Full Description
What do meaningful connections in learning and teaching look like, and how might we foster these? How might the concept of mattering be helpful for our understanding of higher education? In this book, Karen Gravett examines the role of relationships, and in particular of relational pedagogies, where meaningful relationships are positioned as fundamental to effective learning. She explores concepts of authenticity, vulnerability, and trust within learning and teaching, as well as the potential of working with students in partnership. This book examines the role of relationships between colleagues: how educators can learn from others both within and beyond higher education, as well as considering how teachers can support one another when working within challenging contemporary contexts.
Drawing upon a rich theoretical perspective that interweaves posthuman and sociomaterial theory, the book also introduces a broader conception of the relational, where relational pedagogies are understood as encompassing objects, spaces and materialities, as part of an interwoven web of relations. In exploring mattering, Gravett explores both who matters - who should be considered and valued - and the material mattering of learning. In this innovative conception of relational pedagogies, Gravett offers a broad and rich reworking of our understanding of relationality, offering fresh ways in which we might understand and conduct higher education theory and practice.
Contents
Foreword
1. Introduction
2. The Relational in Context
Part I: Relationships with Students
3. Vulnerability as Relational Pedagogy
4. Authenticity, Trust and Mattering
5. Student-staff Partnership as Relational Practice
Part II: Relationships with Others
6. Supporting Others in Higher Education
7. Learning from Others Beyond Higher Education
8. Becoming and an Ethic of (Self) Care
Part III: Relationality and the Sociomaterial
9. Things that Matter
10. The Wider Webs of Relations
11. Conclusions and Directions for Future Research
References
Index
