1 Background

Research on the relation between the teacher and her subject is comparatively scarce [1,2,3,4] although it has recently gained more attention [1, 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The relation between the teacher and the subject she teaches is perceived as essential for teaching and learning [1, 4,5,6, 10, 11], and should therefore benefit from further study, both theoretical and empirical. This study contributes to this exploration by reviewing conceptualizations of the teacher–subject relation as conveyed in scholarly literature. More precisely, the focus is on one of the least explored of these areas, namely, the passion that teachers are supposed to feel for their subject.

2 Teacher–subject relations

A teacher relates to the subject she teaches in several ways. In an inventory review from 2013, Depaepe et al. [1] compiled studies on teacher–subject relations into four thematic fields, i.e., teachers’ knowledge of the subject, teachers’ beliefs on the subject, teachers’ emotions on the subject, and teachers’ commitment to the subject; the latter differentiated into four subthemes, i.e., identity, authenticity, love/passion, and enthusiasm.

Depaepe et al. [1] found most of the research on teachers’ knowledge of the subject to be inspired by the content-related categories that Lee Shulman [12, 13] identified, with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) resonating most in educational research [14, 15], and teachers’ beliefs about the subject they teach to centre on their beliefs regarding the nature of the subject, and the role of these beliefs in preparing for teaching [16]. When it comes to teachers’ emotions on the subject, Depaepe et al. [1] found research on how past and present emotions influence teachers’ attitudes towards the subject [17], and how teaching a subject provokes specific feelings [18]. The fourth of Depaepe et al.’s [1] themes, aggregated as a matter of the teacher’s commitment to her subject, includes identity, authenticity, love/passion, and enthusiasm. Here, I limit the focus to identity and love/passion; authenticity being closely related to identity (see also [1, 4, 19]) and enthusiasm being frugally elaborated on in their thematization. The notion of teacher identity as influenced by the subject has attracted considerable attention since Helms [2] showed that teachers’ relation to the subject has to do with identity: “teachers have more than a passing intellectual interest in their subject matter. In fact, dimensions of their identities are, to greater or lesser degrees, defined by it” (p 831). Additionally, Palmer [4] contended that teachers partially define themselves by their subject. However, although there are examples of studies on the impact of subject matter on teachers’ identity [20, 21], scholars contend that this relation remains underexplored [2, 8, 19, 22, 23].

Educational scholars have long claimed that love and/or passion is involved in teachers’ relation to the subject they teach [4, 5, 10, 11, 19, 24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33]. As Rowland [32] testifies, a declaration familiar to most scholars, especially in the context of higher education, is: “when I recall the teachers that most influenced me, what I remember is their love of the subject, their desire to engage me in their enthusiasm and their sense of the excitement of discovery” (p. 92). In a similar vein, Liston refers to Jane Tompkins in stating that “the teachers who loved their subjects and did not hide it; they were the ones that made the most difference” (Tompkins 1996. A Life in School p 61, cited in Liston 2000, p. 88). In fact, Palmer [4] and Vlieghe and Zamojski [10, 11] put love for the subject first, arguing that good teaching is neither teacher centred nor student centred but subject centred [4] or, as Vlieghe and Zamojski [10, 11] see it, thing centred. In the same vein, Rowland [32] suggests what he calls intellectual love as a “key component of the kind of enquiry that forms a basis for both teaching and research” (p 96), in turn motivated by love of the subject matter.

However, although scholars agree that the love of a subject includes aspects such as love for its objects, its methods, its philosophy, its assumptions, its deep structures, and its relation to the world, to truth, and to teaching it [11, 24, 34] they differ regarding the kind of love they ascribe to the teacher–subject relation. Although some claim that a teacher’s love for her subject is romantic [5, 24, 25, 30], others maintain that it is rather one of the three kinds of love that Plato bequeathed to philosophy, namely, philia [24], eros [35], or agape [27]. Other scholars have recently argued that educational love is ontological rather than ontic in nature (see [4,5,6, 10, 11].

This study rests on the claim that although not (yet) explicitly a part of the curriculum in teacher education, the passionate relation between the teacher and her subject affects the teacher educator, the teaching, the student, and the teacher’s learning, and hence, would benefit from being studied. The aim of this study was to inventory different notions of teachers’ passion for their subject as conveyed in the literature, and to discern aspects thereof that present as (still) implicitly affecting teaching and learning in teacher education.

