Toward Learning and Justice, Through Love

Abstract

This chapter responds to the call for educational developers to isolate the one perspective that guides our work. It retraces the author’s career steps, seeking the origin of love as a guiding principle, and describes its evolution and application during her career. To do so, the piece includes a theoretical perspective on love and argues that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to learning and justice. It suggests the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our field, notes associated risks and rewards, and suggests resources for doing so.

Keywords: diversity, faculty development, leadership development; social justice, social justice

Strategy. Intentionality. Learning centeredness. Cultural Responsiveness. Each of these is a strong contender for the one perspective that steers my understanding of educational development. But then I picture Allan, retired Marine Biology professor, quickly taking off his glasses when he sees me to keep them safe during our now ritualistic (yet clumsy) hug—and I am overcome with the principle that transcends all others: love. Even as I write the word, I hear a litany of counterarguments: too soft, gendered, idealistic, naïve, stereotypical. But when I accepted the challenge of engaging in this thought exercise, of isolating the one perspective that guides me in educational development, love rose to the top of the list, and endured. Thus, I began retracing my steps, seeking the origin of this guiding principle in my work, and charting its progression and application during my educational development career. Here, I will share that story, illustrating that my conceptions of love in educational development have evolved from my love of and the love in my teaching; offer a theoretical perspective on love; and argue that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to teaching, learning, and justice. I likewise suggest the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our institutions and field, note the associated risks and rewards, and suggest resources with which to strengthen our ability to harness its potential.

On Love, Teaching, and Learning

Like many English majors past and present, I gravitated toward journalism. About six months after earning my Bachelor’s degree, I secured a staff writer position at a magazine based in New York City. A few months in, I realized this was not a good career fit, returned to my parents’ hearth in my home “town” of Miami, and enrolled in a Master’s program in literature. Taking the required “teaching writing” course, I was fascinated by the field of rhetoric and composition, of which I had no prior knowledge, and by the ambitious course goals. How could my instructor possibly prepare my classmates and me (most of us had no teaching experience whatsoever) to effectively teach an introductory writing class in only a few months’ time? Though incredulous, I sought to defy the odds, devoting countless hours to reading everything I could find regarding writing instruction, even neglecting other classes, fueled by a sense of urgency. Students, their families, and this institution were counting on me to be competent. Needless to say, neither the course nor my “information gathering” approach sufficed, and I felt far from competent in my teaching and less focused on learning than I might have been. Instead, like Tomkins (1991) I was concerned with “(a) showing the students how smart I was; (b) showing them how knowledgeable I was; and (c) showing them how well prepared I was for class” (p. 654). Despite my misplaced attention, ineffectualness, and the long hours and mounds of student papers, I quickly fell in love with teaching, and by the end of the first semester, was certain I would teach, possibly teach writing, forever.

My love of teaching did not dictate that love would inform my teaching, yet there were early signs this would be the case. I did not (indeed, would not have dared) use the word love explicitly during my early career, but it materialized in the ways I related to my students and in their reactions to me. I recall a colleague asking why my students indicated in the course ratings that I cared about them, a question I found perplexing. She may have been wondering not whether or why I cared so deeply for my students, but rather how I communicated this sentiment such that students themselves would use the term care. I was not yet familiar with Fromm’s (1956) The Art of Loving,[1] but it did not surprise me to learn that care is one of four basic elements “common to all forms of love” in his theory (p. 24). Elaborating on care, Fromm writes that “love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love” (p. 25). This action–orientation mirrors that of teaching, and students witness this care in the time and effort we devote to their learning and development, in and outside of our classrooms, as learners and as individuals.

