How culture shapes Chinese teacher’s compassionate love

Abstract

Background: Love could play a role in motivating teachers to help students and is closely related to students’ achievement and prosocial behaviour. Though influenced by culture, teachers’ love is not adequately studied. Purpose: This study explores how Chinese teachers’ compassionate love is expressed and how situational factors such as Chinese culture and history influence or motivate teachers to perceive and express compassionate love for students. Method: This study adopted a qualitative approach of narrative study by describing and investigating the experience of a Chinese middle school teacher and two middle school students and their parents during COVID-19 pandemic. Findings: Chinese teacher’s compassionate love demonstrates some universal features in terms of emotional response, cognitive understanding and behaviour. Furthermore some Chinese culture-related features are also found: Chinese teachers behave in a caring and supporting way at the cost of sacrificing their own free time and comfort; an enduring long-term teacher-student relationship is valued; the Chinese culture encourages, sustains and motivates Chinese teacher’s compassionate love. Discussion: Teacher’s compassionate love is a multi-dimensional concept entailing some universal traits in cognition, emotion and behaviour. The perception and enactment of teacher’s love is subject to situational factors. Some measures for compassionate love could be built into teacher’s education programme.