Abstract

This chapter attempts to highlight the complexities, challenges and dilemmas for one educator in adopting a pedagogy of relation in Higher Education (HE). The current agenda of HE, is focused on the neoliberal challenge of fostering economic growth through competition, quality assurance and accountability. This has created an overly transactional relationship between students and their teachers. In doing so, we have become tasked with valuing what can be measured rather than measuring what we value. Often absent in the discourse around student success in HE is the pedagogical importance of the relationship between HE students and their lecturers to the same degree that it is explored in other phases of education. Through the analysis of my diary over the course of an academic year, I captured daily events and incidents to gain a deeper understanding of my practice as relational. Thematic analysis of the diary revealed vulnerability to be at the core of these experiences for both the teacher and the HE Student. The contradicting power dynamics between students, staff, structures and systems, created dilemmas in how to respond to this vulnerability. Here, I share my analysis of examples of practice where the need to embrace vulnerability was essential for a pedagogy of relation but where it was met with resistance. This dynamic response to relational practice in the personal, social and cultural space of higher education, I describe as a ‘pedagogy of vulnerability’. I hope that by sharing my experiences and dilemmas, a dialogue can open which helps to understand the nature of the HE teacher-student relationship and its vital importance in supporting and defining graduate success and how to adjust the systems and cultures to enact a pedagogy of relation in higher education.