Currently reading Puckett & Felten (2026) on “Time, Care, and Connection: Faculty Perspectives of Barriers to and Practices for Building Educational Relationships”

We know that relationships in teaching are hugely important — many students say that they’ve been one conversation away from quitting, and good relationships have positive impact not just on retention but on lots of other outcomes. Teachers are expected to initiate and build relationships, and especially in the classroom, since that is the only space where they can reach (almost) all students, not just a privileged subgroup that has time to hang around on campus or meet them in other contexts. So what do teachers say about what is working and what barriers they experience?

In “Time, Care, and Connection: Faculty Perspectives of Barriers to and Practices for Building Educational Relationships“, Puckett & Felten (2026) explore this question. They use a convenience dataset with approximately 2000 responses, 2/3rds of those from workshops within the US, collected in Menti at routine faculty development activities, where they asked both for barriers to relationships and something along the line of “what works for you?”

More than 90% of responses regarding barriers fall into four categories: time (the largest group with 1/3rd of responses — this can be about limits to instructors’ time, classroom time, and students’ time), institutional factors (class size, teaching load, class schedule or format, too much content, etc), student factors (they are hesitant, shy, young, have a different communication culture, …), and well-being (lack of confidence, fear of rejection, emotional energy, anxiety, …). And half of the remaining 8% of “catch-all” were about phones or social media! So far, so relatable.

In resonse to the “what works?” question, the main topics were to demonstrate care (“active listening, following-up when students reach out, and “let them know I’m here to support them as a student.”” as well as being available when they said they would be, using student names, find out how they are doing and what they need, …), to use interactive pedagogies (active or collaborative learning, and methods like think-pair-share), to share personal stories (both the teacher disclosing things about themselves and using methods that elicit personal stories, e.g. ice breakers), and to connect with students individually (for example in office hours or through feedback).

So despite the lack of time and other barriers, there are clearly a lot of things that teachers are doing! And pretty much all the things they mention are also mentioned by students when they are asked what teachers do that they trust. That is interesting for academic development. Over the last years, there has been a lot of focus on teaching teachers active learning methods, and more recently the focus has come on belonging, relationships, care, trust, etc. So it seems that teachers don’t need to learn more new, innovative methods; academic development work can just build on and strengthen what’s there already. And look into the barriers — maybe some factors that are perceived as barriers can be addressed with tips and tricks. For example, if class sizes seem way too large to get to know student names, name tents are a good solution that still shows students that teachers care (and that have positive impacts whether teachers turn out to learn the names or not). And if, as mentioned, asynchronous or online teaching are perceived as barriers, there is also work available on how to work with relationships in those contexts (and I am very much looking forward to receiving and reading a book that I ordered about just this topic recently! So stay tuned…).

Puckett, K., & Felten, P. (2026). Time, Care, and Connection: Faculty Perspectives of Barriers to and Practices for Building Educational Relationships. College Teaching, 1-8.

Featured image and pics below from a beautiful last-of-April walk!

Even though there really isn’t a huge amount of green in the trees yet, it is getting more by the hour and it is making me so happy! :-)