The other three essential elements of love in Fromm’s theory are responsibility, respect, and knowledge, and they too corroborate the affinities between love and teaching. Fromm defines responsible as “able and ready to ‘respond,’” (p. 26) another reminder that love is active in nature. In turn, the notion of loving by “responding” is reminiscent of the centrality of feedback to teaching and learning (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Fromm views respect as “the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality; [and] means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is” (p. 26). This part of his theory bears an uncanny resemblance to thoughts on education and what it means to teach and to learn that Dewey had articulated about 20 years prior. In a brief, satirical New York Times piece, Dewey (1933) offers a vision of an educational ideal, told in the form of a report on his visit to Utopia. Insisting the Utopians were mystified by our educational system, Dewey nonetheless asked about the objectives of their educational activities. Although the Utopians struggled to comprehend the question, Dewey deduced that their purpose of schooling

Dewey’s depiction of an educational ideal appears to share core features, then, of Fromm’s definition of respect: individualism and the psychological construct of acceptance. Often credited to Rogers’ (1951) discussion of therapists’ acceptance of and respect for clients, acceptance represents both an aspiration for the therapist and a complementary client target, the acceptance of self. In teaching, we too might aspire to accept our students as they are and as individuals, and aim to help them accept themselves.

Fromm identifies knowledge as the fourth essential element of love, and describes it in relation to the other components of his theory: “To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge. Knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern” (p. 27). The construct of knowledge is thus itself well aligned with teaching and learning. For one, in establishing the relationship between respect and “knowing” someone, Fromm underscores the widely accepted tenet that faculty would benefit from taking the time to get to know students (Ambrose et al., 2010). Knowledge as an element of love also points to the seemingly obvious: that we must know our content. As Bain (2004) has written, “Without exception, outstanding teachers know their subjects extremely well” (p. 15). They also “have at least an intuitive understanding of human learning akin to the ideas that have been emerging from research in the learning sciences,” (p. 16) he adds. Here, I acknowledge (and celebrate) the considerable progress made of late in the discourse on evidence based teaching practice (Beach, Sorcinelli, Austin, & Rivard, 2016), and in the growing understanding that faculty members’ subject knowledge base would be enhanced by the inclusion of principles of learning.

Knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect are all features in bell hooks’ (1994) approach to teaching, which she also associates with love. Like Fromm, hooks considers love’s “ingredients” to be interrelated, a configuration she describes in an interview with Robertson:

Like Dewey, hooks acknowledges the difficulty of living up to this ideal. And in admitting that she (and we) may not always like all of our students, hooks extends her argument about the centrality of love to teaching, suggesting that a negative affective response to students does not absolve us from our responsibility to their learning. This reminds me of Megan, rolling her eyes, arms tightly crossed, disrupting my otherwise idyllic writing class. Although my initial diagnosis had been: attitude problem, I had the sense to request to see her privately, during which she narrated a series of experiences with high school writing instruction that would make anyone’s eyes roll and arms cross. Today, when a student appears disrespectful or a faculty member complains about student behavior, I recollect a Vincent Ruggerio quote Doyle (2011) cites as a core tenet of building relationships with students: “Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance” (p. 74). When love informs our teaching, we take the time to move past our assumptions and first impressions, and it is incumbent on us to help faculty do the same.

From Teaching to Educational Development

I entered the field of educational development through the same path many of us take, through teaching and the professoriate (Beach et al., 2016); and in my case, abruptly and reluctantly. While teaching English composition, I enrolled in higher education courses to better understand the inner workings of academia; and, frankly, because I could not pass up tuition free courses. Six years into my teaching career, I was offered the opportunity to earn a doctorate in higher education—but on two conditions: I had to leave my teaching job and become a teaching assistant (TA), again. And it was no ordinary TA ship. For 24 hours per week, I would oversee the university’s Preparing Future Faculty and TA development programs. I accepted the position, and on my first day, I was told that TA Orientation was a couple of weeks away and, as there was no Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at this university, I was it—a lone TA who taught TAs about teaching. My initial foray into our profession was characterized by fear, lonesomeness, and anxiety. Love was nowhere in sight.

Still, I approached this new work, which asked me to instruct and model teaching to TAs, via my primary experience as a teacher. Had I been pressed to describe my new role, I would have perhaps referred to it as faculty development, that which “focuses on the improvement of the individual instructor’s teaching skills” (Diamond, 2002). Here, I evoke a somewhat contentious view—that educational development resembles (though is certainly not equal to) teaching, especially in the case of faculty development in which we are teaching fellow faculty, in the form of orientations, workshops, and consultations. Yet even as I consider my work now under the inclusive term educational development that describes “a profession dedicated to helping colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities” (Felten, Kalish, Pingree, & Plank, 2007, p. 93), I still see that work evolving from the love I learned and used in teaching—and which continues to serve me well in my role.

