What is care in engineering teaching?

Abstract

The concept of care in teaching has been associated with the development of supportive, personalized relationships between teachers and students, and with the development of an emotionally safe environment inside and outside the classroom. Care in teaching has been found to have an impact on the emotional health and on the intrinsic motivation of students. Thus, arguably it also has a positive impact on learning experience. Existing literature does not identify what attitudes and practices can be implemented in schools of engineering to promote effective care in teaching. This paper describes the progress of an ongoing research currently carried out at a large engineering school in Chile. The investigation has two main objectives. First, to understand what does it mean to care in teaching; second, to understand what is the influence that caring teaching has on the students' learning experience.