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Episode 5: Compassionate learning and teaching
36 Plays18 days ago
This episode features host Dr Elliott Spaeth from Advance HE discussing compassionate pedagogy with Dr Claire Killingback (University of Hull) and Rosie Jones (Teesside University).
They explore what compassion means in higher education: recognising student distress, responding proactively, supporting wellbeing, and seeing students as whole people. The conversation addresses pushback against compassion from staff worried about workload and boundaries, and discusses how institutions can embed compassion into policies and processes.
Key themes include the importance of listening, avoiding rigid boundaries whilst maintaining professional roles, co-creating supportive frameworks with students, and extending compassion to staff as well as students.
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Transcript
Introduction to Compassion in Education
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast on talking transformation with a particular focus on learning and teaching and with an even more particular focus on compassion both inside and outside the classroom whether virtual or otherwise and I am extremely excited today to introduce both myself as I realize I almost forgot I am Dr Elliot Spaeth I work for Advance HE as a senior consultant in inclusive education and to friends, colleagues, wonderful people that I'm excited to have as guests today Dr Claire Killingback from the University of Hull and Rosie Jones from Teesside University would you be open to introducing yourselves um Claire would you go first?
Setting Up Compassionate Programs
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, super happy to be here. I know, i think we met probably about a year ago and we started chatting these things. So it's brilliant that we're just able to get together now and yeah, talk about it a little bit more. So I've been at the University of Hull for the last seven years. I moved here to set up the physiotherapy program, which is going beautifully. We now have had three cohorts of graduates. So it's a lovely, lovely program. So yeah, I'm a reader in physiotherapy. That's my background and my context and the area that i practice from.
00:01:27
Speaker
And I've also read um some of your work on compassionate pedagogies as well in particular. So it's particularly exciting have you here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it's a real area of passion for mine. I really care about my students. I think that's probably kind of part of my teaching philosophy. That's why I signed up to do the job. I like helping people, love seeing them grow, hate seeing them in distress. So it's like, how do we support that? So yeah, good to be talking about that.
00:01:54
Speaker
Couldn't agree more. Go ahead, Rosie. Hi, I'm Rosie Jones. I'm absolutely excited to be here. at Claire and Elliot and I have had numerous conversations prior to this and I i really like, um in particular, Claire, your work in this area. I've been following for some time, so delighted and honoured to be part of a a podcast. and I'm Rosie Jones. I'm the Director of Student and Library Services at Teesside University.
00:02:23
Speaker
um And I've been at Teesside for about six years. I was at the Open University before that. and So kind of inclusivity and well-being has always been something that's really ah hugely important to my career. um And at Teesside, I lead the access and participation plan, which is huge in our organisation, probably more so than a lot in the sector because we have 87% of our students are APP countable so um it's kind of front and central the work that we do in this space amazing and rosie and i know each other from a wonderful playful learning conference which i've been going to for more years than i can count and rosie's been going for way longer than that so and she is actually what you're the one of the co-chairs are you the are you the actual i am a co-chair yeah
00:03:14
Speaker
Absolutely.
Inspiration for Compassionate Pedagogy
00:03:15
Speaker
So let's get started with um a little opener. When we think about compassion in higher education, what does it mean to us and why is it so important?
00:03:28
Speaker
ah so So for me, and well, yeah, to be honest, it's just something that I think should naturally come in in higher education. um And, ah ah you know, I genuinely believe that people who choose to work or or to be part of a higher education system, I'm hoping that, you know, most of them, this is their kind of aspirational space is to to build an environment that feels compassionate and feels, I suppose I would describe compassionate as kind, understanding and, and ah you know, willing to listen.
00:04:05
Speaker
and And to me, those are the fundamentals of of, you know, definitely the higher education I went into, a place where you can explore and challenge, but you can do that in a way that ah feels accepting and to individuals. and And I'd also say that, you know, for me, and that inclusivity angle, that kind of ben approaches for all,
00:04:28
Speaker
and is fundamental to to education. So higher education should be leading the charge in that space. So so that's that's really broadly what it means to me. and I'm just going to start with a a story because that's kind of how I arrived at Compassion. So I lead a second year research module for the physios.
00:04:49
Speaker
And in it, we kind of have this overarching research question of what do physios need to do to ensure they're prepared for qualifying? And the students then pick topics which are important to them and they do ah kind of a mixed method, some quantum, and some qual.
00:05:02
Speaker
And probably about three years ago, in fact, I think it was the first time I ran this module, a group of the students chose to look at wellbeing. And the reason they picked that was because they'd just been out in placement and they had met newly qualified physios who were on the verge of burning out and quitting because they were just so...
