Course Conception: Relationship-Centered Teaching

As educators responsible for GTA pedagogical preparation—albeit with very different institutional titles and roles—we noted, consistent with existing scholarship (Gardner & Jones, 2011), that at our public, R-1, land-sea-space-grant, predominantly white university, first-year, large-enrollment courses rely heavily on GTAs, many of whom are international (visa) students and/or people of color. GTAs are often the first and most direct point of contact for undergraduates in these courses, ultimately shaping the landscape of the institution and how learners navigate it. Despite this key educational role, GTAs’ pedagogical preparation remains uneven, if present at all, and is typically subject-matter focused, rather than relationally and/or culturally oriented (Smith et al., 2023). GTAs are simultaneously learners and instructors, frequently moving through phases of acculturation while navigating the educational structures within which they are complexly positioned. Yet, in our experiences—both as former GTAs and now as their mentors—the opportunities to pause and consider how one’s teaching and learning are impacted by institutional, social, academic, and cultural positionings, are as rare as they are wanted. We set out to develop a program that would grow GTAs’ competencies toward such integration and assess its impacts on learning and belonging.

Relationship-Centered Teaching was a transdisciplinary one-credit course available to graduate students who were teaching assistants or instructors of record in biology, communication, and biomedical sciences. The course design was guided by scholarship on RRE and instructor self-efficacy (Felten & Lambert, 2020; Smith & Delgado, 2021), but sought to explore a relational complexity greater than the interpersonal focus of these frameworks. Texts for the class included peer-reviewed articles, excerpts from popular pedagogy books (e.g., Denial, 2024), as well as podcasts and multimedia, all exploring critical aspects, definitions, and practices related to belonging, connectedness, mindsets, and learning. In preparation for class, learners completed a reflexive prism (Herakova et al., 2025), centering an idea from the texts and exploring it through student-relevant personal, cultural, and institutional factors. To move learners toward considering how their shifting positions in relation to such factors impact their teaching and learning and to nurture co-witnessing and critical reflection, each class session modeled and experimented with relational pedagogies, such as storytelling, peer observations, and co-facilitating (Figure 2). Below, we review the literature we engaged when developing the course and explicate how we extend it through the evolving ReSyst Pedagogy we propose.

Figure 2. A representative class from the Relationship-Centered Teaching course on the topic of Boundaries. The inset lists the flow of pre-, in-, and post-class activities. While specific activities varied, each class engaged learners (and us) in relational practices involving sharing and listening, co-facilitation, critical inquiry, and reflexivity. Dotted lines indicate reflexive spaces, where learners connect intersecting personal, cultural, and institutional factors to the topic at hand (Herakova et al., 2025). Peer triads completed classroom observations of each other outside of class, focusing on relational practices and feedback (using the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP)). Collectively, these experiences shaped in-class discussions

Complications: Why Relationships, Which Relationships?

Each of us entered this project, as we enter all educational spaces, impacted by and carrying with us our collegial and family relations, immigration statuses, official university titles, communities and cultures that shape our values, principles, and contentions we navigate in our respective academic disciplines, etc. These multilayered complexities surfaced in the engagement practices we brought to class. We felt that even the literature we found inspiring and affirming in its focus on relationships left us longing for something fuller: A recognition that what makes continuous difference is not only how we relate to other humans, but also how we relate to ourselves, our cultures, histories, and present moments. We set out to re-engage existing pedagogical scholarship with an intent to articulate a complex systems view (Figure 1).

Emerging from a large body of literature spanning decades, Felten and Lambert (2020) coined the term “relationship-rich education” (RRE) to include the variety of ways in which relationships support undergraduate students’ learning (e.g., Ambrose et al., 2010; Hagenauer et al., 2023; Walker-Gleaves, 2019), sense of belonging (e.g., Strayhorn, 2012), motivation (e.g., Leenknecht et al., 2023; Wild, Rahn & Meyer, 2024), authenticity (Gravett & Winstone, 2022) and mental health (e.g., Abelson et al., 2022). RRE encompasses a holistic undergraduate educational experience, including working with advisors, finding mentors, and having meaningful peer relationships. In the classroom, it is facilitated through instructional practices that center connectedness, inclusivity, and care (e.g., Denial, 2024; Gravett, 2022; Gravett et al., 2021; Su & Wood, 2023). Despite extensive research suggesting the importance of relationships and self-efficacy in learning, institutions rarely support awareness and adoption of relational approaches (Su & Wood, 2023) or recognize educators who center them (Felten & Lambert, 2020). Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, there are few applications of RRE to the research-obsessed culture of graduate education (e.g., Humphrey et al., 2023), even fewer to GTAs’ pedagogical preparation.

