We talk about wanting to empower our students, but what does that really mean? For Laura Dyer, it means that we are the ones holding the power and we extend it to our students – whereas what we could and should be doing instead is helping students to tap into the power that they already have. This makes power such an important outcome of the humanistic pedagogy model she has developed, which brings together People, Place and Compassion to support students in accessing their power. A humanistic approach aims to teach the whole person, not the subject. It also acknowledges that emotions are central to the learning process and can impact its outcomes both positively and negatively. And what is it like for us, as teachers? As people in a learning environment, we also want to enjoy what we do and have self-compassion as we do it. Content might be king, but perhaps it’s time that the people teaching and learning it took its place!

The resources we mentioned

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas about flow and its contribution to happiness

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The Montessori method

Pekrun, R. (2014). International Handbook of Emotions in Education. Routledge

Rogers, C. ‘The Interpersonal Relationship in the Facilitation of Learning’, In M. Thorpe, R. Edwards and A. Hanson (eds.), Culture and Processes of Adult Learning, London and New York: Open University, (1993 (first published in 1967)), pp. 228-242. 

Shahjahan, R. A. (2015). Being ‘lazy’ and slowing down: Toward decolonizing time, our body, and pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(5), 488-501, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2014.880645

And the publication we talked aboutDyer, L. (2025). A humanistic approach to English for academic purposes pedagogy: people, place, compassion, power. Springer Nature.