00:05:22
Speaker
I don't know what the, yeah, they were really challenging with wellbeing aspects of being a physio in the NHS. And so part of what they did for their quantitative was they did a survey to everyone in the class and it was one of those validated wellbeing surveys. So they had these objective numbers on people's wellbeing and the scores were the students wellbeing was in their boots.
00:05:45
Speaker
And i I was absolutely shocked because I was a personal supervisor for these students. I was like, honestly, like I thought you were all okay. And actually, I'm seeing these numbers and that then prompted a conversation. And I'm like, what?
00:05:58
Speaker
What? Like, what is going on here? So I remember so clearly, like walking back to my office that day being like, what the heck just happened there? And I realized I was totally faced with a choice. I either just open my emails and crack on with doing the rest of my work and blah, blah, blah and everything we have to do. And I'm like, no, we we can't.
00:06:17
Speaker
I can't let this slide. So because I am a nerdy academic and I love doing research, i then did lots of reading around like what's going on with student well-being.
Defining Compassionate Pedagogy
00:06:27
Speaker
Like I didn't I didn't really know a lot about well-being myself at that stage. I'm a Gen X. We just kind of cracked on with things. Life was hard. OK, whatever. You just go for it. And I arrived at this term compassionate pedagogy.
00:06:40
Speaker
And I then began to, I wanted to get underneath the skin of it. Like what actually is it? And I couldn't find a really clear definition beyond like, well, we're talking about compassion. it's It's seeing distress and then trying to do something to alleviate that distress. So compassion, we know all about action. but within the context of that teaching and learning environment, I was struggling to really pin it down. So I did a scoping review and I basically looked at all of the contemporary literature on compassionate pedagogy in the last 10 years. And I tried to filter that through to come up with a definition. And so for me, sorry, this is a really long answer to what compassion means to me. But essentially what I figured out from that, which is what I try and use my practice now is compassion is where are we noticing distress?
00:07:26
Speaker
But it's compassionate pedagogy is really within that context of a teaching and learning environment. Because I get a lot of pushback on compassion from other academics I think it's important that we're clear that we are talking about within this teaching and learning environment, the context of learning. So where are we seeing distress?
00:07:43
Speaker
And the second part of that is what are we actively going to do to respond to that distress, to alleviate, to mitigate it? And that also means preemptively. So it doesn't just mean waiting for the distress to come, but I know exactly in my modules where my pinch points are, where my students are going to be struggling. And so what can I do to try and support that and and reduce some of that stress a little bit? The third part of compassionate pedagogy that came out of this review was this aspect of flourishing and well-being at university.
00:08:16
Speaker
And so often, like learning is challenging. Learning is distressing. Like I remember my PhD, it was so freaking hard. It pushed me to the edge of my knowledge. And that was a really, really uncomfortable place to be.
00:08:29
Speaker
So there is distress in learning and I'm not saying we take that away, but what i am saying is we need to think about learning as that bigger picture flourishing and the whole wellbeing as well. And then the fourth aspect that came out of that review was about seeing students as whole people. And I think historically in academia, we've just been like taking a cognitive approach and our job is to just fill up their minds, fill up their brains, let's give them the knowledge, but actually students are whole people and I think it's so important that we help them develop as whole people. And, you know, our students are in that emerging adulthood phase very often. And so how do we support them on that journey? Because life is hard. So how do we equip them with some of those well-being skills to be able to do that?
00:09:12
Speaker
So, yeah, that's what compassion means to me. And that's why it's important to me and my students, because they struggle far more than I would ever know, ever know. really loved that story. I'm pleased to apologize for telling it because think it was really meaningful. And I think a lot of people listening will connect with that.
00:09:35
Speaker
I think for me, I would agree with both of you. um And in addition, I would say the thing that makes me think about compassion the most is when it doesn't happen. And I think it can sometimes come from this idea that everything is fair the way that it is. And everyone working in in higher education is is also, of course, stressed, trying really hard. And sometimes one can just be following processes and policies and not having space to
00:10:10
Speaker
think about what to do if somebody doesn't thrive in that environment. And that's where it really gets me. and I know that, you know, if I were a student, not everything's going to be perfect for me. But what i can't stand is the idea of a situation where it's justified by the idea that this is just how it is. I feel like that's a lacking compassion. It's a missed missed opportunity for compassion, as Catherine Waddington talks about. And that idea of understanding that the status quo isn't necessarily fair or inclusive. And a compassionate approach means questioning what we think we know and being open to learning and listening, like Rosie said, is what i find so important so that, as you say, people are seen as whole people and they're not put in situations where they have to choose between conforming
00:11:06
Speaker
being in great distress or leaving. And that's what I discuss in in my chapter on the topic as well, which probably won't be in your review, sadly, because I think it was probably published afterwards. um ah Elliot, can I just come in there? I mean, it's seeing the students as ah as a whole, i also think kind of triggered for me that and one of the things I think was really evident when I was at the OU is that the OU thought very differently about students at university and they thought very differently about what success was.
