As part of my work in the HGSE Instructional Leadership course, we’ve been looking at the the characteristics of powerful learning environments. Design education provides so many interesting opportunities to explore, differentiate, and create learning environments that are authentic, rigorous, and engaging on so many levels. Our task was to articulate the elements of an empathetic classroom.

I’ve built my framework around the five perspectives of the TRU framework. This framework identifies five dimensions of empathetic classrooms:

I found that it aligned with much of my own perspective and philosophy - But needed more in order to make it applicable to my context as a design educator. I decided to connect to each perspective one of the Designerly Ways of Knowing, by design education researcher Nigel Cross. This is an influential work that has framed many of my approaches to design education. I found that as I started to think deeper about the TRU perspectives, that extending them actually aligned with Cross's ideas about design education.

In the MIRO board below, these as well as added some resources, if you're interested.