Indeed, in my ongoing reading of and about great teachers, the centrality of love to teaching continues to guide my thinking about educational development. Michael Wesch (2011), the Carnegie Foundation’s 2008 “US Professor of the Year,” confesses that as he travels the world discussing new media and the role of technology in education, his “real hope is to open up a conversation about what [he considers] to be the real secret of great teaching, a force more powerful and disruptive than any technology: love” (p. 23). Wesch’s description of his “secret” points to several reasons love features so prominently in my educational development work: my wholehearted agreement with Wesch that love is crucial to great teaching, and its potency and disruptive nature. Describing love as a disruption reflects my sense (and dismay) that it is not prominent in our colleges and universities. In truth, as Lynch (2010) has argued, higher education culture has long been characterized by carelessness, focused on “educating an autonomous, rational person … whose relationality is not regarded as central to her or his being” (p. 59). Dewey would seem to agree. Inspired by his New York Times article about his visit to Utopia, Schubert (2009) offers a book length analysis of Dewey’s article which, in keeping with the whimsical nature of Dewey’s piece, consists of a close reading of the article from the perspective of the Utopians. With respect to love, the Utopians are baffled by its absence, asking, “Why is love so neglected in academic work of Earthlings—even in their pronouncements on education? Do they somehow see it as soft, thus, inconsequential?” (p. 217). Channeling Dewey, Schubert probes our assumptions, including gendered views on love, which naturally brings to mind Bernhagen and Gravett’s (2017) depiction of educational development as “pink collar labor.” Indeed, our work would seem to be an exception to higher education’s ethos of carelessness, as care is central to our ethos. And as they point out, as a historically feminized construct, care may contribute to our profession’s relative marginalization. I champion the role of love in educational development cognizant of this risk yet convinced that to fulfill our responsibility to our institution’s teaching and learning cultures and uphold our commitment to equity (described below), we must not only sustain our own ethos of care, but also strive to infuse it throughout our institutions.

Love in Educational Development Goals and Competencies

Two years after I began directing the Preparing Future Faculty and TA development programs, I saw a job posting on the POD Network listserv for a full time faculty development position at a nearby CTL. To this point, my primary goal had been to teach, hopefully in my institution’s Higher Education program. Yet I was intrigued by the idea of a full time administrative role, by the chance to extend my budding knowledge of faculty development, and by its opportunity to expand the scope of what my teaching could be. I would not say I fell in love with educational development in the same way I did with teaching, but today, about 10 years later, I am grateful for this profession and its extraordinary international community. I have learned during this time that love is not only well aligned with the goals of our work, it informs some of the key skills it takes for us to excel.

It is beyond the scope of this piece to describe the breadth of educational development skills and competencies, or to evaluate their relative merits. Yet I find it telling that “rapport building” is the focus of the 2nd Educational Development Guide Series, a 102 page document recently published by the Educational Developers Caucus, a community of practice within the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. As Taylor (in West et al., 2017) writes in the introduction, the document “invites us into the seldom explored ‘inner world’ of educational development practice,” affirming that “establishing rapport—creating reciprocal learning spaces based on trust, mutual respect, and empathy—is essential to our practice” (p. 3). Here, we see considerable overlap between the components of rapport and those of love. The guide also alludes to the value of acceptance in establishing developer faculty rapport, a principle I have borne witness to on many occasions. A few years ago, for instance, Clemence, an historian, sat across from me and handed me a yellow envelope. Based on her expression and the point in the semester, I knew they contained her course ratings. We had been working together for about a year, trying to determine why her students were not responding positively to her, despite her thoughtfully designed courses and obvious dedication to them. It was a moment of heightened vulnerability, and in the absence of her students’ acceptance, she needed mine. My acceptance took the form of active listening (care), the gift of time, and a firm reminder that teaching is a multifaceted construct that cannot be reduced to a handful of students’ survey responses (knowledge). I offered counter evidence in the form of my appraisal of her teaching and helped her assemble evidence of her teaching effectiveness (responsibility).

