How can we encourage self compassion in our creative students?

Abstract

The oxford dictionary defines Nurture as 'to care for and protect (someone or something) while they are growing'.

In illustrating ways in which learning support has been designed to extend disciplinary affiliation, nurture is an important word. Developing learning support approaches are beneficial in design disciplinary study in encouraging self confidence, self efficacy and indeed self compassion and embedding these attributes in consonance with practical design disciplinary. As an academic within a creative learning environment there is real opportunity to build strong supportive relationships with students that will encourage their development and attainment. Maclellan (2013) explores nurture as a teaching approach and suggests that for teachers, 'to support learner perseverance, they need to be substantively persuasive and genuine, rather than being gratuitously complimentary (Correll, Spencer, and Zanna 2004).

Thus there is merit in teachers emphasising that the glass is "half-full" rather than "half-empty" but also in calibrating positive messages with knowledge of individual learners and their achievements.' (MacLellan, 2013, p.9). Just as our role as academics I believe is to nurture students through open communications and dialogue with a glass half full mentality, as importantly our role is to develop ways of empowering our students to similarly see their own glass as "half full" or at the very least to see their own glass, and to validate their opinions on their own work or development through encouraging self belief, self efficacy and self compassion.