It has long been established that teaching and learning are autobiographical endeavours, so it follows that self-study is central to sound practice. As a framework, self-study allows researchers to use their experiences to examine self-in-practice with the aim of both personal and professional growth. By its very design, it makes transparent personal processes of inquiry by offering them up for public critique. This type of public inquiry of the personal happens in at least two ways: first, through the inclusion of trusted others who can provide different perspectives on our closely held discourses; and, second, through making our research publicly available so that others might learn from our inquiries. Self-study, then, requires openness to vulnerability as we continuously re/negotiate who we are as teachers. Approaching inquiry from this perspective has at its core deepened self-knowledge coupled with intent to transform praxis. This transformation is sought through integrated ways of being and teaching that support embodied wholeness of teachers and learners. Through critical, qualitative, creative, and arts-integrated approaches, this collection seeks to advance teacher self-study and, through it, transformative praxis. Contributors are: Willow S. Allen, Charity Becker, Yue Bian, Abby Boehm-Turner, Diane Burt, Vy Dao, Lee C. Fisher, Teresa Anne Fowler, Deborah Graham, Cher Hill, Chinwe H. Ikpeze, David Jardine, Elizabeth Kenyon, Jodi Latremouille, Carl Leggo, Ellyn Lyle, Sepideh Mahani, Jennifer Markides, Sherry Martens, Kate McCabe, Laura Piersol, Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, Amanda C. Shopa, Timothy Sibbald, Sara K. Sterner, and Aaron Zimmerman.

A mentor, advisor, or even a friend? Making connections in college makes all the difference. What single factor makes for an excellent college education? As it turns out, it's pretty simple: human relationships. Decades of research demonstrate the transformative potential and the lasting legacies of a relationship-rich college experience. Critics suggest that to build connections with peers, faculty, staff, and other mentors is expensive and only an option at elite institutions where instructors have the luxury of time with students. But in this revelatory book brimming with the voices of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert argue that relationship-rich environments can and should exist for all students at all types of institutions. In Relationship-Rich Education, Felten and Lambert demonstrate that for relationships to be central in undergraduate education, colleges and universities do not require immense resources, privileged students, or specially qualified faculty and staff. All students learn best in an environment characterized by high expectation and high support, and all faculty and staff can learn to teach and work in ways that enable relationship-based education. Emphasizing the centrality of the classroom experience to fostering quality relationships, Felten and Lambert focus on students' influence in shaping the learning environment for their peers, as well as the key difference a single, well-timed conversation can make in a student's life. They also stress that relationship-rich education is particularly important for first-generation college students, who bring significant capacities to college but often face long-standing inequities and barriers to attaining their educational aspirations. Drawing on nearly 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff at 29 higher education institutions across the country, Relationship-Rich Education provides readers with practical advice on how they can develop and sustain powerful relationship-based learning in their own contexts. Ultimately, the book is an invitation—and a challenge—for faculty, administrators, and student life staff to move relationships from the periphery to the center of undergraduate education.

At a time when many aspects of the faculty role are in question, Harriet Schwartz, the author of Connected Teaching, argues that the role of teachers is as important as ever and is evolving profoundly. She believes the relationships faculty have with individual students and with classes and cohorts are the essential driver of teaching and learning.This book explores teaching as a relational practice – a practice wherein connection and disconnection with students, power, identity, and emotion shape the teaching and learning endeavor. The author describes moments of energetic deep learning and what makes these powerful moments happen. She calls on readers to be open to and seek relationship, understand their own socio-cultural identity (and how this shapes internal experience and the ways in which they are met in the world), and vigilantly explore and recognize emotion in the teaching endeavor. Connected Teaching is informed and inspired by Relational Cultural Theory (RCT). The premise of RCT is that the experience of engaging in growth-fostering interactions and relationships is essential to human development. RCT’s founding scholars believed the theory would be relevant in many different settings, but this is the first book to apply them to teaching and learning in higher education. In this book, the author shows that RCT has much to offer those devoted to student learning and development, providing a foundation from which to understand the transformative potential of teaching as a relational practice.

This book brings together contributions from international experts on early years education to explore and debate relational pedagogy across different countries and in the context of a broad international field.

Providing detailed illustrations using cases from pioneering schools around the globe at both the primary and secondary level, this book demonstrates how a relational orientation to evaluation in education can enhance learning processes, foster students' engagement and vitality relationships, and elevate the evaluation of teaching and the school as a whole.

This book brings together recent research on interpersonal relationships in education from a variety of perspectives including research from Europe, North America and Australia. The work clearly demonstrates that positive teacher-student relationships can contribute to student learning in classrooms of various types. Productive learning environments are characterized by supportive and warm interactions throughout the class: teacher-student and student-student. Similarly, at the school level, teacher learning thrives when there are positive and mentoring interrelationships among professional colleagues. Work on this book began with a series of formative presentations at the second International Conference on Interpersonal Relationships in Education (ICIRE 2012) held in Vancouver, Canada, an event that included among others, keynote addresses by David Berliner, Andrew Martin and Mieke Brekelmans. Further collaboration and peer review by the editorial team resulted in the collection of original research that this book comprises. The volume (while eclectic) demonstrates how constructive learning environment relationships can be developed and sustained in a variety of settings. Chapter contributions come from a range of fields including educational and social psychology, teacher and school effectiveness research, communication and language studies, and a variety of related fields. Together, they cover the important influence of the relationships of teachers with individual students, relationships among peers, and the relationships between teachers and their professional colleagues.

This book is a collective statement about a new approach to education - the pedagogy of relation. After revisiting a number of existing conversations, the authors bring together several theoretical traditions under the umbrella of the pedagogy of relation. This book is an appeal to develop a common frame of reference for educational approaches based on the primacy of relations in education. The authors try to understand human relations rather than educational processes, behaviors, methods, curriculum, etc. The authors also examine the dangers that a pedagogy of relations may present, and the implications such a pedagogy may have for curriculum and educational policy. The promise of the pedagogy of relation is to offer a viable alternative to dominating trends in educational thinking - trends that emphasize control over teacher and student behavior as the main way of achieving excellence.