00:11:37
Speaker
And that's definitely something that's come with me at Teesside and I see all the time. But, you know, we're we're kind of forced to conform to success being a good education, a good degree outcome. You know, these boxes that you tick through. But actually the stories I see of success...
00:11:56
Speaker
are actually transformational
Influence of Backgrounds on Compassionate Pedagogy
00:11:58
Speaker
successes where we have thought compassionately. So they might be people who have, you know, struggled with mutism on occasions and they've got, you know, that kind of complex disability. And our success factor with those individuals is that they can deliver a presentation at the end of the university degree. It doesn't matter what grade they get.
00:12:19
Speaker
that, you know, that that to me is is compassion and that is thinking differently about higher education and what you can do for those individuals. Yeah, I find it so interesting because I think what I found with compassionate pedagogy, like it's ah it's a really big umbrella term, but each of us approach it with our own, like, brand or own flavour. You know, so Rosie, for you, that'll be really different working in the role that you and Elliot will be different for you. um for me i You know, I come from that perspective of like yeah well-being, I guess, because it was that story that first triggered my approach to it. So I'm always looking at, OK, how can I get well-being into my curriculum in a much more overt way? Because we have amazing well-being services. I love them. I regularly signpost my students to them, but they're really separate to our pedagogic practice. So for me, I want to see well-being blended a lot more in with the actual pedagogy of how we teach
00:13:18
Speaker
But actually, I think, you know, hearing you two talk about it is your your brand of compassionate pedagogy. We all come from our own workplaces and our viewpoints and the the students that we interact with, don't we? So i I think compassionate pedagogy isn't just one thing, but it's positioned from who we are and what we bring and, yeah, our approaches to university and our lived experiences probably as well. That massively informs, doesn't it, as an element of that autobiographical element of what we get into are our day jobs, I guess.
00:13:52
Speaker
I would actually say that well-being is at the center for me as well. um For me, it's because of my own experiences. I am disabled. i am neurodivergent. I have... um mental health issues, all of which got diagnosed either during or immediately after a period of study. So for me, when I'm thinking about, i guess i guess overthinking is something that I do to cope with many, many feelings and also to create what will be perceived, whether it should be or not, as logismacy around discussion of these things.
00:14:28
Speaker
um In that I've experienced what it's like to be in a situation where uncompassionate approach has been incredibly damaging for me because my nervous system gets really badly triggered when I feel like there's a person in a position of authority that can do things that might unintentionally be extremely harmful for me. And if I try and raise it, it's either gonna create a dangerous relational dynamic because they'll be angry with me and that might show up in how they treat me. I feel like people in positions of power in higher education, whether that's, that might not be what you expect. That might be if anyone is the gatekeeper between you being heard or not, whatever role that is.
00:15:17
Speaker
If somebody's in that position, i don't think they necessarily realize that the impact of them just saying, no, we can't think about doing this differently for you, or no, that doesn't sound like a valid concern to me. That can be absolutely catastrophic for somebody. And that's, I often don't actually talk about it because it's so embedded now that I i feel like i need to over-intellectualize perhaps for it to feel legitimate. But I actually agree with you that that that well-being, although often it's viewed as this separate thing, it's actually at the heart of how we can do higher education and learning and teaching in particular in an ethical, responsible, humane way.
00:16:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I very much agree. Very, very much agree. it's um and And interesting that you touched on like those, the power dynamic of you being able to share openly some of your lived experiences and your challenges because of, yeah, someone like shooting that down like that's that's really tough. But it happens. That's the reality. And how do how like how do we not do that with our students? How do we really hear them? Which was your point, Rosie, wasn't about listening to them?
00:16:30
Speaker
So conveniently, some of the things that you've been talking about have gone on to several of the other things that I wanted to see if we could have time to discuss today. And now I'm just trying to decide which one to go to next. um So sometimes I feel like I experience a bit of a backlash to compassion, this idea that people think that it's it's not something that's relevant in higher education or that it's kind of the antithesis of rigor or there's all sorts of things. And I'm curious about how you two might have experienced that and what you might say to people that don't really understand why compassion might be relevant in higher education.
Challenges and Misunderstandings in Compassionate Pedagogy
00:17:15
Speaker
ah Do you want want me to go, Rosie, or do you want Yeah, okay. So I definitely feel like I have had pushback when I'm talking about compassionate pedagogy. And I don't know that I've had heaps of it. But you know, when you get pushback, it's always like, really, you inflate that in your head. So it feels like way, way worse. And it's way more people pushing back than what probably is But i think the main pushbacks I've had are probably coming from a place of staff feeling like, you know, they're rolling their eyes and it's like, is this something else I've got to do Are you kidding on top of everything else?
