Compassionate pedagogy in higher education: A scoping review

Abstract

Compassion was a theme of the COVID-19 pandemic era scholarship. The traumatic nature of the pandemic experience for many led to a greater humanising discourse around education, alongside the need to be embracing pedagogies of compassion. This scoping review investigates how compassionate pedagogy is conceptualised and realised in contemporary higher education contexts. Through a systematic search across electronic databases, 25 relevant articles were identified. Findings suggest that there was no consistent definition of compassionate pedagogy in the included literature. The authors synthesised these studies to propose a working definition which has four key components: a noticing of suffering, distress or disadvantage in the learning environment; a commitment to address or mitigate the suffering, distress, or disadvantage; the promotion of wellbeing and flourishing; and a concern for the whole student as a person beyond the cognitive role of education alone. The review explores the realisation of compassionate pedagogy at various levels, including institutional, program (curriculum), module, and individual lecturer perspectives. Further research should investigate the perspectives of students on how compassionate pedagogy can be realised. Institutional perspectives would also be beneficial to understand how compassionate values, policies, and leadership cascade down to the student and staff experiences of compassionate pedagogy in the classroom.