What is good in higher education?

In today’s educational landscape, where measurement and standardized testing often take center stage, there is a growing recognition of the importance of relational pedagogy. This perspective challenges the prevailing emphasis on measurement and individual performance, instead highlighting the significance of relationships and care in education.
While many scholars in this field argue normatively for a return to core principles of care, some critics point to the gap between these ideals and the realities of educational practice. Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers empirical ethics as a perspective for exploring this practice. Rather than defining in advance what should count as care, empirical ethics examines practices descriptively and empirically, focusing on how care is expressed in different ways.
 
In this project, we take an empirical approach to relational pedagogy to explore how care is manifested in higher education and its methods, and what consequences this entails. We are particularly interested in understanding the distinct pedagogical and epistemological values that emerge across educational settings, including engineering and humanities programs and interdisciplinary studies.

 Research questions

• What pedagogical goods are articulated in our three cases?
• What pedagogical goods are cultivated and enacted in practice in our three cases?
• What epistemological goods are articulated in our three cases?
• What epistemological goods are cultivated and enacted in practice in our three cases?
   
  To answer these research questions, we conduct interviews and ethnographic observations across these different educational settings. Drawing on our expertise in STS and empirical ethics, we aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion on care and education and thereby inform pedagogical methods and policies to improve higher education.