00:17:52
Speaker
Which is, i think, if I'm honest, is about the fact that, like, for me, one of the most compassionate practices I do is making sure i have a personal supervision with my students face-to-face,
00:18:08
Speaker
once every trimester, because it's in those conversations that you can do the head tilt and the, so how are you really doing? Like what's really going on? And that's often when I'm like, oh my goodness, I had no idea you were struggling with this and that and the other. And students have such complex lives. So that's when I hear that. And that's when i can most often signpost to our wellbeing services because they are much, much better at supporting students with that.
00:18:34
Speaker
But making sure I do that comes to a massive cost to my workload because, you know, we all have a lot of students that we are personal tutees for, don't we, are tutors? and And so that can be a real challenge. So I think people push back because I think they worry in those meetings that it means they have to become a counsellor and they have to respond to all of those things. And when students tell us those difficult things,
00:18:58
Speaker
One, it can be distressing for us to hear. So we need to work out how we're going to be responding to that distress for our own wellbeing. We also need to make sure we keep boundaries.
00:19:09
Speaker
So we are we are their lecturer at the end of the day. So we have to be mindful that we're not there to fix those things. But again, that can be hard. So one of my friends talks about having ah boundaries, but sort of porous boundaries at points. Because sometimes our boundaries are so rigid, you just get that like robot response of, oh, that's, yeah, that's not my problem. I can't cope with it. So actually, I think we need slightly porous boundaries of sometimes to make sure we keep our humanity, but we're also looking after ourselves.
00:19:40
Speaker
So I think that's probably one of the big critiques. The other thing is, I think the so the second big critique is that people think that it means they have to do whatever the students want and whatever the students are requesting. And I know like when I get my module feedback, students will,
00:19:56
Speaker
i I will seriously take on board what they want. And if I can make a change to my module, I will. But actually a lot of my modules run, they run quite well on the whole. And then I'm like, what more do you want from me? I've already given so much to this module and now you want this extra superhuman thing. So some of it is a boundary of, well, actually, where does a student need to come and meet me halfway? Because it's not just about me doing everything for them. But I taught this on our...
00:20:25
Speaker
um the PG cert in education practice and i'm trying to think how I did it now it was it was last year but I tried to make sure I heard from i got them talking in groups about some of the people that maybe found it more challenging and I was really open to hearing their responses and I think they were probably the main things that people were coming back with but that has just made me acutely aware now that for some people it's It's a challenging concept, I think because it's also a misunderstood concept with compassion. it's I don't know, has it been overused? And that's when probably the main thing I do is I come back to the definition.
00:21:06
Speaker
So but we're noticing distress and we're trying to respond to do something about it. That is the boundaries of compassion within a teaching and learning environment. You can't solve everything for students outside what's going on.
00:21:19
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm mindful there'll be some people. Actually, know people who don't like compassion probably wouldn't listen to this, would they? But I'm aware that it's a challenge as well. I mean, this, this again, just just reminds me of, them so it is that kind of fearfulness of compassion. and And I certainly, when I first started in a kind of student services environment, it it was really strange because there was it wasn't compassion that people were fearful of at that point. They were fearful of mental health.
00:21:50
Speaker
like, like nothing I'd ever seen before. So a student would present crying. And that was an immediate escalated referral into our mental health and wellbeing teams, rather than an immediate compassionate approach for how are you today? and What could I do to help? And, you know, can I connect you up with something? There was this absolute terror of of mental health during that period of time and I think it's because people were were worried about the consequences of getting something wrong and it feels like compassion has become that kind of next chapter of that and and that people you know they they've
00:22:27
Speaker
They want to be compassionate, but they're absolutely terrified of what they might unearth in that compassion and the, I suppose, the commitment that that might that might draw out of them. and I'd say, you know, we've done a lot of work in that space. And Claire, that boundaries piece is really, really key.
00:22:46
Speaker
And actually what we see a lot ah of is the boundaries going completely wrong either side. So there's either boundaries in terms of that over-referral, which is is great that you know the academics understand that the support services exist, but actually, you know we we know how many people are impacted in this space.
Aligning Policies with Compassionate Practices
00:23:07
Speaker
There is no way that my services or teams could do specialist support for every individual. So there's got to be something meeting in the middle there. Or there's the other boundaries where an academic gets so invested with with absolutely the right intent, put completely over steps into a space and and you know suddenly...
