Relational pedagogies for contemporary times

This keynote will explore the concept of relational pedagogies in higher education, and the implications for teaching and learning in contemporary higher education. Relational pedagogies involve thinking about relationships, connections and care in higher education. Thinking about connections is not a new idea. But what is new are the pressures upon forging connections in universities (and beyond). For example, there is a plentiful literature on the difficulties of academic life where institutions have been described as environments that are both uncaring and unhealthy. Educators are increasingly concerned about how to foster student wellbeing, and experiences of belonging, as well as engaging with new and challenging questions regarding how artificial intelligence will reorientate engagement and connection. This session explores how we might engage in meaningful connections with others in contemporary universities. In doing so, I explore ideas such as partnership, vulnerability, authenticity and trust, and how we might think about these ideas and use them in different ways to develop meaningful ways to engage with diverse students.

A further understanding of relational pedagogies requires us to think more deeply about the concept of relationality. In this keynote, I will also introduce some theoretical approaches, for example posthumanism and sociomaterial concepts, to think about relational connections in ways that position the teacher or student as entangled within a web of relations, that includes nonhuman others, spaces and things. For example, never has it been more important to think about digital technologies and the relational role that they play. More than mundane tools, technologies work as agentic actors, changing the ways in which teaching and learning is understood and enacted. I suggest that thinking in new ways about relationality and connection enables us to ask different questions, and to engage in a critical practice that enables us to notice our students, institutions and learning spaces anew.

Biography
Dr. Karen Gravett is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Associate Head (Research) at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education. She is a member of the Society for Research in Higher Education Governing Council, a member of the editorial board for Teaching in Higher Education, and Learning, Media and Technology, and Associate Editor for Sociology. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor for the Centre for Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University. Karen’s latest books are: Gravett, K. (2025) Critical Practice in Higher Education, and Gravett, K. (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education.