhuman others, spaces and things. I suggest that thinking in new ways about relationality and connection enables us to ask different questions, and to notice our students, institutions and learning spaces anew.