Currently reading Gravett (2022)’s book “Relational Pedagogies”, and thinking about parasocial bonding

It all started out with me listening to one of my all-time favourite podcasts, Teaching in Higher Ed, to an episode on designing video with intention and authenticity. Actually, it started before, with me reading about “Relational Pedagogies” by Gravett (2022), but I could not find a way to start a blog post about the book until listening to the podcast…

There are two main things on my mind right now:

1. Can and should we, as academic developers, give “tips” on how to build relationships between teachers and students? (Thinking about this in the context of the “teacher trust moves” that we are currently working on exploring, and our article on “students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond“, where doing just that is our explicit advice)
2. How can I create videos for our upcoming MOOC where participants feel that they have a connection with me, want to learn from me, want to come back into the one-sided conversation with me?

These two are somewhat in conflict with each other (or maybe not?), so let’s explore.

The first question is very much prompted by an interview with Stephen Brookfield in Gravett (2022), where he says that “mandating and operationalizing vulnerability is something I would not want to see. If you start specifying standard vulnerable behaviours, then you underscore the most superficial aspects of performativity. You’ll reduce teachers to checking off in their heads internalized injunctions to ‘use a personal example’ every fifteen minutes, or ‘admit to at least two errors per lesson.’ The fundamentally relational nature of teaching for critical thinking just can’t be ‘canned’ in that way. How trust develops varies so much from person to person. It can’t be standardized.” And, as Gravett writes earlier in the book, “an excessive focus on technique was distracting the teachers I saw (including myself) from exploring some of the more significant questions“. So no teaching tips then, but what do we do instead?

Gravett (2022) starts out with a discussion of Palmer (1999)’s “focusing inwards, in order to connect outwards” and the question “who is the self that teaches?” This is an important question that we also think about a lot, especially in the context of co-creation and Teaching for Sustainability, where we want to build authentic connections with students to be able to talk about difficult subjects and where we need to do a lot of inner work ourselves before we can hold the space for others. What I found really interesting in Gravett (2022) is the discussion of ourself as an onion — if we peel away layer after layer, in the end, there is nothing left. So who is our real, true “self” that we can authentically show? I guess that is something to explore not only individually but also together with students…

The main way Gravett (2022) explores to build relationships, though, is to show “vulnerability as a means to foster connections, and as a route to disrupting power hierarchies“. I myself have a lot of trouble with the word vulnerability (but that might be due to language? To me, it implies somehow to assume that students will want to harm me as soon as I open up. Gravett writes that “a pedagogy of vulnerability is a dangerous enterprise, and one that involves taking risks“. Constantly expecting harm from students is not an assumption I want to carry. But that is of course coming from a position of privilege, because the (perceived, or real) “risk” is definitely not the same for everybody, and of course admission to mistakes are endearing when they come from the old white grandpa superstar rather from a young woman…). What I think Gravett and others really mean, and what I can totally agree with, is that sharing your humanity is desirable as a teacher. Examples given include sharing feeling stressed about public speaking, admit to “shortcomings”, “imperfections”, and mistakes, sharing nasty reviews that one oneself has received, going first when talking about racial microaggressions one has committed. The idea being, as cited after Molloy and Bearman, that the “teachers go first. When those with high social capital are prepared to open themselves to learning, and the concomitant possibility of loss, it creates an atmosphere of humility and possibility. Students may get a glimpse of the notion that they are on the same team as the teacher.” Showing who we are also means taking away the shield of completely separating personal and professional, “in which [the teachers] avoid talking about selfhood, and instead focus upon technique“.

(One warning that I found super important in the book but that doesn’t really fit in my storyline here is that against “individual agency”, where students are expected to follow their “desire”, where “students are agents of their own fate. The implication is that any deviation from the ‘correct’ path would be the responsibility, actions or choice of the individual“. That means that “[f]or those who do not achieve, or cannot compete, the assumption is simple: the wrong choices were made.” This of course fails to recognise that there are a lot of contextual factors that can help or hinder students substantially, and a culture that praises individual agency also makes it difficult to impossible to ask for help.)

