{"id":657,"date":"2026-05-22T10:39:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/plus\/?p=657"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:39:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:39:48","slug":"modeling-a-pedagogy-of-care-in-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/plus\/modeling-a-pedagogy-of-care-in-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Modeling a Pedagogy of Care in Higher Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Anna CohenMiller <\/a>(Nord University) & Myriam Guichard<\/a> (University of Brest), May 25 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the moment we (Anna<\/a> and Myriam<\/a>) started putting together the international blended intensive program (BIP) for PhD students on teaching and learning in higher education, we knew it had to be more than just theory<\/strong>. As part of the European University alliance \u2013 SEA-EU<\/a>, we worked to consider how our students would be coming from many different perspectives and experiences. And we knew there had to be purposeful time set aside to reflect, to connect, and to learn both formally and informally both inside the classroom and beyond. Our cross-disciplinary course brought together students from eight European countries with cultural backgrounds reaching to the Americas and Asia, and from across disciplines from law to education, and computing to communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teaching PhD students how to teach is a particular kind of responsibility<\/strong>. They arrive with deep disciplinary expertise and, often, very little experience of what it actually feels like to stand in front of a room and hold a group’s attention, curiosity and trust. A one-week BIP was never going to cover everything. We knew that, we said it openly, and that honesty became the first building block of a pedagogy of care: an approach that puts the conditions for learning before the content of learning, and trusts that when people feel genuinely seen and safe, something real can happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ways students are brought together influence their sense of themselves, one another, and their learning<\/strong>. As a cultural theorist and educational advocate, bell hooks explains in Teaching to Transgress<\/a>: Education as a Practice of Freedom,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another\u2019s voices, in recognizing one another\u2019s presence (p. 8)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what does that mean in practice? As hooks continues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cthe professor must genuinely value everyone\u2019s presence\u201d (p. 8).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what then is a pedagogy of care?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A pedagogy of care is discussed across disciplines, all aiming to recognize, value, and facilitate the growth of student learning. Some seek to understand how to move caring in higher education further, recognizing the mismatch between student, teacher, and university expectations (here<\/a>) or how to develop student experiential learning and awareness to environmental justice with empathy (here<\/a>). And then others have sought to create clear steps and guidance in how to integrate caring within higher education. For instance, at the University College London, Martin Compton and Rebecca Lindner were influenced by hooks and articulated a \u201c(hu)manifesto<\/a>\u201d to integrate 10 aspects in their pedagogy that include valuable steps such as humanizing the connection between people, challenging norms and normalizing \u201clearning through mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we did. <\/strong>We started building a pedagogy of care. We brought together hooks\u2019s \u201cteaching to transgress,\u201d which builds from Paolo Freire, Nel Noddings ethics of care, and transformative learning in adult education. Here are two fundamental things we did, and why we think they worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building trust<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On the first day, we took the time to go around the room with picture cards<\/a>. This facilitation tool invites people to express themselves not through academic language but through images, associations, and feelings. There was no rush; time was taken to listen to everyone\u2019s voice, including the shy ones. Every contribution was thanked. In the end, the four teachers played along too, we didn’t sit back and facilitate from a safe distance. We positioned ourselves, expressed our own associations, showed our own uncertainties, shared our experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And something began to shift. By the end of that first circle, we weren’t a group of teachers and students anymore. We were just a group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That shift happened because we made a choice, from the very first hour, to model what we were asking of the students: openness, willingness to listen, and a certain vulnerability about not having all the answers. This is what Noddings calls the ethics of care in education, and what Edmondson coined as \u201cpsychological safety\u201d: people only take the risks that learning requires when they genuinely believe the space will hold them. Trust isn’t built by telling people the space is safe. It’s built by showing them repeatedly, concretely, in the small gestures, that you mean it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also recognized that everyone in the class has something to offer – a move from deficit thinking to asset-based thinking (or asset-based pedagogy): the idea that you start from what participants bring rather than what they lack. Moll and colleagues refer to this also as \u201cfunds of knowledge\u201d – a recognition that we all bring our our lives and contexts and cultures with us, and each of us brings value. We also decided to use a flipped classroom model that allowed participants to share their own work or thoughts throughout the week, inviting them to interact on a more horizontal plane, not just with each other but also with the teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being vulnerable and welcoming mistakes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We had built in \u201ccontemplative inquiry\u201d – a pedagogical and research tool that encourages self-awareness of ourselves and acceptance of others (as explained here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and in the TEDx talk here<\/a>). Critical self-reflective writing was one type of inquiry practice we used daily. Each participant was given a notebook to write in every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What wasn’t planned was that the teachers would end up writing in them, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I (Myriam) didn’t plan to write during one of Anna’s sessions. She led us in a contemplative inquiry practice from Janesick using a prompt relating to a teacher who influenced our lives. But somewhere between handing out the notebooks and watching the students settle into their own reflections, I picked up a pen too and wrote about how a biology teacher in a Texas middle school changed my outlook:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

«This biology teacher had the most impact on me as a human being but also as a future teacher. It was the first time I saw a human being instead of a persona… He was fun and creative, had unconventional methods but still made sure to cover content in a way that related to the real world.»<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Around the room, others were writing too. They later shared, not just one or two of them, but almost everyone wanted a chance to share their experiences and feelings too: about strict but passionate teachers, about guides who helped them believe in themselves, about teachers who inspired an entire generation to follow in their footsteps, building confidence and ability in students. Another teacher, Antonio, shared that his model had come not from a real classroom but from a film, one that had given him, as a shy student, both hope and a sense that another way of teaching was possible. It resonated. Our models don’t always come from our own teachers or the traditional curriculum. For some of the PhD students sitting with us that week, the BIP was perhaps the first time they had been genuinely invited to ask the question of what kind of teacher they wanted to become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the reflective writing made visible, for teachers and students alike, is that there is no definitive answer to the question of what makes a good teacher. And that’s precisely the point. Our goal was never to hand PhD students a checklist on how to be a good teacher in Higher Education. It was to create a shared reflective space and trust each person to start building their own answer, one that will keep evolving, through experience, for the rest of their teaching lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, in itself, is what Sch\u00f6n calls the reflective practitioner: not someone who has arrived, but someone who keeps learning from the inside of their own practice. A critically reflective teacher as Brookfield calls it. And Dweck’s research on growth mindset reminds us that this orientation, towards learning rather than performing and towards mistakes as data rather than failure, has to be modelled, not just mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In showing our human imperfection and openly discussing it, we showed how to adjust, pivot, and be what CohenMiller and colleagues refer to as \u201crigidly flexible\u201d – we had the learning objectives always in mind, through the lens of a pedagogy of care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tried to model it. We didn’t always get it right. That was also part of the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what about you? How do you model your profession for others learning in the field? How does showing imperfection help in that process?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n