Care and compassion in large-group teaching: uncovering teachers’ experiences

Large-group teaching has long been a mainstay of university education, often through lectures. In the UK, neoliberalism in higher education has pushed universities to increase cohort sizes as a way to meet higher education demands and ensure economic sustainability. Consequently, the proportion of staff undertaking large-group teaching has increased to ensure students receive adequate contact hours for direct learning from teaching staff on a larger scale. Our project explores the nature of this contact: what type of teaching experience does it provide? For staff dedicated to pedagogies of care, how do high student-to-staff ratios affect their ability to connect with students? Using professional conversations (Leonard, 2012; Jarrett, 2021) as a participatory research method, we capture the experiences of participant-teachers who lead large group lectures. These professional conversations elucidate the intricate ecology of lecture spaces, encompassing the human, spatial (physical and technological) and structural or policy factors that influence the teaching experience. This approach enables us to examine how these forces shape the large-group teaching experience, uncover the complexities of teaching large classes and contribute to the broader discourse on a pedagogy of kindness (Denial, 2019; Bali, 2021). We aim to challenge the notion that care, compassion and kindness flow only from teachers to students and are solely a human-driven process. Our findings suggest pathways to mutual compassion and care in large-scale pedagogy, involving both human and nonhuman elements.