Feeling-function centered pedagogy: Using student-centered curriculum and friendly student-teacher relationships to heal educational alienation, loneliness, and meaninglessness

This paper is set within the context of my academic journey through my Master of Education program. I became interested in the subjects of alienation, loneliness, and meaninglessness during my final year of undergraduate school. I have worked with classmates from Canada, the United States, and Switzerland. The study of alienation, loneliness, and meaninglessness is important since a lack of inclusion, belonging, and meaningful learning in the lives of students leads to increased incidences of estrangement, isolation, and purposelessness. Supporting learners through their personal quests for meaning is therefore an essential aspect of holistic education. Feeling-function centered pedagogy is cultivated through attentive, creative, imaginative, and friendly classroom instruction. The presence of warm and friendly studentteacher relationships is essential to learner inclusion, belonging, and meaningful learning. I argue that student-centered curriculum and friendly student-teacher relationships are central to the care of post-secondary students. Jung (1933, 1989), de Troyes and Cline (1985), and Frankl’s (1986, 2006) psychoanalytic, mythological, and existential perspectives reveal how it is the wounding of a student’s feeling-function which exacerbates their feelings of loneliness, alienation, and meaninglessness. As my graduate program became imbued with feelings of relatedness, I healed from my own experiences of loneliness and meaninglessness. If educators desire to decrease academic loneliness, alienation, and meaninglessness, they will practice student-centered curriculum and friendly student-teacher relationships with their students.Not peer reviewedStudent-teacher relationshipsAlienationLonelinessMeaninglessnessCapstoneFeeling-functionstudent-centered learnin