Compassionate pedagogy and student wellbeing: how our teaching can enhance our students’ mental health.

In this session, we aim to facilitate discussion about how our teaching practice can enhance our students’ mental health. We look forward to sharing with you our developing work on compassionate pedagogy (Hamilton & Petty, 2023). We are proud that this approach is influencing teaching practices within and outside of YSJU.

Together we bring psychological expertise from health and education settings, bridging what can often be siloed knowledge about how best to support young adults to achieve a sense of belonging and wellbeing. We will talk about environments that can help students to thrive, and that seek to ameliorate individual-level difficulties. We welcome your own experiences of how, as educators, we notice, welcome and accept student differences with warmth, considering the real-world messiness of overlapping mental health and diversity needs of our students.

Drawing on the foundational principles of compassion-focused psychological therapies, we consider how compassion can be enacted within interpersonal interaction, curriculum design, and leadership culture in universities. We make recommendations for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and strengths-based pedagogical approaches, which create a fit-for-purpose educational environment for the widest possible range of learners. These ways of working are designed to offer an antidote to bolt-on provisions for students who differ from the normative, and aim to enable different students to flourish within and beyond higher education. We propose that pedagogies and practices that are inclusive by design are optimal for universities seeking to produce graduates equipped to tackle the complex problems of contemporary society.

In this session we will introduce you to a free self-help resource for students, and those working with them, to understand psychological wellbeing, with a focused example of neurodivergent students. This worksheet is designed to be a flexible emotional wellbeing resource.

We are both involved in research and advocacy for student wellbeing, aligned with a social justice informed approach.

About the presenters

Lorna Hamilton is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at York St John University. Her research focuses on contextual factors that influence educational outcomes for children and young people, including barriers to access for neurodivergent learners at all stages of education. She increasingly uses participatory methods to understand how educators can provide more fit-for-purpose learning experiences for the widest range of learners. Lorna is an advocate of neurodiversity-affirmative education in schools and university settings and has delivered co-produced training for regional schools and academy trusts. Please see this profile for further information.

Stephanie Petty is Deputy Associate Head – Psychology at York St John and a Chartered Clinical Psychologist. She provides assessment and therapeutic interventions for a wide range of patients in the mental health sector, and for neurodivergent clients. She carries out complementary research focused on neurodivergence, mental health and wellbeing. At York St John, she contributes to the Doctorate of Counselling Psychology programme and leads on strategic development and practitioner training in Psychology. Stephanie has worked as a qualified clinician for ten years in a range of settings, including inpatient, hospital, outpatient, community and neurodiversity settings. Stephanie thoroughly enjoys both academic and clinical approaches and think they are extremely complementary. Please see Stephanie’s profile for more information.

Strategic links

• This session aligns with the university’s LTSE strategy 2026 (2.1) Our learning, teaching and assessment practices will be inclusive by design
• UKPSF Links: A1-A3, K2, K3, V1, V2

Booking information

To sign up for this session and receive the Teams link, please complete a copy of our CPD booking form.