But when building relationships, who is included, or invited, in co-creation? Ideally everybody and not just the “usual suspects“, so everybody gets to benefit from the increased connection, from being heard, from influencing their learning environment. One important thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as “the student voice” (like there is no “the public” in “public outreach”). Gravett writes that “[i]ndividuals matter: their voices, experiences, thoughts, actions, connections and relationships“, and we need to engage in meaningful (micro-)interactions with many students, and listen to their individual voices (plural). Gravett reports on a study where participants report “that they felt alienated by homogenizing phrases such as we are all in ‘the same boat’ and desired meaningful, individual connections with peers and tutors.” Listening to individuals rather than some average voice is important, as Gravett writes later: “[w]hat might be missed within taken-for-granted narratives about how students learn and how teachers teach?”

Being included and invited can, however, mean many different things to different people. Gravett reports on a student who appreciated being CCed into emails “that didn’t even involve me remotely” (which, at least at this stage if my career, would drive me NUTS!), and another one that noticed that the Prayer Room felt like a “forgotten space” because there was never any advertising for events in there (which, to me, would feel appropriate?). Also, where is connection welcomed? Gravett tells the story of a participant for whom “family members became sources of professional connection as work and home lives entangled” during the pandemic, when for others that was definitely not the case.

It is at this point that I paused reading the book (so a summary of the second half will come at an undetermined later date) and listened to the podcast episode mentioned above, and started thinking about the second question — how to build connection with people who will only watch us one-way. Which is, of course, very very different from what Gravett (2022) describes as “Relational Pedagogies”, but it will be so important when we start filming for our MOOC!

In the podcast, which is referring a lot to this video on “education as content“, there are three main suggestions for good educational videos that build on the viewing habits of a young audience (scary realisation: students starting university now were born after Facebook was launched!!):

• Attention to length (different lengths of videos signal different type of content; students are, for example, used to watching short but very dense videos over and over to fully understand them, because this is the common way to produce reels for tiktok or Insta)
• Attention to formatting (landscape videos imply a higher level of planning and production value, often more formal content and infotainment — but are also paced so slowly that they can be watched at high speed for reviewing; portrait is more intimate and (seemingly) spontaneous)
• Parasocial strategies (which are about how to build a feeling of connection with an audience that will never get to meet you in person; for example by strategically disclosing select aspects of our lives that have educational relevance — which I guess I have been doing to some extent for this blog)

And it is this last point that sent me into this new rabbit hole of figuring out how to build such “parasocial relationships”…

Hoffner & Bond (2022), in “Parasocial relationships, social media, & well-being“, define parasocial relationships as “nonreciprocal socio-emotional connections with media figures such as celebrities or influencers“. They describe that parasocial relationships form when followers imagine interacting with influencers (and especially when it really happens, for example by influencers retweeting a follower’s post, or liking a fan’s comment [and when chatting about this with Terese, she mentioned that really successful influencers probably have employees for that, which did not even occur to me!]), and that frequent self-disclosure helps build such relationships. They write that “companionship is a key motivation for media use, which can be satisfied in part by developing parasocial bonds“, and that people are most likely to turn to connection on social media “when people experience social deficiencies with their offline social circle or have limited access to like-others“. Influencers can then act as role models (which is, I guess, where their name comes from…) and become really important!

Chung & Cho (2017) write about “Fostering parasocial relationships with celebrities on social media: Implications for celebrity endorsement”. They write that “[t]echnological affordances of social media, such as interactivity and immediacy, and an intimate communication style on social media, create a suitable environment for the fostering of close and meaningful relationships between consumers and celebrities“. Even when an interaction is not happen with each fan personally but only with some of them, the mere possibility of it happening helps build relationships through a “sense of intimacy and reciprocity“. They also stress the importance of self-disclosure: “Acts of disclosure imply that the discloser values the inter-personal relationship and wishes to maintain and nurture it. Therefore, consumers interpret celebrities’ self-disclosure as a sign of friendship being offered“.