00:23:27
Speaker
you' you're having to remind the academic they can't take the student home with them every day or make their tea I'm going a bit you know far on that piece but you you can see that piece so that there's kind of that and spectrum at the moment so I hadn't really framed it it in that kind of you know what I'd seen before but it almost feels like that next same chapter and one of the things I didn't get a chance to say before is is Teesside has got this lovely approach and it you know it was it already started before I was at Teesside. So we do embed and inclusivity and wellbeing into our learning and teaching frameworks. So we did have, we used to have an academic academic enhancement framework where there were scales of wellbeing interventions. We decided... Whilst that was lovely, it just felt like you were telling somebody they were gold standard or not gold standard and it didn't really help with the the progress. So and we've recently relaunched our learning and teaching framework. And one of the themes that we have is this inclusivity and well-being theme. And our academics use it at Curriculum Design.
00:24:34
Speaker
So they're given kind of prompts to explore and discuss. And they're all around kind of, I suppose, how how we can be aware of who is in the room, how we can be aware of biases that might exist in the room, different perspectives, different behaviours. And it takes, rather than scoring how these courses come out, it takes people through these conversations and starts to get them to to think about how they might handle it that in the classroom. And also, and you know, alongside that, we have a kind of boundaries guidance for our academics so that they can understand when to refer and where we can come in as a student service.
00:25:16
Speaker
So out of interest, Rosie, what kind of things do academics do to respond to that framework? Like what concrete things are they doing in their programmes? And I don't mean to put you on the spot because so ah yeah if you're not sure. No, no, no, no, you're completely right. And and it's varying levels. So possibly without the kind of guide that got them to perform at a particular level, it's a different kind of impact, but probably more compassionate to the academic themselves now, I think, rather than the other way around. And so they might ah reframe how they're doing discussion groups with students and and think about how how they go about forming those groups or the roles within those groups or the appreciation of and how the dynamic in that group works. So they might look at that piece. They might look at um how they introduce assessment in the classroom and and how that might feel for the individuals and how they could scaffold that kind of introduction to the assessment so there are practical examples um i wouldn't say we've actually we've mastered it but actually what this document has allowed us to do is to ourselves discuss it really and start to have those open conversations in the university yeah I think that's great and it because it's so different for different disciplines isn't it uh because yeah we all just take different
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, the the context matters, I think, with compassion and how we how we set that up. That's all just so interesting. I'm aware that me saying that sounds like I'm being sarcastic and I'm really not. like I think you but you think you both know that. Listeners might not know so much. But um yeah, it's just there's so much. And I had so many things I wanted to respond with. But actually, you know you've just both shared such interesting and relevant things that I won't say I'm lost for words. Everyone knows that doesn't really happen to me. but I am almost, actually, the thing I wanted to come back to was um what you were talking about in relation to mental health, Rosie, because I've i've been frustrated for years. Mental health is kind of how I got into academic development in the first place, really, because of my own
Systemic Compassion in Education Policies
00:27:26
Speaker
experiences. And um I actually have a PhD in clinical psychology. Not that that qualifies me to do anything apart from research, just to be clear. um But what has been bothering me about the whole um let's talk about wellbeing in higher education,
00:27:41
Speaker
thing in the past few years in particular has been the idea that it's entirely separate from the way that we interact with our students, the way that we the way that we create our systems, our policies, our processes. You know on the one hand, we'll say, how can we help mental health? And on the other hand, we'll be like, and also, how can we enforce this problematic and uninclusive and harmful policy? um And what you said about referral was the thing that was so interesting, the idea that, okay, we've we've seen someone are distressed, we understand that what we're meant to do here is to escalate. And it's funny because I feel like for years, that's what I say we as a sector, not we as the people here, but that's what we've been telling staff to do. And it's been the bane of my existence and that it's been this kind of, okay, there's a distressed student. How can we create a framework or how can we create guidance on how that can be escalated or how they can be signposted to more support? And I feel like, of course, that's important.
00:28:43
Speaker
But that also contributes to the narrative that it's this siloed thing that students happen to be experiencing something in relation to wellbeing and it's entirely separate to higher education, which sometimes is the case.
00:28:55
Speaker
But you two have already provided really clear and articulate wording and thoughts around actually why what we do
00:29:07
Speaker
in relation to the student experience can be such a strong driver for mental health, whether positive or negative. And um I feel like I had a point there. I wonder what it was.
00:29:22
Speaker
I suppose for me, the question is,
00:29:28
Speaker
if we view compassion as a road to supporting mental health, what does it look like to be thinking about that at a systems level, at a policy level, um because so often the policies and systems unintentionally, one hopes, are designed in a way that could, if someone didn't really get it, be used to justify really uncompassionate practice. And I personally feel like this is a ah rough thought, but even if every policy said on it,
00:30:05
Speaker
where this is true and accurate, you know, you could do this if that's in the best interest of the student or if that's what the student would like. Because so often there's something that's been written as a way of supporting students. But if a student says, that's awful, please, that would make things worse for me. And people like, no, no, no, it says in the policy, it'd make things better for you. I feel like unpicking that is about half of my job. And I'm curious about what you two think about how we could do that to... to embed these things in a way where people didn't have to rely on additional knowledge, goodwill, passion in this particular area to be able to follow the compassionate way.
