The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Higher Education: A Compassion Business or Edifying Experience?

   • Paul Gibbs

   Pages 1-16

3. Thinking About Compassion and Education

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

      PDF

   2. Compassion in Philosophy and Education

      • Richard White

      Pages 19-31

   3. Pursuing the Aim of Compassionate Empathy in Higher Education

      • Bruce Maxwell

      Pages 33-48

   4. Creating Conditions for Compassion

      • Kathryn Waddington

      Pages 49-70

4. Expanding Compassionate Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71

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   2. Intercultural Compassion in Higher Education

      • Irena Papadopoulos

      Pages 73-84

   3. Compassion in Buddhism and Islam: The Liberal Arts and Living a Meaningful Life

      • Derek F. Maher

      Pages 85-99

   4. Compassion in the Context of Higher Education Transformation in South Africa

      • Labby Ramrathan

      Pages 101-112

   5. Confucianism, Compassion (Ren) and Higher Education: A Perspective from the Analects of Confucius

      • Kar-wai Tong

      Pages 113-126

   6. Education as Compassionate Transformation: The Ethical Heart of Islamic Pedagogy

      • Abdullah Sahin

      Pages 127-137

5. Compassion Within the Being of a University

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 139-139

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   2. On Becoming a Campus of Compassion

      • Nancy Billias

      Pages 141-153

   3. Learning About Consequences, Community, Creativity and Courage: Cultivating Compassion in Higher Education Leadership

      • Marilee Bresciani Ludvik

      Pages 155-172

   4. In Search of Critical and Strategic Pedagogies of Compassion: Interrogating Pity and Sentimentality in Higher Education

      • Michalinos Zembylas

      Pages 173-187

   5. When Looking Is Allowed: What Compassionate Group Work Looks Like in a UK University

      • Theo Gilbert

      Pages 189-202

   6. The Reflective Paradigm in Higher Education and Research: Compassion in Communities of Learning

      • Mary Koutselini

      Pages 203-212

   7. All Together Now?

      • Jacqui Boddington

      Pages 213-224

   8. Compassion and the Student Experience

      • Sandip K. Gill, Alina Ursuleanu

      Pages 225-228

This book offers a moral rather than instrumental notion of university education whilst locating the university within society. It reflects a balancing of the instrumentalization of higher education as a mode of employment training and enhances the notion of the students’ well-being being at the core of the university mission. Compassion is examined in this volume as a weaving of diverse cultures and beliefs into a way of recognizing that diversity through a common good offers a way of preparing students and staff for a complex and anxious world. This book provides theoretical and practical discussions of compassion in higher education, it draws contributors from around the world and offers illustrations of compassion in action through a number of international cases studies..

• higher education
• interculturalism
• global justice
• research ethics
• student engagement
• student counselling
• empathy
• contentment
• student well-being
• diversity
• Care

“The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education, Gibbs collects diverse ideas about compassion in higher education. This volume can serve as a guide, for individuals and institutions alike, for an engaging historical and topical conversation on the wide-ranging ways to integrate ideas of spirituality and humanity into realms that have increasingly come to seem consumerist.” (Matt Kubacki, Reflective Teaching, wabashcenter.wabash.edu, July, 2018)

• The Burroughs, Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom

  Paul Gibbs

Paul Gibbs is Director of Education Research at the University of Middlesex. He is a professor of the University, founder of the Centre for Education Research and Scholarship and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Open University in Hong Kong and the University of Cyprus. He is an educator and researcher, having taught notions of transdisciplinarity alongside social realism and Heideggerian hermeneutics, and has over thirty successful transdisciplinary professional doctorate students. He has published twenty books on topics ranging from the marketing of higher education to vocationalism and higher education, and has published more than eighty academic articles. His particular approach to transdisciplinarity that informs his work is through the works of Heidegger, neo-Confucian thought and the insights of Basarab Nicolescu.  He is also the series editor of SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education and Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives for Springer Academic Press. 

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