That individualized work with Clemence is also reminiscent of the historical turning point Dewey describes in his Utopian version of education:

How would this “educational liberation” manifest itself in our colleges and universities? And what would it mean for educational development? On the one hand, Dewey’s ideal validates the time we spend working with faculty one on one, in course observations and consultations; as well as our leaders’ more recent prioritization of institutional cultures and contexts for teaching and learning (Beach et al., 2016). On the other hand, it reminds us that “one size fits all” approaches are unlikely to be effective, despite the allure of efficiency. Harnessing individuals’ “positive capacities” may also prompt us to discuss the merits of explicit asset based frameworks for our work, perhaps modeled on emerging ones for student success (as in Rendón, Nora, & Kanagala’s, 2014 “Ventajas/Assets y Conocimientos/Knowledge: Leveraging Latin@ Strengths to Foster Student Success”).

Dewey offers yet another ideal with resonance for educational development. He asked the Utopians which attitudes are most important to create through schooling. “I should say that they ranked the attitude which would give a sense of positive power as at least as basic and primary as the others, if not more so,” Dewey inferred; outlining precursors to attaining this ideal:

The “sense of positive power” appears to be a combination of self efficacy (Bandura, 2008), a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006), perhaps also grit (Duckworth, 2016). Labels aside, we would likely agree it is a useful ideal—for both students and faculty—and note its relevance to our profession. In fact, just this year, our community responded with a combination of agreement and bewilderment when an Inside Higher Education article shared the results of anthropologist Lauren Herckis’ study of why many faculty do not make changes to their teaching. “They are simply too afraid of looking stupid in front of their students to try something new,” summarizes Matthews (2017), substantiating Dewey’s sense that we need “positive forces” to work against faculty members’ feelings of “failure and incapacity.” Matthews adds that “an even stronger source of inertia was the need to hang on to their ‘personal identity affirmation’ – in other words, to avoid appearing stupid in the lecture hall.” Much of our work in educational development already strives to build faculty confidence or self efficacy, and increasing our efforts in this area would be an important expression of the care and respect so integral to love. For instance, based on Horvitz, Beach, Anderson, and Xia’s (2014) finding that faculty have higher levels of self efficacy related to online teaching when they witness student learning and performance improvement, we may be even more intentional in helping faculty not only be successful in instructional refinement, but also collect and reflect on evidence of this success.

Love and Leadership

Like CTL Director Natasha Kenney (in West et al., 2017), I “faced a steep learning curve related to my responsibility of fostering a positive work culture” (p. 83) when I assumed a formal supervisory role. About a year and a half ago, I was appointed my institution’s first Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning, charged with overseeing our CTL, online and hybrid faculty development unit, writing across the curriculum program, and academic integrity initiatives. Becoming CTL Director led Kenney to the literature on coaching and me to that on leadership. Descriptions of leadership abound, yet I am drawn to Brenee Brown’s (2012), perhaps because it disassociates leadership from title or rank and reinforces my view of educational development as a form of leadership: “A leader is anyone who holds herself accountable for finding potential in people” (p. 185). We may not typically describe educational development work this way, but I sense it is one of our core assumptions: that most (if not all) faculty have the potential to be great teachers, and that other institutional stakeholders, too, can excel in their teaching and learning roles. This was certainly a tenet of mine long before I had any “direct reports.” My conviction that love is a useful guidepost for our work therefore entails holding ourselves accountable for finding potential in all institutional teaching and learning stakeholders, and when we assume formal leadership roles, love informs how we discover that potential in our colleagues.

One book in particular speaks to my values, resonates with our profession, and, surprisingly, addresses the relationship between leadership and love directly: Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People like Family by Barry Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman and Babson College business professor Sisodia (Chapman & Sisodia, 2015). Chapman and Sisodia use “stewardship” to describe the organization’s approach to leadership, where “stewardship” to them means, “to truly care, to feel a deep sense of responsibility for the lives we touch through our leadership” (p. 68). Care and responsibility surface again as central features of the leadership philosophy, and one of the book’s main arguments centers on the impact of this approach on “the lives … touch[ed] through [their] leadership.” Chapman and Sisodia (2015) explain that their employees’ experiences carry over into their lives and communities. They have found that when their employees are happy and fulfilled, the business profits—as do each individual’s friends, family, and communities. Many of us in educational development teach fewer students than we used to, or stop teaching altogether. The Barry Wehmiller example may give us some comfort and remind us that the impact of our work extends far beyond the individual faculty we serve. Defying stereotypes about leadership texts, Chapman credits the company’s achievements to nothing other than love: “Our approach is extraordinarily successful because we have tapped into something far more fundamental to our true nature; which is the opposite of fear: love.” Like Dewey, he finds that part of love’s power appears to be its ability to neutralize fear.

