This practical resource illustrates how to establish and nurture relationships with intention, paving the way for meaningful student, instructor, and content engagement.
Torres expertly peels back the layers of disengagement prevalent in today's college classroom and demonstrates how in-person and online courses can form ecologies that empower students and teachers rather than exhaust them. Informed by a rich blend of pedagogical research, case studies, and social interdependence learning theory, this book features plentiful activities, suggestions, and templates for cultivating and connecting care throughout learning environments. A worthwhile read for any faculty member regardless of level or discipline, this book is especially relevant for those who are new to teaching, concerned with student engagement, or interested in redesigning their courses.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Who Cares? 1
1 An Interdependent Perspective of Care 12
2 Higher Education as an Ecology in Need of Care 30
3 Care Between Teachers and Content 52
4 Care Between Teachers and Students 70
5 Care Between Students 87
6 Care Between Students and Content 105
7 Care Between Teachers 124
Conclusion: We Care! 142
Index 150
About the Author :
JT Torres is Director of the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington & Lee University, USA. He is an award-winning educator and scholar who has published several articles and books about how we learn to perform particular identities as part of cultural practices and social networks.
Review :
"We need an approach to social justice in higher education more rooted in care; many people have written about this kind of social justice. Teaching, Learning, and Caring in Higher Education transitions us to something more: an approach to care more rooted in social justice—not the hollow, fluffy kind of care we often find in higher education, but the intentional, transformative kind. This book has helped me, and can help you, to make that transition."
Paul Gorski, co-author with Seema Pothini of Case Studies for Diversity and Social Justice Education
"Teaching, Learning, Caring in Higher Education: How to Sustain Interdependent Classrooms addresses a key issue of our time: how colleges and universities can create sustainable systems that support and care for faculty, staff, and students. This book insightfully integrates research and practice, and it provides the reader with an extended "care kit" of tools to transform their classrooms and institutions. The book will be of particular interest to educational developers, who play a pivotal role in building campus communities and connections."
Mary C. Wright, Professor of Education Scholarship, University of Sydney, and author of Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education
"Readers looking for an overview of the last few decades of pedagogical research combined with wide-ranging references, helpful anecdotes from the classroom, and a vibrant heart need to look no further. Teaching, Learning, and Caring in Higher Education is chock full of... you guessed it, teaching, learning, and most of all caring."
Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Senior Associate Director for Teaching & Learning at Simmons University, USA
"JT Torres has the unique ability to synergistically hold, connect and braid concepts from disparate fields, domains and perspectives to build ideas more beautiful and more powerful than to consider. This book is full of that kind of insight, which calls together energy and ideas to build unified framework of care that creates conditions for a more humanized and humanizing learning experience in higher education. It is well-researched, well-argued and relentlessly hopeful about the power of pedagogies designed for human people."
Rachael Gabriel, Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Connecticut, USA
"Find out why “teaching and learning” deserve to be forever coupled with “care” in this thoughtful, helpful, and heartful book. By giving us vocabulary, research, and concrete practices that demonstrate the inextricability of relationships and of care to teaching and learning, JT Torres reminds us that our work can (and should) be joyful and transformational."
Isis Artze-Vega, lead author and editor of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching and co-author of Connections Are Everything: A College Student's Guide to Relationship-Rich Education
"Teaching, Learning, Caring is a delight--and more, a book that we desperately need in the moment we presently occupy. Crafted in clear and vivid prose, Torres analyzes the deeply relational work at the heart of teaching, and articulates the importance of centering care for everyone connected to the classroom. Drawing from thinkers across the academy and beyond, from community wisdom as well as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and from his own experiences as an instructor, Torres writes with an infectious compassion and enthusiasm about the hard, beautiful, quixotic, and humbling work of crafting and entering into relationship-centered educational spaces. A must read."
Catherine J. Denial, author of A Pedagogy of Kindness (2024)
