Dr Deirdre McGillicuddy is Assistant Professor of Education in UCD School of Education and author of Educaring from the Heart – How to nurture your wellbeing and re-discover your purpose in education. The book is available here. This paper is available here.
“To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin” (bell hooks, 1994).
Introduction – Education as Societal Purpose
Education is the cornerstone of our societies. It is the foundation upon which we build our communities, re/shape our values and understand ourselves as citizens of our immediate world and beyond. Education helps us to make sense of the world around us, challenging us to engage our creativity and critical thinking skills to solve problems, instilling in us a sense of curiosity and wonder. These skills and attributes have never been as important as our increasingly interdependent world becomes more complex with issues, such as climate change, digitalisation of our societies, and political volatility, facing humanity at an unprecedented level. Such issues proffer opportunities as well as challenges, pushing us to continuously adjust and respond in pragmatic and engaged ways. Time no longer stands still for anyone. Keeping up is now an art form and critical to ensuring you don’t get left behind. This paper explores the possibilities for educaring from the heart as a transformative approach to placing care, empathy and compassion at the heart of a thriving society.
Global Transformation & Educational Intensification
Education is the linchpin upon which our societies prepare their citizens for such intensive and continuous global transformation. More recent educational policy has shifted the focus from solely on the importance of content learning to also foreground concept, problem and process-based learning (OECD, 2018). This policy approach is critical to developing problem solving and critical thinking skills and to nurturing creative and innovate competency among learners. This reflects the shifting nature of our societies, where global transformation shaping how our societies operate (through economy/jobs), interact (through relationships/citizenship/community) and are defined (through values/laws) is under constant re/formation and revelation. Knowing the ‘how to’ is now as important as knowing the ‘what’.
The intensification of time and the high expectations on education for an immediate response to global transformations means that those working within and across educational institutions are under immense pressure to embed ever-changing curricular content and pedagogic approaches into classroom practices. The expectation for an immediate response to societal crises in education is particularly challenging, placing immense pressure on an already pressurised system. Indeed, many of these responses are additive to the already expansive curriculum in educational settings without an expectation of replacing or removing existing approaches/content. To many educators it can feel like an additional straw being placed on the camel’s back with a giant step back to test whether the camel survives and remains standing. This is no more evident than with the most recent emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a key agitator across our education systems (UNESCO, 2023; OECD, 2024). Responding to this particular opportunity, or challenge depending on your viewpoint and lens, is especially challenging as the decision-making process in education is significantly more delayed than the rate at which change is happening within the field of AI.
Wellbeing in/through/with Education
Wellbeing has never been more important across our societies and in our education systems. Yet, our collective wellbeing is in decline, with statistics indicating that young people’s wellbeing, in particular, is negatively impacted (Dooley et al., 2024; Smyth & Nolan, 2022). When we contextualise our wellbeing as a symptom for how we are experiencing our lives across our increasingly complex and neo-liberal societies perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Our approach to enhancing wellbeing can be experienced as a plastering over cracks, rather than getting to and digging out the root of the problem. Education becomes the elastoplast for fixing our wellbeing crisis across our societies. There is no doubt that a thriving society for all can only emerge from a thriving and inclusive education system for all. Placing wellbeing at the heart of the work in education is critical to promoting positive wellbeing for our children and young people (Shirley et al, 2020; Taylor et al., 2024). This is promoted in public policy espousing the importance of ensuring the promotion of positive wellbeing within and across our national and international education systems. However, the wellbeing of those working in education is often overlooked as a key component of nurturing a thriving system. Educator wellbeing is critical to ensuring positive wellbeing and effective learning for all learners across the continuum of education.
Relational Pedagogy & Wellbeing
Relationships at are the heart of education – we cannot effectively educate in the absence of relational pedagogy. Relationships in/through/with education shape how we understand and define who we are as citizens of the world. Relationships are the fertile ground into which we plant seeds and grow our self-esteem, our confidence and our ability to be vulnerable and take risks when teaching and learning. The symbiotic interaction between educator and learner facilitated through positive relationships provides fertile conditions within which positive wellbeing can be nurtured within the learning environment. Positive relationships flourish in conditions where there is positive wellbeing for both educator and learner. Placing care, empathy and compassion at the heart of our relationships in education ensures we create an environment where we can take a heart-full approach to nurturing wellbeing in our classrooms/early learning settings/lecture theatres. If we are to aspire to high quality and effective education it is critical to consider how best to nurture positive relationships to enhance wellbeing in our system with ripple impacts for our society.