Thinking for a moment about leadership in the parts of our field known as organizational development—that which refers “to the organizational structures and processes of an institution and its subunits” (Gillespie, 2002—in Robertson’s, 2007 book)—leads to yet another reason love is invaluable to our work. Organizational development often takes us into contexts characterized by tension, sometimes outright antagonism, between faculty and administrators; and by some accounts, this antagonism is on the rise (Ginsberg, 2011). As Ginsberg suggests, the rise of administrators has coincided with The Fall of the Faculty (the title of his book), in which he argues that administrators have served to marginalize the faculty in carrying out tasks once clearly faculty responsibilities. One context in which the tension often arises is the area of faculty evaluation. Notably, the anthropological study regarding faculty members’ reluctance to change their teaching indicated that “one of the stumbling blocks … was that ‘a desire to get good [student] evaluations posed a risk to their willingness to innovate’” (Matthews, 2017). Meeting our organizational development goals requires us to navigate this space, advocate for faculty, and serve as bridges between the two “sides.” One of the projects I currently oversee is the development of a comprehensive, humane, and valid approach to evaluating teaching at my institution, a Carnegie I Research University in which reward structures have not historically privileged teaching. Informed and emboldened by love, I view my role in this undertaking as faculty advocate and ally. Knowing that this topic speaks to faculty members’ sense of identity, I approach it with heightened knowledge, care, and respect. This may seem self evident in that knowledgeable, care and respect are hallmarks of our work with faculty, but here, I engage mostly with upper administration. By ensuring that I have comprehensive and deep knowledge of teaching evaluation, my ability to advocate for faculty is enhanced, and I endeavor to extend this love to the varied project stakeholders, from overworked and often underappreciated department chairs to a Provost under considerable pressure to realize gains in student learning and performance through improved teaching.

From Love to Justice

To shift from a current project to my very first assignment in my first full time CTL position, I was assigned to implement a grant activity focused on “Training Faculty in Cultural Sensitivity,” which involved exposing faculty to culturally aware approaches to teaching Hispanic and nonnative English speaking students. I appreciated the rationale for this project: the notable differences between the racial and ethnic composition of our undergraduates and that of our faculty, as well as its alignment with my personal values and interests. Indeed, during and immediately after my undergraduate years, I wrote on a freelance basis for the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, and my composition and rhetoric research centered on linguistic pluralism. As a full time faculty developer, it did not take long for me to learn of (and feel elated by) the central role diversity plays in the POD Network. Indeed, in her overview of POD’s Diversity Related Initiatives from the 1950s to present, Roy (2014) found that equity has been a longstanding POD value. It seems fitting that “faculty development, as we understand it today, began to emerge in U.S. higher education … with the advent of the student rights movement” (Ouellett, 2010, in Gillespie & Robertson, 2010, p. 4). Only 17 years after its establishment, the POD Network’s 1991 Mission Statement served as a turning point in institutionalizing the commitment to being a multicultural organization, and steps were taken toward forming a Diversity Commission. The following year, the now Diversity Committee was born as a 24 person team of POD Network members form a Diversity Interest Group at the Tampa, Florida, annual POD conference.

Although I recognize that POD’s values do not necessarily represent those of the entire field of educational development, which spans the globe, the organization’s leading role in our profession and its commitment to equity and inclusion corroborate their significance to our work. It does not, however, elucidate the relationship among educational development, equity, and love. For this, I rely on more of bell hooks’ wisdom, cite leading scholars on culturally responsive teaching, and pay another visit to Dewey’s Utopia.

