Radical empathy positions us to engage and connect with our students while also staying grounded in our role and responsibilities as educators.

Building collaboration with students into the teaching process brings with it many benefits for learning, but it also requires accepting the risk and unease that comes from redefining the roles of students and teachers.

Informed by Rosenberg's (2003) concept of nonviolent communication, the author's pedagogical perspective encourages educators to criticize institutional and classroom practices that ideologically place underserved students at disadvantaged positions. At the same time, this perspective urges teachers to be self-reflective of their actions through…

Faculty in higher education may find themselves reading student work or hearing students' voices in class or in online course discussion boards that reveal a lot of personal information, information that they think might be better kept private, information that may be concerning or even threatening. In their attempts to create richer learning…

Spiritualism can exist in a secular educational institution. In this autoethnography, the author shares the spiritual challenge she had with students in her initial years of teaching as an assistant professor. She discusses her spiritual pedagogical approach, which she integrates into her teaching strategies to touch the minds, hearts, and spirits…

An important ethical task is for the college faculty member to handle the teacher-student relationship well outside the classroom. May Sarton's novel "The Small Room" depicts both success and failure. The teacher should always act as a friend, seeking the good of the student for the student's own sake and recognizing this as a unique…

Certain ethical rules are inherent in the creation and distribution of knowledge, guiding judgment about conduct in the intellectual sphere and setting moral limits to actions beyond those required by law. Ethics of knowledge are governed by rules of conduct appropriate to the effective advancement of knowledge and to the integrity of the…

The nature of the relationship between college student and teacher elicits for the latter a special kind of responsibility and extended ethical obligations that may reach beyond the classroom. These include four kinds of responsibility: causal and role responsibilities, a responsibility of proximity, and responsibility of last resort. The nature…

College students' developmental stages affect their capacities to comprehend and absorb difficult texts and moral problems embedded in them, and faculty should teach accordingly. Interpersonal subjective transactions between teacher and student, the latter of whose identity is in flux, can result in transformations for both. (Author/MSE)

The ten finalists for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's annual Professor of the Year award give a variety of responses, most concerning outlook, to a question about the single most important piece of advice they would give a beginning college teacher. (MSE)

The nature of mentoring and the role of faculty in mentoring college students are discussed, and some guiding principles in the mentoring relationship are outlined. These address the quality of communication between mentor and student, the mentor's role as sounding board and knowledgeable reference, understanding one's own limitations, helping…

Classroom research addresses the why and how of learning, encouraging teachers to use their classrooms as laboratories for the study of learning. At its best it involves students as collaborators rather than as subjects. Classroom research has the potential for creating teaching and learning communities with the shared goal of understanding…

Sound ethical decisions depend on clear problem definition, careful review of alternatives, consideration of consequences, and thoughtful application of relevant principles of responsibility. Often they also require a willingness to receive corrective insight and to check judgments with moral intuitions. Higher education has a special…

Faculty need more general institutional information and training if they are to perform effectively as academic advisors. Three key elements in their preparation for this function are: a conceptual understanding of student development and of the advising process; institutional and curricular information; and relational skills and knowledge to…

Faculty advising students pursuing programs in the arts and humanities should bring to this endeavor suggestions that both challenge students' creative spirit and reconcile this attitude with the realities of earning a living. Guiding principles should include honesty, ensuring that students understand their art interests completely, respect for…