Critical, embodied musings on love as a transformative practice for health professions education
In this talk, the speaker will use a critical feminist lens and relational cultural theory to contextualise why love is dismissed and perceived as deviant and threatening in higher education spaces, and invite us to envision what love, as a transformative practice, can offer health professions education, and indeed, ourselves.
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Description
Many of us come to health professions with a desire to alleviate human suffering (Piemonte, 2018). Yet, health professions education learning environments, pedagogies, and methods of assessment can de-humanize students, and in the process, de-humanize educators (Kreitzer et al., 2019). This tension between our heart’s calling and the practices of health professions education can land as moral dissonance for students and educators. Moral dissonance can threaten the educational outcomes and wellbeing of health professions students and educators and extend to adversely impacting the wellbeing of health professionals, and even patients/clients (Pololi et al., 2009). I suggest that a potential antidote to this moral dissonance is love. With roots in Black American liberation justice work (hooks, 1981; Monahan, 2011) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 2008; Ohito, 2019), love has gained increasing attention in Global North higher education as a transformative practice (Gunnarsson, 2014). Even so, love is often dismissed as silly, trite, taboo (hooks, 2001), and perceived as deviant and threatening in higher education spaces. In this talk, I will use a critical feminist lens and relational cultural theory to contextualise why this may be and invite us to envision what love, as a transformative practice, can offer health professions education, and indeed, ourselves.
Presenter
Katie Lee Bunting
Rounds Details
Best Practices in Education Rounds (BPER) are co-hosted by the Centre for Faculty Development, The Wilson Centre and the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education.
Accreditation Details
Each BPER has been accredited for up to:
- 1 College of Family Physicians of Canada – Mainpro+ credits
- 1 Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada – Section 1 hours
Review complete accreditation details.
For more information about BPER, please click here.
Event Details
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