During that interview with hooks, the conversation turned to love, and Robertson (2007) asked about her perspective on love and teaching, including its relationship to educational development. “It seems to me that what engaged pedagogy is about is learning to love in this way in the professional role of a teacher,” Robertson shared; “is that something a faculty developer should be helping faculty learn to do?” (p. 22). “Absolutely,” replied hooks, and she continued:

As in her comments relating teaching and love, hooks points to the additional challenges that can come with aspiring to be guided by love as one teaches across difference, and she suggests that educational developers have a responsibility to help faculty respond to these challenges. In Teaching to Transgress, hooks elaborates on this point, suggesting that we might do so by facilitating “practical discussion of the ways classroom settings can be transformed so that the learning experience is inclusive” (p. 35), perhaps by showcasing the work some professors have done to transform their teaching—all while “tak[ing] into account the fears teachers have when asked to shift their paradigms” (p. 36).

Experts in inclusive pedagogy reinforce hook’s recognition of love’s relevance to equity and offer useful frameworks and tools for faculty development. Hammond (2015), for instance, writes that “in culturally responsive teaching, relationships are as important as the curriculum,” and refers to “Geneva Gay, pioneer of culturally responsive pedagogy (2010), [who] says positive relationships exemplified as ‘caring’ are one of the major pillars of culturally responsive teaching” (p. 72). Hammond (2015) adds teachers and students increasingly report feeling disconnected from (even distrustful of) each other –especially when building relationships across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines where implicit bias can get in the way. Her text is invaluable in that it demystifies the process of building trust with culturally and linguistically diverse students, both for faculty who aspire to teach with inclusive excellence and those of us who want to support them in the difficult yet critical job of so doing.

As in teaching, where the relationship between love and justice can take many forms, educational development “diversity” initiatives are varied. One of the first of which I had the pleasure of facilitating was a faculty book group using Claude Steele’s (2010) Whistling Vivaldi. Predictably, I found myself working with “the choir,” yet the results of this programming embody both Barry Wehmiller’s ripple effect regarding leadership and the way love exerts its force on justice. The faculty participants demonstrated an unexpected degree of leadership. They not only adopted classroom changes, but also took the initiative to share what they had learned. My colleagues and I describe the outcomes in an article on our stereotype threat based diversity programming (Artze Vega, Richardson, & Traxler, 2014), but to highlight one example, a computer science professor shared that, after the book group, she integrated the concept of stereotype threat into multiple workshops she facilitated—both within and outside the United States. By her own account, she had been empowered by the information in Steele’s book to emphasize to colleagues that discussing stereotypes and implicit bias is essential to bringing in more females and minorities into the computing field.

Dewey’s vision of Utopia may help us invigorate our diversity related programming, so it better aligns with our lofty ideals and more powerfully harnesses love’s disruptive powers. Schubert (2009) writes that one of the key lessons the Utopians wanted to communicate to Earthlings is that loving relationships are “a necessary and neglected dimension of social justice” (p. 3), and that we as “Earthlings” (not simply as educational developers) have not yet tapped into its potential. “A large part of the message through this book,” summarizes Schubert, “is that loving relationships that strive for social justice can overcome the harmfulness of an acquisitive society and provide the possibility of cultivating democratic and dialogic experience” (p. 10). In the Utopians’ poetic formulation of this point, many of our “strident calls for justice sadly wither and blow away for lack of loving relationships” (p. 217). In their view, love can thereby serve as anchor for justice, and its absence a potential reason for our lack of progress in attaining equity goals. They urge us to “rediscover the critical need for political action to be infused with love, citing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s motto: ‘Freedom and justice through love’” (p. 218). In 2017, as many of our core democratic values are called into question, it would seem prudent, indeed vital, to harness love’s liberating potency.