00:30:48
Speaker
Can I just say the importance of that point is absolutely paramount, I'd say. So So, you know, you can have all of this amazing work happening in kind Claire's area and and all of, you know, this this brilliant stuff embedded into the curriculum. And then, you know, I'll ahll blame me, us with our systems and processes can come in and undermine the whole thing by just being, I would say, sometimes brutal in our communications. and ah Usually quite and difficult and traumatic times for our students. So, and you know, we were only talking about this at Teesside the other day as we updated our terms and conditions as a university, which, you know, if you ever actually look at the terms of conditions and conditions for a student, they are multiple pages of legal jargon, and page after page after page. And a student actually probably just signs them away, and you know, like you would your terms and conditions on your phone contract or something like that. Whereas and they'll then only ever need to use them when it's in anger.
00:31:55
Speaker
You know, they they need to go back to them at that point and they become this, you know, overwhelming experience. So we've we've been looking at that again through the university. I suppose from my perspective, what we've done, first of all, is look for the kind of low hanging fruit in this space.
Revising University Policies for Compassion
00:32:12
Speaker
So there have been some policies and processes that we know are probably the most triggering or the most, and and Yeah, they they sit against what we're trying to do within a ah particular and experience. So, for instance, we used to have a fitness to study policy. Every university will have some kind of version of that. and Whilst we were going through our mental health charter exercise, and we we rewrote that and that's now a support to study and process.
00:32:44
Speaker
It's co-written with the students. So we we went through a lot of consultation to be able to write that. It's written in a much more user-friendly language, a much less daunting language about, you know, the consequences of anything. And we've tried to make it much more visible from the outset to students. So so the whole policy got rewritten. and and the other one that we looked at was our process for kind of I hate to say it, but debt recovery as well. can you Can you imagine how awful debt recovery is for students? And you can imagine where those processes sit in an organisation and potentially the mindset of those individuals who are doing, you know, those debt recovery because they're not in a student-facing kind of environment. So we, again, picked that one off to work out how we would help students understand both the seriousness, because the debt is a serious issue,
00:33:40
Speaker
and a thing to to to deal with. You've got to be able, you can't hide that. But what we worked with was how we I suppose, and scaffold the information, get students aware of what could happen in a particular scenario, worked with peers in the student unit union to help communicate some of those messages, and took some of that um fright out of what you could potentially get as a student if if, you know, you get those kind of letters coming through and you've never had anything like that before. So I've I don't know the answer to anything to it all yet, because the terms and conditions one is um um ah the deputy vice chancellor at Teesside is also absolutely wanting to kind of work out that puzzle. How do you make terms and conditions into something that's both compassionate, does our legal duty and becomes understandable to the students? And that's that's the next thing that we're picking off as a university to look at.
00:34:38
Speaker
It's so heartening, though, Rosie, to hear that that's the approach you're taking with some of those policies and really breaking them down. And what does it mean for students? And yeah, that like that's the heart of compassion, isn't it? And working out, putting ourselves in the shoes of the students and thinking, OK, how how distressing is this? How do we how do we mitigate that distress? That's great.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I just love, love, love the fact that you're at a position where you're like, well, clearly we need to do something about this. And I just am not sure what that's going to be. But we're going have a work on it together and we're gonna figure it out. Because I think in my time working with um staff in universities, the number one fear I've always heard is about getting it wrong, which I think is probably the same fear that that the students often have. And I think my one of my ideas about why sometimes uncompassionate approaches or uninclusive approaches can be taken. It's because people feel like maybe they either need to say no or they need to have an answer for what the yes would mean right
Embracing Uncertainty in Compassionate Education
00:35:42
Speaker
now. And I feel like if I could give one phrase to all student facing staff, it would be, you know, wow, thank you so much for letting me know. I'm going to have a little think about that, see what we can do and get back to you.
00:35:53
Speaker
And I think that just being able to sit in that space of it's okay that I can't think what the answer would be right now. It's okay not to be sure.
00:36:04
Speaker
But being open to being in a position of trying to figure it out, for me, that's what real compassion looks like. Yeah. Yeah. It's that willingness, isn't it? To be like, okay, well, I'm i'm hearing you. Yeah, I don't have the answer, but let's let's figure it out together.
