Teaching with Heart: Pedagogical Love in STEM for Higher Education
摘要
This chapter reviews research results from participants in Teaching With HeartTeaching With Heart, a grant funded by the John Templeton Foundation’s programJohn Templeton Foundation’s program encouraging character development through community. The project goal for Teaching with Heart is to build a community of STEM professorsSTEM professors in higher educationHigher education who are committed to teachingTeaching with loveLove in their engineering and science classrooms, to spark a movement of like-minded educators to transform engineering higher educationHigher education. Three cohorts consisting of about 20 teachers per group were recruited from the researchers’ home institutions and professional networks, expanding to reach more than a dozen institutions over the course of the project. This chapter analyzes the participant responses from the first two cohorts of professors and their students. The goal of this research is to determine the impact of Teaching with Heart on facultyFaculty and student well-beingStudent well-being, classroom practicesClassroom practices and environment, and student experiences in these classrooms. The researchers hypothesized that supporting facultyFaculty in infusing loving pedagogyPedagogy into their classrooms would result in better outcomes and well-beingWell-being for facultyFaculty and students. However, even though many stakeholders in higher educationHigher education desireDesire transformationTransformation, these changes are challenging to implement because facultyFaculty are pressured by high performance expectations, lack of time, and potential for burnout. Reflection responses from teacher participants are analyzed alongside questionnaire responses from students to bring detail and depth to preliminary conclusions about what students and facultyFaculty needNeed to feel supported in their work on college campuses. Particularly for students and facultyFaculty in the STEM disciplinesSTEM disciplines with histories of rigorRigor and rigidity centering their curriculumCurriculum, shifts in systems to allow for more flexibilityFlexibility in honoring our humanityHumanity are essential. This research suggests that institutions should provide more robust support to their facultyFaculty who engage with student well-beingStudent well-being to encourage healthy management of expectationsManagement of expectations and relationshipsRelationships. The Flow of Care model is introduced to illustrate the interconnectednessInterconnectedness of the hierarchies in educationHierarchies in education and the responsibility of institutions to support facultyFaculty so they are resourced enough to support students. A more nuanced and robust language is required to articulate the necessity of adaptability within loving pedagogyPedagogy, and can be conceived as careCare modes, differentiation in action based on variable needs.