Relationality in an Age of Measurable Outcomes: Teaching, Tenure, and Collegiality

Abstract

Market-oriented language and principles influence universities’ aims, activities, and values. Yet such an outcomes-oriented framework tends to obscure the vast complexity of relationships involved in university function. This inquiry offers a concept of relationality, a process-oriented theoretical framework that foregrounds the notion that educational endeavors continually emerge from complex interactions that may refuse delineation. I use relationality to reevaluate existing aspects of higher educational institutions that, through the cultivation of collegiality, support the development of teaching. Drawn from the classical Chinese philosophical text Zhongyong, relationality situates people as necessarily interdependent and prioritizes attention to relation. Reading research and examples of faculty learning communities through the lens of relationality, collegiality emerges as a valuable outcome that enriches faculty networks, generates collaborative projects, and reimagines notions of value in unpredictable ways. In addition, the concept situates reflective pedagogical research, for example by educator Elizabeth Ellsworth, as a form of personal cultivation that is relevant across disciplines. This inquiry encourages administrators and educators to continually question normative academic practices, to ask what is missed by the pursuit of market-oriented principles to construct institutional directions and tenure/promotion guidelines, and to consider the extensive value of the cultivation of faculty collegiality for higher education communities.