On the other hand, research has examined GTAs’ relationship to their own developing teaching self and its potential impact on one’s teaching approach (inward/outward; Smith et al., 2023). Specifically, instructor self-efficacy is one’s sense of their “ability to accomplish specific teaching tasks in a particular context” (Smith & Delgado, 2021, p. 1) and has been correlated to teaching performance (Klassen & Tze, 2014). Professional development grows self-efficacy among GTAs through mastery and vicarious experiences, including teaching practice, mini-demonstrations, and observations of peers and faculty (Brown & Crippen, 2016; Connolly et al., 2018). Additionally, continued verbal reinforcement (e.g., through faculty observations and feedback to the GTAs) and the GTAs’ own social-emotional factors impact self-efficacy (Mills, 2011; Smith & Delgado, 2021). Notably, the development of neither outward-oriented, student-centered instruction (Gormally et al., 2016) nor GTA self-efficacy (Chiu & Corrigan, 2019) follows a linear upward trajectory, but fluctuates over the course of one’s teaching practice. Thus, self-efficacy-oriented GTA pedagogical preparation may offer opportunities to examine which institutional and cultural factors influence one’s sense of teaching abilities within contexts. Taken together, this research suggests that GTA self-efficacy, instructional approach, and their correlations are dynamic and impacted by a variety of changing relationships, thus necessitating a systems view.

Situating ourselves among the GTAs as fellow participants in the course, we were transparent about the complexity of our roles. We observed that the literature didn’t fully account for a spectrum of relationship-systems dimensions and movements. One team member reflected, “…just as none of us entered the project from the same starting point nor moved through it in the same ways, neither did the students.” We all reflected on our ongoing growth and transformations, including understanding our roles at the institution better. Later, one of us noted that instead of implementing the kinds of simplifications that are often helpful in research, we seek to account for complex systems through a framework that is both distinct from existing models and honors the foundations they have laid. ReSyst Pedagogy, thus, grew out of a need to attend to: (1) the meaningful roles that intra- and interpersonal, cultural, and institutional relationships play in teaching and learning; (2) the different entry points and movements of ReSyst learners and practitioners, including the different valuing of relationships they bring; and (3) the non-linear interactions among the three critical relationship-systems dimensions we observed (Table 1, Appendix).

Emergence: ReSyst Pedagogy

ReSyst Pedagogy is an ongoing teaching/learning process that puts subject-specific knowledge in conversation with relationships and contexts that shape its meanings: classroom and other academic relationships (inter-personal); connections to institutional, cultural, and communal legacies; one’s sense of self within intersectional systems (intra-personal). ReSyst Pedagogy training aims to enable thriving across complex learning spaces (here, referred to as systems) by (1) providing tools for participants to recognize the various ways in which relational systems (e.g., connections to members of the class, to course content, to society, to personal histories) can directly impact learning, (2) identifying and prioritizing pedagogical practices that support and promote the building of connections and networks, and (3) empowering participants with connected awareness and relational agency to position themselves within the personal, cultural, and institutional forces that impact teaching and learning.

In the Relationship-Centered Teaching course, we imagined that learners would readily move toward ReSyst Pedagogy through activities such as story circles, prism reflections (Herakova et al., 2025), and co-facilitating class meetings. In our hopes for the course, rooted in our own experiences, we neglected the seemingly obvious: The outcomes of this pedagogical development program would be unpredictable, and people would engage in ReSyst practices differently, based on their own entry points, understandings of, and roles within relational systems (Chaaban et al., 2023). Some students were comfortable with and experienced in these types of engagements, but the activities, content, and even the learning management system we were using were entirely new to others. Some GTAs dedicated themselves to learning, while others resisted the invitation to engage. We feared “failure” when only a few of the GTAs implemented in their teaching the practices we modeled. We felt discouraged when, halfway through the semester, some GTAs had yet to learn the names of the undergraduates in the sections they taught. We realized we needed to be even more transparent about how what we were modeling was changing us, our classroom relationships, and learning. We needed a dynamic representation of such change as well as of the patterns of GTA growth we observed.

