On Liking and Learning

It's definitely summer-mode for me, and as I said to someone recently, this is the first time in five years that I'm neither taking courses, or teaching a course (or both) during the summer. Don't worry, I have plenty of other projects to work on, but I definitely appreciate the change of pace of being able to work a bit more on my own time-table.

For instance, yesterday morning, my colleagues in Education had an impromptu coffee time because one of our colleagues who had been out of the country for a few weeks was back, and we wanted to hear stories of her adventures abroad.

Through the course of our conversation, we wound up talking about different educational settings of which we have been part, as both students and instructors. We agreed that classroom atmosphere makes such a huge impact on students' learning, and even on their willingness to learn.

In response to this, I asked a question of my colleagues: "Do students have to like you to learn from you?"

They had a few initial responses to that wondering. We talked a bit about the difference of being liked and being respected. We talked a bit about the importance of caring relationships--that students have to know that their teachers care about them as people. But is caring the same thing as liking? (As in, can I care about my students even if I don't like them? Perhaps that's an entirely different conversation!)

We also talked about teachers that we liked very much but didn't learn much in their classes. So perhaps "learning" does not automatically result from "liking."

But I do wonder about this.

Can students learn effectively if they don't like their teachers? Is "liking" a prerequisite for "learning?" I'd love to hear what you think about this.

Public domain image from Pixabay.com