Summer Reading: A Pedagogy of Kindness

By Erin Kraal

As a child of the ’80s, I’ve never outgrown the summer reading program. I remember earning prizes—such as personal pan pizzas—for tackling a stack of books over the summer. This summer, I’m diving into a big stack of pedagogy and faculty development books that have been piling up in my office. I’ll be sharing short reviews focused on their relevance to the KU community. Maybe one will make your future reading list, or offer something helpful right now.

How many books does one have to read to earn a pizza? I'm asking for a friend...

First up: A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial

This book is a good pick for faculty who:

• are feeling burned out

• are new or early in their careers

• enjoy personal stories

• are finding students unmotivated, disengaged, or disinterested

• want practical tips across a wide range of topics and approaches

• dislike dense pedagogy “research” books

• prefer shorter reads

The first thing Catherine Denial addresses is that kindness isn’t the same as being nice, though the two are often confused. “In contrast to niceness, kindness is real, it’s honest, and it demands integrity.” She defines kindness as encompassing clarity, compassion, boundaries, and flexibility. Throughout the book, she breaks down deeply entrenched assumptions about what it means to be a professor and to teach.

The book strikes a remarkable balance between practical advice and Denial’s personal narrative. She takes us through her journey toward a pedagogy of kindness, sharing powerful moments of her own “unkindness” that illuminate her growth. More than once, when she shared a less-than-successful snapshot from her teaching, I saw something uncomfortably familiar from my classroom. But these stories don’t dominate; the book is balanced with actionable, grounded advice. The pedagogical insights are supported by best practices and well-documented references, but it never reads like a literature review.

There are only four short chapters (about 20 pages each), and Denial starts with what may be the hardest place: kindness toward the self. Many of us “grew up” in academic environments that were, frankly, unkind, and we can’t begin to transform our classrooms until we first address what’s happening within ourselves. She offers eight practical tips, and while I appreciated the chapter’s overall message, especially around imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy, I found some of the tips less relevant to my own experience.

The next three chapters focus on syllabus design, assessment, and classroom environment. I especially appreciated her starting with the syllabus (or as we call it at KU, the “first-day handout”). Gwendolyn Yoppolo (KU Ceramics) helped me realize how under-utilized my syllabus was during one of her CEL-hosted workshops, and Denial takes a similar approach of centering student needs and creating a welcoming, engaging document.

Chapter 3 tackles kindness in assessment. While it offers fewer practical tips, it’s one of the most accessible and inviting approaches I’ve read for rethinking how we grade. Her evolving examples of course assignments are especially helpful. Chapter 4 covers the day-to-day of the classroom: welcoming students, encouraging participation, group work, and difficult conversations. If you’re struggling with class participation, turn straight to page 91 and read the short section on “Participation in the Classroom.” Denial emphasizes that participation must be taught. Providing the opportunity isn’t enough, and this might be the missing link for many of us.

Denial defines a pedagogy of kindness as “…attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a discipline.” The back cover calls it “part manifesto, part teaching memoir, part how-to guide,” and I couldn’t agree more.

A few gems from the text

“It is manifestly unjust to place individuals in classrooms without proper training in the pedagogy of their field and, more generally, our best understanding of how humans learn… This is too often how teaching careers in higher education begin.” (pp. 19–20)

“…we need a foundation of genuine respect. Without it, collective care is merely a performance, a product of prioritizing niceness while fundamentally avoiding the responsibility of being kind.” (p. 36)

“The students we teach come from an ever-expanding number of communities, and if we invite them to the seminar table or lab space, they should find intellectual nourishment of every kind.” (p. 48)

“Giving serious thought to how we’re asking students to show us what they know is a kindness.” (p. 61)

“Some students may indeed fail a course. But those Fs (and Ds) are not a badge of honor for an instructor but rather instructive: something, somewhere, went wrong.” (p. 63)

“Participation can and should be taught. It is not enough to consider class participation to be a vehicle for the absorption of class content; it has to be a skill that we give students time to develop.” (p. 91)

References

Denial, C. (2024). A pedagogy of kindness. University of Oklahoma Press. https://www.oupress.com/9780806193854/a-pedagogy-of-kindness/

Denial, C. (2024). A pedagogy of kindness [Ebook]. University of Oklahoma Press. Available through Rohrbach Library: https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=0d7e7172-3969-3bb3-bf3a-a296662eab4f

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Dr. Erin Kraal is the current Faculty Director for the Center for Engaged Learning and a professor in the Department of Physical Sciences, where she teaches planetary science, astronomy, geology, and science writing. She is particularly interested in exploring how faculty teach and students learn the process of science. In her non-work time, she likes to hike, travel, and cook, and has recently taken up a new hobby of learning to watercolor (yeah, YouTube videos!)