00:36:21
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:36:25
Speaker
I'd love to, I just wanted to pick up on the stuff you were saying about the mental health side of things earlier, because I hold up my hand, like I'm really scared about mental health. I'm scared about talking about it with students. I'm scared about getting it wrong, if fear a failure, or all of those things that we just mentioned. So one of the things, but I know I need to know need to be brave and understand it better. So one of the things I've done, so my third year research module, the dissertation module,
00:36:52
Speaker
so distressing for students because the volume of work they have to do, the intensity, the level, it is a full on students cry in that module every year. And I work really hard every year to make it better so that I get less tears.
00:37:04
Speaker
So one of the things I've done is i've done I do this wellbeing corner. So in every workshop that i run, I take five to 10 minutes of it and I pick an aspect of wellbeing to be talking about things. So lots of different things from like coping strategies how full is your battery, what what goes into your battery to recharge it so as you're not just depleting it all the time.
00:37:28
Speaker
um but i do talk about cognitive, emotional, problem-focused coping strategies and social coping strategies. And and really for the module, it's the problem-focused coping strategies that I need them to make sure they're learning to sort out. But then one of the things I do is I talk to them about the dual continuum model.
00:37:52
Speaker
and the mental health versus the mental well-being aspects of that and I break that down what that might look like and so this is the second year I did it this year and every time I do it i'm really scared like honestly really scared so the first year I think I just spoke it really quickly and said that this is a dual continuum model and this is how it is and this is what it looks like and it's like okay no questions okay let's let's keep going And then this year I was a lot braver. I felt a bit more confident talking about it because I wanted to make sure that students had the language to be talking about actually when ah when is it a mental health problem? When are you really struggling? And when is it mental wellbeing? Because sometimes I've found students, um because of what they're going through, things get made so much bigger. And actually, okay, well, we can solve that. Let's work that out between us. This doesn't have to become this big deal. But because I'm scared about talking about mental health, I've been trying to get better at have the language. So I'm trying to help them also have the language. But interestingly, so I felt better delivering it this year, but I did not feel brave enough to hold that space in the classroom for students to, you know, say, well, OK, you know, have a chat with someone that you trust about where you're at on this continuum.
00:39:09
Speaker
my gosh, can you imagine if I'd have done that? That would have been such a good learning thing. And I didn't, I chickened out. And the feedback, one of the bits of feedback on the students from the module was, oh, no, it was good that Claire did all that, but we didn't get an opportunity really to talk about it. and i was like, no, you're right. I didn't give you the opportunity because I was so freaking scared myself.
00:39:30
Speaker
But I think that it's one of those situations with no right answer because it's possible that you could have given the opportunity and they said they might have said something like, um you know, for some people that might have been quite triggering or traumatic to be asked to share those sorts of things. and I'm not suggesting students can't be pleased by anything. I just mean, there's no one approach that would have been perfect there. But like talking about it is great. So I hadn't, I wasn't familiar with that particular model. So Claire, could you just explain that model for anyone that might not be familiar with it?
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, I will give it a go. And apologies, I i arrived at that model because I read lots of advanced HE documents on wellbeing. So that was where I found it. And then I did lots of reading around it. So it's essentially it's saying that like there's this horizontal continuum, which is around that lived experience of mental health. So it might be that you have no lived experience of a mental health condition. This is the other end of the continuum might be that you do have a lived experience of a mental health condition. And then the vertical axis is around wellbeing. So the the bottom end of it being actually your wellbeing really low.
00:40:40
Speaker
You know, things are really hard. there's There's lots of things going on. You've got homesickness, those sorts of things. And the top of that wellbeing would be actually you're doing really well. You've got a good group of friends and, you know, life is is going well. But actually within any of those quadrants, students can s sit within any of those at any one point. So that's what I try and explain to them.
00:41:02
Speaker
ah Because sometimes I was finding students were coming in and saying, oh, my mental health is so bad. And it was but actually they were talking about well-being. They weren't necessarily talking about lived experience of a mental health condition. And for me, that was helpful because.
00:41:20
Speaker
I had to work out what's within my boundaries, again, coming back to those boundaries of me as an academic and actually where can I be supporting a student and where do I actually need to say. um you know, going to a team like Rosie's, okay, this this is beyond what I can manage. And I feel really vulnerable saying all this out loud because I feel like people listening going to be like, oh, well, maybe that's kind of obvious. Or I don't know. i feel very vulnerable sharing this because I don't know if I'm doing it right. So I guess that's my fear of failure. But I think it's partly what you were saying, Elliot, in that I don't have all the answers here.
