Caring and responsible teacher-student relationships are of great importance in higher education (Healey, Flint, & Harrington, 2014). However, the educationally disruptive and life-threatening crisis due to the war in Ukraine has dramatically changed what can be expect from these partnerships. This multi-crisis we are witnessing in Ukraine has disrupted existing paradigms of teacher-student partnerships, magnifying both teachers’ and students’ vulnerability and enforcing a complete reprioritization of what is important in life. Yet, receiving and providing an education under such circumstances could become a driver for hope and resilience for both teachers and students (Eliot 2005). Caring teacher-student partnerships may have the potential to improve the psychological and physical wellbeing of people to overcome this humanitarian crisis. When teachers normally plan their teaching, they base this typically on pedagogical and subject specific needs. However, these unprecedented circumstances demand approaches that go beyond the subject focus. Caring partnerships can reinstall hopefulness in times of despair and are particularly valuable for strengthening the feeling of safety that is being transformed under the crisis conditions. In times of war-related insecurity, the feeling of safety implies that being together with somebody (physically or virtually) and trust of other people is more essential than physical safety (McEvoy, 2019), while continuity of care during the separation from family, friends and social isolation is an urgent need (Bürgin, 2022). Following up on this argument this work will focus on the role of safety and safe spaces in partnerships in education.

The works of Boostrom (1998), Gayle, Cortez, & Preiss (2013), Callan (2016) and Fast (2018) are helpful in defining the notion of safe space. In the presentation I will focus on the exploration of the details of a digital safe space in a partnership of teachers and their students in the context of the war in Ukraine.

This paper presents findings from a focused literature review (Snyder 2019) to offer a proposal on how to work with the concept of safe space. ERIC and Google Scholar databases were used using the following key words (and combinations thereof): safety, safe space, safe environment, crisis, digital environment. The research focused on work that offered definitions of ‘safe space’, as well as related concepts such as “brave space”, “community of disagreement” etc. A reflecxive thematic analysis explored the notion of teacher-student partnerships and its significance in creating safe spaces in crisis conditions. The reflection was based on personal experiences interacting with students from a Ukrainian university, to guide the outline of the challenges in creating a digital safe space. The reflective analysis allowed to generate the key concepts of safety and develop possible scenarios of creating a digital safe space where teacher-student interactions can be realised.

The findings suggest that a digital safe space in times of crisis needs to offer comfort, care and engagement. Comfort represents a form of safety yet, it is more complex. A comforting climate connects partners and breaks silos of isolation, both physical or social. Thus, the digital safe space should be a place to de-stress, relax and to allow different partners to stay “visible” (Boostrom, 1998). Engagement and collaboration increase a sense of belonging, and ‘feelings of safety and comfort that arise from the idea of being part of a community, organization or institution’ (Asher & Weeks, 2013, 16). In emergency situations, collaborative learning, involvement in interaction and enriching educational experience add feeling of support and safety. Feeling of safety in crisis situation is supported when others care. According to Noddings (1992), caring includes the moral and ethical obligation of humans to care about others. This approach in pedagogy is defined as the ethics of care that fosters the feeling of responsibility and respect for others’ feelings and encourages to act and protect others. Care in teacher-student relationships is supported through open communication and direct instructions as powerful mechanisms to learn to care for others (Swan, 2021). The reflective analysis highlighted some specific challenges, including: 1) shift from pedagogy of content to a pedagogy of the digital safe space; 2) overvictimising students’ experiences while trying to build a teacher-student partnership and a perception of safe space being a “safe-ish” space; 3) managing limited resources when creating a safe environment. The hectic relocations of educational institutions and repeated blackout periods prohibit access to material resources and digital technologies which are the only means for organising digital teacher-student interaction. Possible scenarios for creating safe digital spaces will be presented and how they support the basic concept of safety and the challenges outlined.

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