Chatting with Terese while reading, we somehow got to the topic of hair salon videos during the pandemic, and this reminded me of watching this series of covid lockdown cut-your-own-pixie-at-home tutorials before cutting my own hair for the first time, and then actually sending the creator pictures of my very first home-made haircut (and being so proud when he responded “good job!” or similar). So yes, parasocial relationships can be super important! Five years later, and I am still cutting my own and sometimes my family’s hair (and by now definitely a lot better than those first attempts).

Anyway, next paper. Yuan & Lou (2020) investigate “How social media influencers foster relationships with followers: The roles of source credibility and fairness in parasocial relationship and product interest“. They investigate perceived trustworthiness (honesty, sincerity and truthfulness), expertise (competence and capability in the topic they are talking about), similarity (with the social media user), and attractiveness (physical or social), as well as fairness (of the process, the interaction, the outcome). They find that social media users are more likely to relate to people that they find attractive and with whom they see similarities. Even though those influencers in the study are trying to sell products, their fairness is mostly valued when it comes to the perceived niceness of the relationship. What, interestingly, did not influence the relationship was “whether the information shared by influencers was beneficial, candid, or moral” (that did, however influence interest in the product they were trying to sell). They advise that “[p]ractically, for influencers, it is important to cultivate attractive personae that also signal similarity to followers to strengthen parasocial relationships with their followers. Meanwhile, how followers are being treated by influencers (interpersonal fairness) and whether the interaction with influencers is two-way and somewhat reciprocal (procedure fairness) also matters equally in relationship building. Influencers should showcase adequate etiquette and respect in their interactions with followers and also reciprocate followers’ expectations and emotions to ensure stable relationships with followers“.

My summary of what these articles on parasocial relationships might mean for our MOOC (even though of course presenting in a MOOC is not the same as being an influencer on social media):

• recognize that people consuming online content are likely missing community to some extent, so create a sense of companionship with participants
• stress similarities with participants (that we are also teachers, that we have similar goals, …?)
• try to create at least some feeling of interaction despite the asynchronous nature, e.g. respond to messages promptly and nicely, or “like” and share posts. We need to think about how to do this efficiently though!
• try to look nice-ish on camera ;-)

Even though this does not come out of the articles I read, to me it makes it even more important that we think about how to create community between participants, in “local hubs”, etc, for when we, as instructors, cannot provide enough relationship and connection for all participants!

And what does all of this mean for my two questions above? While I certainly believe that attempts at building relationships should come from genuinely caring about students and course participants (and even participants of a MOOC that we are likely never going to meet in person), I do also think that there is value in figuring out how to build relationships. Of course, we should not give or follow exact recipes, that’s both impossible because of course things are highly dependent on context and also not desirable at all if we actually want to build relationships and not just perform for show. But reflecting on and recognising what it is that signals care and trustworthiness to students, and using that intentionally to improve communication of those good intentions and build relationships (again, NOT to perform, and certainly not to take advantage of luring people into false beliefs about the relationships they have with a teacher) is surely a good thing?

Chung, S., & Cho, H. (2017). Fostering parasocial relationships with celebrities on social media: Implications for celebrity endorsement. Psychology & marketing, 34(4), 481-495.

Gravett, K. (2022). “Relational Pedagogies”

Hoffner, C. A., & Bond, B. J. (2022). Parasocial relationships, social media, & well-being. Current opinion in psychology, 45, 101306.

Yuan, S., & Lou, C. (2020). How social media influencers foster relationships with followers: The roles of source credibility and fairness in parasocial relationship and product interest. Journal of interactive advertising, 20(2), 133-147.