Importance of Relational Practice in Education Curriculum

Provocation No. 16 - "It's the Relationships, Stupid" (Link in comments) <snip> "To imagine education as a site of relational repair is to ask “how we might create the conditions for people — young and old — to re-learn how to be in meaningful relationship?” That includes relationships among students and teachers, yes, but also with ideas, with institutions, with histories, with futures, and with all the other life on the planet that sustains us. It means recognizing that relationship is not just the backdrop for learning; it is the substance of it. This approach doesn’t negate the importance of content or skills. It reframes them. It asks: what is this knowledge in service of? How did it come to us? What does it help us notice? Who does it help us care for? How might it change the way we live and learn alongside one another? If education truly centered relationships, the work would slow down. It would require us to be more present, to ask different questions, and to notice the subtler dynamics at play in a classroom, a community, or a culture. It would also ask more of us as educators — not just to teach well, but to show up differently. To practice humility. To model care. To acknowledge harm and stay open to repair." </snip> #education #schooling #relationality #change

Learning is a conversation that remembers. For decades, teaching was treated like content delivery. The hype, FOMO, and scramble to “integrate AI” risk speeding up that old story when the real work of learning has always been relational. On the ground, the shift is clear. Educators no longer just ask How do we integrate AI? The conversation is moving toward relational world-making. In our community, educators keep naming the moments that move learning: the pause before a student speaks, the ten-minute conference where understanding turns, the ritual that settles a class in care. AI reveals what learning has always been. I’m hearing less fear of replacement & more willingness to grieve the story we told ourselves about teaching and to ask better questions. What’s emerging is a return to presence. Teachers describe feeling less like explainers and more like witnesses, holding space while students and AI work in tandem. Learning becomes collaborative, the teacher as wayfarer, walking alongside learners through unmapped territory. Assessment expands from checking what students know to witnessing who they’re becoming. When AI is added by default, platform priorities set the terms, presence thins, values hide inside “personalisation”, and accountability blurs. 3 Relational Design Anchors A shared way to make choices visible, negotiable, and teachable, so practice stays human. ARC: Attune • Relate • Care 💙 Attune: Hold Space for Becoming Learning begins in relation: witnessing, staying, naming what emerges. Let automation create space for presence, not consume it. 🌱 First move: Begin with a moment of witnessing, a minute of silent observation or reflection before AI enters the task. 💙 Relate: Honour Relational Integrity Treat the human–AI encounter as living dialogue, not delegation. Clarify how the system participates, where human judgement rests, and how repair happens when meanings drift. 🌱 First move: Declare the relation: AI as interlocutor drawing on [sources]; student holds interpretation. 💙 Care: Tend the Boundaries of Belonging Care carries the weight of sovereignty; consent, custody, and commons. Practise it by naming what stays local, how consent is renewed, & who decides when data moves. 🌱 First move: Publish a classroom model card; purpose, roles, data flow, and opt-out pathways. Invite families to co-amend it. Relations are always in motion. Our work is to stay present and participatory, so practice leans toward care rather than convenience. The shift is toward response-able, situated forms of AI, attuned to pedagogy, accountable to context, woven through human presence. Learning remains what it has always been; alive, relational, and whole. Teaching lives inside that relation, a shared walk in becoming. The invitation is to stay attuned, relational, and caring enough to keep evolving together. 💙 Follow Arafeh Karimi for relational, pedagogy-anchored, sovereign AI. ♻️ Share to keep learning relational.

“We must resist the narrative that AI companions are inevitable or neutral. Instead of normalizing emotionally immersive AI, we must build platforms that educate users on healthy social connection and actively encourage real-world relationships—prompting people to get out of AI, not deeper into it. Rather than investing in simulated intimacy, we should ask: What would it look like to invest in relational infrastructure—systems, spaces, and supports that nurture genuine human connection? This means centering relationships in our public systems, starting with education. It means training teachers in relational intelligence, redesigning technology to support—not replace—human connection, and building environments where belonging is a design principle, not a side effect. What if every school was designed not just for academic readiness, but as a relational hub? What if we trained educators not just in instruction, but in connection? What if we measured not just literacy scores, but the strength of connection in a classroom?“

I am happy to share my recent publication, Becoming a Care-Ready Institution: Operationalizing a Relational Framework for Student Success. This piece is especially meaningful to me. It outlines a relational framework rooted in an ethic of care—an ethic that has shaped my life, my leadership, and my understanding of what it means to truly partner with students. I hope it serves as a practical tool for institutions seeking to advance student success in ways that honor connection, equity, and shared humanity. Abstract: In contemporary higher education, outcomes-driven imperatives often privilege efficiency, data, and technology over relational dynamics that underpin student thriving. This article advances the argument that care, understood relationally, institutionally, and structurally, constitutes a form of capital with measurable impact on equity. Building on Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of capital and Yosso’s (2005) framework of community cultural wealth, I introduce the C.A.R.E. Framework (Community and Connection, Accountability and Advocacy, Reflection and Relationships, Equity and Empowerment). Developed through years of leadership practice, this model conceptualizes care as a value and a resource, positioning care-readiness as a strategic and moral imperative for higher education. https://lnkd.in/gcNiVaaK

The biggest risk of AI embedding in education isn’t bias or cheating. It’s loneliness. That’s the warning from Isabelle Hau, Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and author of Love to Learn. At Stanford, she’s translating research on human development and cognitive science into edtech products that support—not replace—teachers. Her thesis is simple but radical: Learning is social. Love is a neurobiological condition for learning. And our obsession with efficiency is missing the point. In our conversation, we explore: • Why education should be relationship-centered, not just learner-centered • How joy, play, and connection build the adaptability students will need in an AI-shaped economy • What relational intelligence might mean for the future of learning and leadership