Love as a Pedagogical Practice: The Case for Refugee Education

• In Event: The Humanity, Emotionality, and Love of Teaching

Abstract

This paper considers how pedagogical love is created and sustained as a co-constructed practice between refugee background students and their teachers in multicultural schools in Finland and Australia, and how this love transforms with time and the changing needs of students.

Employing modified, child-led version of critical incident procedure, 45 students from refugee backgrounds and 30 teachers were interviewed for this paper. Their views were analysed through the theoretical frameworks of praxis and pedagogical love.

This paper argues that reimagining love as a pedagogical practice provides conceptual tools by which to comprehend how pedagogical love as a crucial practice for refugee background students may be enabled and/or constrained in schools.

Authors

• Jane Jane Wilkinson, Monash University

• Mervi Kaukko, Monash University