Feeling that you matter — to peers, staff, university — is important for student mental health. To really understand what it means for students to matter, Smith & McLellan (2026) analyze 155 respondents’ open-ended responses to the questions of describing situations where they felt that they did (not) matter while at university.
Didn’t feel like I had time to go for a morning dip, but made the time and am glad I went, both because that’s always awesome and because it gave me the chance to listen to the episode “How college students make, keep and lose friends with Janice McCabe” on one of my alltime favourite […]
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 […]
I see statistics on social media every day about 1 in 3 young people who say that there are topics they talk about with an AI but not with another human. And almost all our students report that they use AI for learning, because they aren’t being judged, they don’t feel like they are bothering […]
In the Affective Learning Model, the premise is that learning is shaped by emotions. Teachers that show care and concern positively influence students’ emotions, so they are more willing to engage in learning. In our own work, we have shown that affect is the category of trust moves most frequently mentioned by students. Generally, relationship […]
The wide availability of GenAI has introduced challenges to relationships between teachers and students and within the respective groups (see for example Rachel’s and my work on that!). GenAI being able — and to unknown extent being used — to perform actions that before had to be done by humans creates different perceptions of what […]
I am sitting on the ferry sailing towards Germany, with new-found appreciation of the Öresund bridge and its harp-style carrying cables… And I am listening to a conversation with Michelle Miller on one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Tea for Teaching, on “teaching from the same side” (what a nice, figurative bridge to the featured […]