What might this entail? To use Latinx college students and national discourse about immigration as an example, a record 3.6 million Latinxs were enrolled in public and private colleges in the U.S. in 2016 (Gramlich, 2017) while our nation’s President campaigned on border security, questioned a U.S. born federal judge’s ability to do his job because of his Mexican descent, and later announced that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would be rescinded. Although the impact of these actions on students is immeasurable, Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s words offer a glimpse of their psychological toll: “There are small but very profound layers of humiliation attached to a nationality that’s assumed to be criminal and inferior” (in Tobar, 2017). In our institutions, this sense of inferiority is likely compounded by the fact that so many Latinx students are the first in their families to attend college, and may shed light on why their degree attainment continues to lag behind that of other groups. Recognizing contextual factors that obstruct degree completion is itself an important step toward disrupting prevailing deficit based explanations. Among the specific ways our work could respond, empowered by love: urging faculty to maintain high academic standards while assuring all students they belong and can thrive in academia, while remaining empathic and attentive to current affairs; developing programming and services rooted in asset based, culturally responsive frameworks (as in Rendón et al., 2014); and collaborating on ambitious programmatic efforts like the City College of New York’s Beyond Identity program, which aims to give students the power to effect social change and advocate for themselves, “to take young people with direct experience of injustice and clear ideas of how to redress injustice and let them speak to these issues” (Boudreau, in Gluckman, 2017, my emphasis). Because many of us believe so firmly in the role education plays in social and economic development, the preservation of democratic values, and the advancement of our country (and world), let us continue to embrace loving relationships that strive for social justice, and to help them take hold throughout our institutions.

Odds, End, and Liabilities

When I embarked upon this thought exercise and isolated love as the one perspective that steers me in educational development, I did not know where it would lead. After retracing my steps, identifying its origin in my love of teaching and the central role love plays in my teaching and educational development philosophies, I am left fortified in my selection. I am also overwhelmed by the implicit message: that I should strive to embody this ideal in my daily development work. Yet I remind myself that (a) an ideal is, by definition, aspirational, and (b) that, as a community, we already have many of the necessary tools and dispositions at our disposal. We already take the time to get to know faculty and work with them as individuals, withholding judgment (even with the “difficult” ones); are tireless in our efforts to support them and enhance our institutional cultures; find motivation and purpose in advocating for more equitable outcomes; and promote inclusive and culturally responsive instructional practices.

At this point in the inquiry, I also abound with new questions. On a personal level, how do I become comfortable “owning” love as the cornerstone of my educational development philosophy, when it likely reinforces stereotypes about at least two of my identities: my Latinidad and maternity? And how do I broach discomfort with the term love based on the primacy of romantic love and/or the notion that it requires physical contact? When I first met Allan, about six years ago, I could not have predicted our now ritualistic hug. In fact, the first time I felt compelled to hug him, I regretted it almost immediately, worried that I had violated his personal space or imposed my personal inclination. And he did seem surprised. The next time I saw him, however, Allan initiated the hug, and so our ritual began. Prior to submitting this piece, I sent him the introduction to this piece, requesting permission to share our anecdote, and he replied, not only giving me his blessing, but also endorsing my argument, and signing the email with an italicized Love, Allan. Imperfect, yet additional evidence that love, even the term itself, may be able to claim a space in our work.

As a community, how might we address the fact that love is a highly gendered construct? Our field is already comprised mostly of women: 73% (Beach et al., 2016), likely reflecting and/or reinforcing the view of teaching and educational development as “women’s work,” (Bernhagen & Gravett, 2017) and the “moral imperative [in higher education] on women to do care work and on men to be care less” (Lynch, 2010, p. 54). How might we allow love to thrive in contexts where objectivity reigns? In general, how do we ensure that the benefits of being guided by love outweigh the potential liabilities? Bernhagen and Gravett (2017) offer many useful responses. One, in particular, recalls the list of contenders I generated for the perspective that steers my understanding of educational development: “As a starting point, closely connecting CTL efforts to institutional values, missions, and strategic initiatives can be an effective way to position educational developers as change agents—in addition to continuing valuable service work—in higher education” (__). In my case, this suggests I should strive to strike a balance among three of my guideposts: love, strategy, and intentionality. I will likewise turn to the relationship among love, teaching, learning, and especially justice articulated in this piece to give me the courage it will take to continue to align my career with my core values.

Because contemporary discussions of higher education abound with calls for disruption and accelerated reform, I close with a bit of Palmer’s (2007) wisdom, a distillation of why few gains will be realized unless we champion love in our work:

Note

1. Alhough I have chosen to use Fromm’s theory of love, I do not endorse all of his views; in particular, his sentiments on LGBTQ relationships, which I find deeply flawed and offensive.

References

• Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: seven research based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
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