Finding Joy: Radical Collegiality and Relational Pedagogies of Care in Education

How can we manifest more relational care in education by harnessing joy in the school setting? Finding Joy suggests it is found in care-based pedagogies, radical collegiality and relational reading practices. Guided by philosophical conversations with educational thinkers whose works have informed the author’s own praxis over a twenty-year career in public education, at the end of each chapter the reader is given provocations for reflection through a series of questions.

Finding Joy offers readers the opportunity to spend time with educational philosophers like Gert Biesta, Nel Noddings, Michael Fielding and Maxine Greene. A relational reading of education-adjacent thinkers like D.W. Winnicott and Martha Nussbaum also point to the work that must be done to sustain and grow a thriving collegium in a changing world. Using narrative interviews and a/r/tographical research to help unpack what care looks like in education across various sectors, this book suggests that collegiality and care are required for the support of both teachers and students.