Policy Drivers & Wellbeing in Education
The impact of policy on the everyday practices across our education system cannot be underestimated. Policy drivers can create the conditions within which our education system thrives, or contracts, and where outcomes can be unintentional as well as intentional. Policy can create important spaces to foreground critical aspects and values we aspire to in/through/with education, such as wellbeing. In contrast, policy can constrain educator agency, impacting on their ability to focus on nurturing wellbeing through their relationships with their learners. Initiative overload driven by the introduction of new policy in response to crises in our societies (such as climate change and economic/social/political volatility) can impede the time available to educators to engage in/through/with relational pedagogy. While policy can provide the space and language for identifying and naming challenges or gaps in and across our education systems, it can also be experienced as a reductionist yard stick against which an educator’s effectiveness is evaluated and measured. The divergent tensions between the aspirations espoused by policy and the translation of policy into practice contributes directly to the wellbeing of those working and learning across our education systems. A careful and considerate approach to policy making and implementation is key to ensuring we are intentionally contributing to positive wellbeing in education.
Educaring – A Transformative Approach for Wellbeing
Educaring places care, empathy and compassion at the heart of our educational encounter to nurture wellbeing and contribute to a flourishing and thriving of our wider societies. It is a call to action, encouraging practitioners, policy makers and learners to place greater importance on slowing down to nurture wellbeing, creativity and innovation in education. Educaring begins with intentionality, to place care, empathy and compassion at the core of our educational policy and practice. It empowers learners and educators to engage in/through/with more meaningful and connected relationships to allow for more authentic engagement through the pedagogic encounter. To be cared for, and to care about and for other individuals is at the heart of our humanity and what it means to be an empathetic citizen of the world. Caring for the souls of our students can only enhance their wellbeing, role-modelling the importance of caring for the souls of fellow citizens across our societies. Expanding and deepening such relational power demands mental, physical, relational and emotional energy and, as such, caring about and for educator and learner wellbeing as a key aspect of this process is absolutely critical. Educaring from the heart proffers a pragmatic framework through which wellbeing and creativity can be realised through the pedagogic encounter, embedded within the everyday interactions between educator and learner, enhancing wellbeing across the education system.
Conclusion – Educaring from the Heart for Societal Transformation
Educaring from the heart calls for an integrated and embedded approach to wellbeing and creativity to guide educators, policy makers, and those working within and across education to refocus their attention on building heart-full societies that can challenge the complexities and challenges facing humanity – and ultimately change the world. Policy makers play a key role in creating a space and language for valuing this educational purpose which places care, empathy and compassion at the heart of relationships to nurture wellbeing in education. The transformative possibilities for our societies are profound, with the potential to contribute to more empathetic, compassionate and care-full citizens empowered to tackle future societal challenges in more creative and democratic ways. Embarking on a journey for such educational and societal transformation begins with a first step – caring for the souls of our students and educators within and across our education systems. Stating such an aspiration as a clear outcome in policy and for practice provides an opportunity to place values at the heart of our education systems, on a par with educational attainment and outcomes. To value our educators and learners is to value heart-full societies where care, empathy and compassion are at the core of our humanity.
References
Dooley, N., Power, E., Healy, H., Cotter, D., & Cannon, M. (2024). Mental health of Irish adolescents following the COVID-19 pandemic: results from a population-based cross-sectional survey. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 1–9. doi:10.1017/ipm.2024.16
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700280
OECD (2018), “The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030”, OECD Education Policy Perspectives, No. 98, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/54ac7020-en.
OECD (2024), Education Policy Outlook 2024: Reshaping Teaching into a Thriving Profession from ABCs to AI, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/dd5140e4-en.
Shirley, D., Hargreaves, A., & Washington-Wangia, S. (2020). The sustainability and unsustainability of teachers’ and leaders’well-being. Teaching and Teacher Education, 92, 102987. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102987
Smyth, E., and Nolan, A. (2022). Disrupted transitions? Young adults and the COVID-19 pandemic, ESRI Research Series 142, Dublin: ESRI, https://doi.org/10.26504/rs142
Taylor, L., Zhou, W., Boyle, L., Funk, S., & De Neve, J-E. (2024). Wellbeing for Schoolteachers (Report No. 2). International Baccalaureate Organization.
UNESCO (2023), “Education in the age of artificial intelligence” in The UNESCO Courier, No 4 downloaded from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387029_eng (3/12/24).