As academics, professional services staff and students at universities across the UK all prepare for the start of the new academic year, I imagine that although our tasks may all look different, there is much about this anticipatory experience that we have in common. I think we share the embodied and emotional apprehension in imagining what lies ahead, wondering what may be asked of us and reflecting on whether we will be able to meet the yet abstract requisites and needs of the unknown ‘other’. As an academic I find myself wondering if this will be the year that the students finally unveil me as a fraud!
In a meeting last week, a colleague reflected that when they first started teaching, they used to have a clear idea of what the students needed to know. They knew what should be included in the curriculum and what skills the students should be taught. But now, after many years in the role they don’t have that certainty anymore. This deeply resonated with me and I have written about similar things before, describing ‘certainty as the death of good teaching’ and highlighting the need to let go of ‘knowing as cleverness’. Rather than being a loss, this decline in certainty reflects an appreciation of complexity and the development of wisdom.
I have come to see that educators have an ethical responsibility to simultaneously know and not know. Students expect us to help them learn things and this is not unreasonable. But we also need to be able to meet them where they are, to enter a supportive learning relationship that is participatory, from both sides. This means letting go of our fixed ideas about a student or group of students, ourselves and the subject, and being prepared to enter into the alive, uncertain unfolding of a meaningful educational encounter.
A few months ago, I wrote this short reflective piece about winter swimming and as a I write this I am struck by its relevance as a metaphor for what it can feel like to be stood at the front of a lecture hall at the start of term:
The moment the water touches my skin I feel deeply alive. The winter North Sea welcomes me with brutal grace. Deep humility mixes with an outrageous aliveness as my reasonable opposition gives way to the exhilarating lift of the waves. Chopped up sunshine glistens on the surface. A sense of belonging threads through each stroke as the world pushes in on me, the pressure of water, the touch of air on cold reddened skin. And yet losing it all feels close - don’t go too far out or stay in too long.
It is when I am in the sea that I feel most intimate with the world. As though everything I do is felt and responded to – not that the world changes according to my whim! I argue with the waves and the coldness and with time. But I am accommodated too. The water admits my body with ease, affording the forward propulsion of my strokes and kicks. Not that it wouldn’t take my life in a moment given the chance.
There is a subtle negotiation that unfolds between the limits of a human body and the starkness of the sea. An intimate whispered discussion that won’t settle for anything less than my full attention. Experience so full that my sensible mind (that still wishes it was in the warm car at the top of the beach) is quieted. I experience myself as a living being amidst the life that sustains me. With each breath I am simply taking place amongst the myriad things.
I am not suggesting that teaching offers the same immediate threat to life that the North Sea poses in February! However, it can feel like it. I used to teach in a tight, performative way because there was a sense that if something ‘went wrong’, if the projector broke or I was asked a question I could not immediately answer, I would drop dead on the spot. There was an underlying vulnerability that I could hardly dare look at. Although this has attenuated with experience and practice, in our current context of increasing political polarisation holding space for meaningful debate and complex exploration can feel like a deep personal risk.
In 1997 Palmer picked up on the tension between the personal, inner life of the teacher and the public domain of the classroom, encapsulating this sense of risk:
'…a good teacher must stand where personal and public meet, dealing with the thundering flow of traffic at an intersection where “weaving a web of connectedness” feels more like crossing a freeway on foot. As we try to connect ourselves and our subjects with our students, we make ourselves, as well as our subjects, vulnerable to indifference, judgment, ridicule.' (Palmer 1997: 8)
This tension feels particularly pertinent now. As an educator in this historical moment, I feel an increased weight of ethical responsibility and recognise the need to consider how I support my colleagues and students in carrying it. I wonder how to find the space to respond creatively and effectively meet the needs of this moment.
Perhaps the excerpt above provides some clues. It points to what happens when we participate, when we become aware of the ‘subtle negotiation’, becoming sensitive to how we are touched by our students, how they respond to us and how learning is afforded through the mutual deepening of understanding. It suggests how aliveness and connectedness can arise from being present and allowing vulnerability; how something ineffable can shift, giving rise to a shared transformative experience that cannot be planned for but becomes possible when given sufficient space. As participants, interactions tell us not just about the being or thing ‘out there’ but also about ourselves: ‘our subjectivity feels the participation of what is there and is illuminated by it' (Heron and Reason 1997: 279). In these moments the classroom transforms from ‘the starkness of the sea’ to a place of belonging ‘amongst the myriad things’.
Contemplative education research is drawing out the importance of contemplative practice for educators, how it supports them in relating creatively to challenging situations and navigating the tensions outlined above (Chirillo 2021). Personally, contemplative practice has transformed my capacity to be aware in my teaching, to move beyond myself as a buddle of reactive nervous habits, towards an embodied, less certain but more responsive presence.
Greater awareness and openness to not-knowing has improved my capacity to act ethically in the classroom and to be more sensitive to the balance between care and risk taking that is crucial for learning. In his discussion of ethics, Varela draws a distinction between ‘know-what’ - a propositional approach to ethics, for example knowing the idea that ‘lying is bad’ - and ‘know-how’ an embodied approach that arises from our moment-to-moment sense-making of a particular situation. According to him, ethical behaviour emerges from an embodied wisdom, grounded in lived experience. Ethical know-how is expressed in the world, it is not a matter of reasoning. He notes that:
“The ethical is not a set of rules to be followed, but a path to be walked, a way of being in the world that is cultivated through practice.” (Varela 1999: 35)
To be an educator is not easy and there is no getting it ‘right’. It is not simply a matter of technique or knowing the subject well. The ethics of good teaching are found not in pronouncements about what or how to teach but through relationship and meaningful participation in which there is space for complexity. Knowing with too much certainty can be an obstacle to connection and shared exploration with students and colleagues. Knowing too little risks failing to create an effective container in which learning is made possible. We need to ‘jump in’ and be willing participants in our teaching, open to learning and the limitations of our knowledge, whilst drawing on our understanding and experience to prevent everyone from drowning! As the new term opens up before us with all its unknowns and possibilities, how can we be present to the subtle tides of the classroom as well as embracing the energetic potential of the unexpected waves that may crash into our teaching? Can we experience the solidity of the ground beneath our feet and yet dare to be unsure, welcoming the mysterious currents of teaching and learning, permitting ourselves and our students to be transformed by them?
References
- Chirillo C (2021) The ‘quiet revolution’: Exploring contemplative pedagogy in UK universities. University of Reading.
- Heron, J. and P. Reason (1997). "A participatory inquiry paradigm." Qualitative inquiry 3(3): 274-294.
- Palmer, P. (1997) The heart of a teacher: identity and integrity in teaching Change Magazine, 29(6): 14-21. Accessed 18 September 2025
- Varela, F. J. (1999). Ethical know-how: Action, wisdom, and cognition. Stanford University Press.
