The Pandemic Classroom and Supportive Relationships: Antidote to Neoliberalism in Higher Education? 2023 Hans O. Mauksch Address for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching

Abstract

Research reviewed here reinforces earlier findings about the importance to higher education students of having supportive faculty. A 2022 faculty survey at a public Midwestern university demonstrates faculty awareness of student struggles during the pandemic coupled with a changing, more flexible and caring pedagogy to address student needs. Qualitative interviews in 2023 with students in the “pandemic cohort” suggest a desire for classrooms and student-faculty relationships that are at odds with the bureaucratic model of impersonality, rules and regulations, specialization, and a hierarchy of authority. What may be emerging from the pandemic is a kind of antidote to neoliberalism with an other-regarding rather than individualistic focus and a desire for connection rather than competition. Recommendations, implied by these data, for building these classrooms and supportive relationships and a discussion of the downsides of the “new normal” are presented.