Evolution: Ways of Growing into ReSyst

Out of this consideration, aligning with previous research about the non-linear progression of self-efficacy and teaching approaches (Chiu & Corrigan, 2019; Gormally et al., 2016), evolved different ReSyst Pedagogical personas. We emphasize that ReSyst personas are intersubjective, contextual, and relational, which distinguishes this framework from other perspectives focusing on internal cognates, such as teacher beliefs and mindsets. Personas emerge in relation to contexts and are, thus, not static, but adaptive and situationally dynamic, meaning one’s positioning along the different areas of the ReSyst Pedagogy spectrum could, and would likely, shift (Figure 3). The spectrum dimensions—authentic presence, reflexivity, and commitment to growth—were informed by existing literature with an added emphasis on educators’ specific attention to learning (Appendix).

Figure 3. ReSyst Pedagogy dimensions spectra and two sample personas. Each point on the spectrum is positioned based on our analysis of the reflections of GTA learners in our course and the language they used to describe their experiences with relationships in teaching across scale/systems

We mapped the personas based on our own reflections on the course, as well as our coding of GTA-submitted reflections throughout the semester and in exit interviews, which explored definitions of relationship-centeredness. One throughline we noticed in such definitions was an emphasis on “being nice and getting along.” Such reflections paid little attention to connecting in ways that shaped learning or linked course material with personal histories and motivations (the lighter shading in Figure 3). We observed this as a persona demonstrating inauthentic presence, shallow reflexivity, and inattention to growth. Such a persona may be overly concerned with being liked and seek to cater to student wishes, without balancing depth of learning; they would respond to feedback defensively and/or look for “quick fixes” and would avoid opportunities to experience alternative approaches to teaching and learning (such as peer observations).

Another persona (the darker shading in Figure 3) we observed was deeply engaged and present throughout the course. Although GTAs with this persona might be new to reflexivity praxis, they applied their emerging questions to the impacts of ReSyst Pedagogy on complex relational systems in their own teaching/learning spaces and beyond. They were curious about the underlying patterns of their position in the institution and in their communities, how they relate to those, and how teaching/learning with relationship-centeredness changes the patterns.

Just as ReSyst Pedagogy is dynamic and changing in response to relationships and systems, personas are not fixed, nor is anyone unchangeably attached to a persona. For example, one of us reflected:

When a GTA comes boasting and joyful about some critical practice they are seemingly “discovering on their own” and advise me that I should be teaching that, I feel myself defensively sliding into less authentic presence and away from continued growth. In such moments, it helps me to call in ReSyst Pedagogy and show curiosity about the GTA’s “discovery” and how they may gift it to others, acknowledging that their seemingly independent learning does not mean I have failed and that what matters is their joy, their sense of connection, and sharing.

In offering these personas, we are not recommending one over another or suggesting one right way to be and do. We consider them to be reflexive heuristics—a way to appreciate and respond to one’s own engagement with relationships and systems in teaching and learning. Thinking in terms of personas may also be helpful to mentors in building authentic relationships with GTAs and assessing and guiding their movement along the spectra.

To Be Continued…: ReSysting and Transforming

We began by wondering what classroom communities and learning would look like if educators and students understood and valued relationships and our varied positionings in relation to our selves, cultures, and academic institutions? While we cannot, at this point, offer a definitive or generalizable answer, we can address how ReSysting shaped our own learning. We feel transformed and more connected: We more clearly value the complex systems of relationships that shape higher education and impact learning, we better recognize that the processes of understanding these relationships are ever-developing, we deeply respect the complexity of “training” others in this deceptively simple approach and believe in its potential for impactful changes in ourselves and the spaces we are a part of.

Our collaboration, the transdisciplinarity of this work, and the development of ReSyst Pedagogy tools (e.g., prism; Herakova et al., 2025) and frameworks (e.g., dimensions in Figure 3) motivate us to further define the personas and consider the dynamic interplay of their spectral dimensions. Further questions we will investigate include: How might understanding the emerging personas across the spectra of ReSyst dimensions support GTA and undergraduate student learning? How does one cultivate shifts toward attention to further growth, deeper reflexivity, and authentic presence/engagement in learning? What are the impacts of such shifts on learning within particular institutional and cultural contexts?

Our understanding of ReSyst Pedagogy is ongoing. We continue to extend our research collaborations to assess its dimensions and impacts, and hope this is a SoTL research area that others will help us develop. Relationships are dynamic, and thus, present uncertainty in all systems—a challenge and opportunity for future research and collaborations.

Appendix