This paper reports on an investigation of acts of kindness in education. Social science researchers have in recent years been calling attention to the ‘rise of affectivism’ (Dukes et al 2022). They argue that by building upon and integrating previous phases of behavioural and cognitive research, we are entering into a new area of understanding of human behaviour that is concentrated on emotions, motivations, feelings, moods and other affective constructs. Not only are such processes linked to our well-being, but also they shape our behaviour and drive key cognitive mechanisms. This is nothing new to those concerned with educational research and scholarship who have long emphasised the role of care in education  (Held 2006; Noddings 2003; Tronto 1998; Diller 2018). Our concern here is with something specific within care -  kindness. Kindness is not an orientation like care but is known and recognised in specific acts. Kindness according to Brownlie and Anderson (2017) can be conceptualized as being composed of four constituents: its infrastructural quality in a societal sense (low profile acts without which nothing would happen); that is is unobligated; that is has a micro or inter-personal focus; and that it has an “atmospheric” potential to subtly alter what we feel and do. The unobligated aspect of kindness has prompted commentators to believe that ‘what is subversive in thinking about higher education practice through the lens of kindness is that it cannot be regulated or prescribed’ (Clegg & Rowland 2010, p 721).

Teacher pedagogical beliefs are known to be informed by a range of factors, including the stories we tell ourselves about our own historical experiences of teaching and teachers (Kagan, 1992). Teachers may be motivated to teach by their beliefs about teaching, either to pay forward acts of kindness they have been shown or by vowing to do better themselves. Unfortunately we have no shortage of negative stories. Negative framing of teaching can become a dominating narrative of public discourse, leading to teachers being excoriated in the media for example (Mockler, 2020). If the image of what it means to be a teacher is being corrupted it is high time to reclaim this space. In order to offer a counter narrative of what teaching can be we embarked on this project to unearth and shine a light on positive pedagogical practices. The research project described in this talk attempts to address a deficit in focus on pedagogical positivity by asking student teachers what kindness means to them and what examples they can recall, of practices of kindness, from their educational history. We touch and acknowledge issues of diversity and lack thereof in our practice landscape as we seek diverse accounts of universal acts. From these accounts we are developing a mutimodal narrative representation of kindness in teacher education. Our results will be presented in a surprising way, for kindness is just that, something that arises unexpectedly, perhaps just when we need it, and then disappears, leaving nothing but a faint smile.

In order to help weave the stories of its participants this research adopted a form of narrative enquiry. Specifically it aimed to use an approach known as speculative design. Speculative methods have seen increased attention by educators of late (Houlden & Veletsianos 2022; Ross 2022) for their focus on imaging possibilities for education via less traditional representational methods. We aimed to elicit narrative accounts of acts of kindness in teaching from student teachers and then weave these into a speculative fiction that is set in an imagined future - see (Costello et al 2022; Richard & Caines 2021) for examples of how participant testimonies are used to generate fictional artefacts and worlds. We employed a visual artist to help us illustrate our imagined future. Following an application for ethical approval from our institution’s ethical review committee, permission was granted to conduct this research. Following this approval 13 student teachers were recruited and interviewed. We conducted vox pop style short interviews with student teachers approaching them on the campus and recording a series of audio interviews of short questions which took approximately 10-15 minutes each. Most of our research population (student teachers in Ireland) are a relatively non-diverse population being primarily white Irish middle class students who accessed university through the traditional competitive entry routes. We also recruited students from a university access programme who are classmates of author two, an undergraduate student herself pursuing a non-traditional route to higher education. Lastly, author three interviewed author two. Author three is a female who was a recent arrival to Ireland seeking asylum from Afghanistan (where higher education for women has now been banned by a recent Taliban decree). (Author two 2021; Author three, 2022).

Results of this research project are ongoing and we present initial findings here.We have uncovered uplifting acts of kindness from teachers and students in the testimonies of our participants. In this session we will present anonymised excerpts in a creative way. We have engaged a visual artist as a member of the research team to help tell a story based on the participant’s contributions using a multimodal approach. We hope our talk will have an interactive element to allow delegates to be part of this storytelling conversation and help us celebrate and storify kindness in education.

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