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.

This book offers a psychoanalytic perspective on learning and teaching and on many of the issues which preoccupy those who work in educational the origins of learning in children’s early relationships and at factors which help and hinder the educational process in later childhood and adolescence. Amongst the topics addressed in the book are the significance of play and playfulness, the impact of change, separation, times of transition, bereavement, bullying and racism. The author has aimed to set well-established psychoanalytic ideas about lear of current educational practice and to look at the teacher’s experience alongside that of the students.

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.

“After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss. The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be better. The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.” This is a book for the newlywed to the empty nester, for those thinking about getting married or remarried, and for anyone looking for illuminating advice that will make a real difference to getting the most out of marriage today.

Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a book about learning to improve your love life. After 30 years of clinical research and treatment of patients with unhealthy love lives, I now recognize that most people are not in control of their love lives. Why? Because most people don't know what they've learned about and from the love relationships in the course of their lives. Love relationships that started in their families of origin the moment they were born. If you don't know what you've learned about love relationships, then what you've learned is in control of your love life, healthy or unhealthy. If what you've learned was healthy, no problem. Chances are you'll simply replicate what you've learned about love relationships. If what you've learned was unhealthy, you could be unwittingly making the same love life mistakes over and over again because of what you've learned. Learn to Love will show you how to identify what you've learned about love relationships, how to unlearn what is unhealthy, and practice something new, healthy, and the opposite of what you've learned, now as a corrective in your adult love life. This simple learning formulate has helped many of my patients begin taking control of their own love lives, as well as helping me improve my own love life. Learn to Love will help you learn how to take control of your love life. Dr. Thomas Jordan

This insightful book shows how prioritising loving relationships in the primary school between practitioners and children helps secure children’s emotional well-being, improves behaviour and leads to more successful learning. It identifies the fundamental values that underpin effective learning encounters and provides the practical tools and language to realise deep connections with children. Combining theory with personal experience the authors present relationship-based practice as a robust and credible pedagogic approach to teaching and learning. The book offers unique features such as ‘Shared language’ to support and promote a rich, meaningful dialogue and ‘The lens of the authors’ offers practical and realistic contexts to help teachers apply theory and ideas from personal experience. Giving educators the confidence to teach with the relational qualities of love, trust, respect, and empathy, this is essential reading for all teachers wanting to develop authentic relationships with the children they care for.