00:41:55
Speaker
I'm trying to work it out. And I guess my response to learning about the dual continuum and trying to share that to give a language as part of my response to working it out and if I keep doing that every year then I guess I'll get better at it eventually but but what strikes me Claire and I was going to make this point earlier is I think you know when we're talking about these kind of compassionate approaches goes both ways so I'm you know I'm it's hugely valuable that you showed your vulnerability there and talked about your experience but actually we're not very forgiving
00:42:25
Speaker
with our own kind of, you know, with the staff at university around that compassionate piece. So it's brilliant that you're sharing that. And actually that's going to be hugely helpful to a whole host of academics who who will have that similar feeling. And that's that's that's definitely what I saw when I first joined Teesside around mental health. The other thing though, just, you know, would really welcome people not to think of student services as something that has to be separate. So, you know, I know Definitely in that scenario, one of my team would have been more than happy to co-deliver that element. And, oh my goodness, I always think that I'm kind of, um you know, whilst I lead the team, I don't have any qualifications in this space, but so I sometimes think i'm I'm all right at it because I've done it for so long. But once I see one of my team in those spaces and the way that they can handle those kind of silences or and work them through and that they've got, you know, they've got all of that great delivery, yeah don't don't forget that well-being services I think actually the beauty the sweet spot is probably that co-delivery sometimes to kind of go through those sessions and support people through those sessions and and then you know hopefully that starts to cascade and more people in the university do that yeah I think you're right because it's working out where do we put these things in our modules because the reality is like I'm doing that it's a five ten minute block because that's all all i can squeeze into the curriculum and And then, and it's like, right, so next we're gonna talk about data extraction, data synthesis. And it's like, oh, oh right where do we put these things?
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, i I really agree with with both of you on this. And what's always concerned me is the idea that there's there doesn't seem to be so much space for things where it's, it maybe it is about, you know, a mental health condition, a diagnosis,
00:44:20
Speaker
But also it's being exacerbated by something that's going on within an institution and how can we work together between professional services, learning a teaching, leadership, et cetera, to be able to think about how we can create change from that.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
Fostering Compassion in University and Community
00:44:42
Speaker
it's it's almost time for us to wrap up. So it's time for generally overarching, insightful wisdom comments that people will smile and nod at and go, ah, yes, that must be true. Just no pressure at all for you.
00:44:56
Speaker
It's been so wonderful to talk to both of you today. And based on where we've gotten to and the things that we've discussed, I just want to give you both an opportunity to share what you think the questions are that we still need to answer perhaps, or what we need to start doing as institutions to allow compassion to drive our transformation.
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah. So for me, I think I love the work that Paul Gilbert has done around compassion. And he has this one particular quote, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get it right, but I'll give it a go. And essentially it's like compassion is like a spotlight. And the more we shine it, the brighter it gets.
00:45:36
Speaker
And I think that's very much what I found in my work around compassion. The more I talk about it with colleagues, the more I read about it, the more I see in places, not just with staff being compassionate to students, But with students being compassionate to staff and then students being compassionate to other students. So I think the more we use as a filter for our interactions and our teaching, the brighter it gets. And surely that's a good thing for higher education.
00:46:04
Speaker
Love that. That's exactly that that kind of inspires what I'd want to be able to say, which is entirely around that kind of behaviours piece, but thinking of the whole community and actually possibly even thinking beyond your university computer community. So compassionate, ah compassionate approaches need to go always.
00:46:23
Speaker
You know, it's not just about the students, it's about the staff who, we you know, we're all going through turbulent times at the moment. and behaviours of students and a lack of compassion could be the thing that really triggers a member of staff to you know really feel awful in the in in this current climate. and So one of the things, again, that we're looking at at the moment is and reviving. We have a Yes to Respect campaign. I'm not entirely sure it should be called Yes to Respect anymore. But again, this is a co-creation piece that we're working on with staff, students, and actually the community itself.
00:47:00
Speaker
So working with our local public health teams, the police, with you know charities and organisations to start to think about what do we want behaviour to look like, not just in the university, but in the community that we influence. And one of those big themes in that is compassion.
00:47:20
Speaker
is that kind of idea of understanding other people and understanding other perspectives and and working through those you know those those listening skills again. So and that's our kind of grand idea at the moment. It seems really aspirational, but that's that's the project we're working on.
00:47:40
Speaker
That sounds really exciting. And I'm looking forward to keeping update updated with how it goes, Rosie. It sounds really lovely. I think that's a really great note for us to finish on. So I want to say thank you so much to Dr. Claire Killingback and Rosie Jones for joining me in conversation today.
00:47:57
Speaker
i wanted to say I've been Elliot's faith. Like I've been on some sort of comedy stage, but that's... Maybe that'll stay and maybe it won't. Who knows? We'll flip a coin on that.
00:48:08
Speaker
Thank you so much for today. It's been a real pleasure. And to everyone listening, I hope that it's been useful and um looking forward to further conversations in future.