3 Method

I searched for notions of teachers’ love for their subject using the database ERIC via EBSCOhost and ProQuest Central, using the following search terms: “teacher” + “subject matter” + “‘love” or “passion”. I then explored journal articles and book chapters referred to in the articles I found, and used Google Scholar for a “forward search”, i.e., scanning more recent works that had cited the articles I found. Only works including notions of love or passion were included for review. This process yielded nine texts that explicitly addressed the teacher–subject relation in terms of love or passion.

A thematic review inspired by what Thomas [36] called “a general inductive approach” was undertaken, allowing themes and conceptualizations to emerge from frequent, dominant, or significant themes inherent in the material. This review set out to inventory themes of teacher love for the subject in the literature, revealing four notions of love: i.e., romantic, friendly, erotic, and divine. This was followed by a detailed reading over several iterations while carefully noticing emerging key aspects within the thematic fields. The reading resulted in five commonly recurring aspects, namely, (a) the source/driving force of the love; (b) its central characteristics; (c) its consequences for the teacher; (d) for the student; and (e) for the subject.

4 Findings: themes and key aspects

Here, each of the four notions of love, including combinations of two or more, and two notions of an ontological nature, is presented. Each of the presented notions are followed by an account of the driving force and character of each one, and what they entail for the teacher, the student, and the subject itself. The key aspects are summarized in the next heading.

4.1 Romantic love for the subject

Four of the scholars included in the review generally refer to the romantic notion of love as the passion a teacher has for her subject, namely, Elliott [24], Liston [30], Halpin [25], and Aldridge [5].

Elliott [24] depicts a teacher’s love for her subject as a romantic love story, including feelings such as taking delight in a subject, phases of utmost passion, struggle, and passion transcending into devotion to scholarship and becoming a teacher of the subject. Elliott [24], narrates a love story between a scholar and her subject that many teachers may recognize:

… a child at school finds a subject attractive, takes delight in it, and begins to look forward to the lessons in which it is taught. The subject seems to welcome his attention, … and he comes to think of himself as ‘good at’ the subject. It becomes ‘his subject’. … In due course it dawns on the student that his enthusiastic interest in his subject is not enough in itself. There are standards which have to be met, and to meet them he has to develop skills and abilities which he did not originally associate with his subject. He also has to do a good deal of work which seems uncommonly like drudgery. Pleasures do not come easily now, but he finds a fulfilment in trying to satisfy the demands his subject makes upon him. He has become devoted to its discipline, and feels at times that he has been enlisted in its service. His relationship to his subject now bears an analogy to courtly love, … a love which makes extreme, even cruel, demands and offers no guarantee of pleasure. The student accepts these conditions, acquires the necessary skills, satisfies the standards, and performs the drudgery with a good heart, without resentment. One day he finds himself experiencing the old delights again, as if nothing had ever come between him and the objects he is studying. The demands upon him then become more severe, and his relation to his subject becomes once again primarily one of devotion to its discipline. Let us suppose that his intellectual life continues in this cyclic manner through the period of his studies at the university and that he becomes eventually a scholar and teacher of his subject (Elliot 1974 p 135–136).

According to Elliott [24], a teacher should be an advocate for the subject and “do what he can to ensure that his subject develops in the manner which is best for” (p 137). In fact, according to Elliot [24], loving a subject involves recognizing an obligation to think about the nature of the subject, and doing what one can to ensure that the subject develops in the manner which is best for it. Additionally, when the methods or orientation of a subject begin to change, this kind of devotion calls for the teacher “to take a stand, and do what they can either to ensure that the changes are successfully carried through, or to resist them if they believe that they will be detrimental to the subject” (p 137). Elliott [24], concludes that the love of a subject—like the love for a person—might involve a degree of self-sacrifice and even though this advocacy for and resistance to change can be tedious, exhausting, and even personally disadvantageous, it is—like love for a person—rewarding also for the teacher in that it supports her in achieving self-fulfilment (p 136).

In a similar vein, Liston [30], portrays romantic love as a matter of visiting other places and languages to which we submit to “transcend ourselves—… [and] reach beyond ourselves for something that is greater than any of us” (p 100).

4.1.1 Romantic love enlarged by eros, philia, and agape

Halpin [25] advocates for a notion of romantic love that encompasses aspects of eros, philia, and agape. Building on Elliott’s [24] romantic notion, he adds erotic love, claiming that romantic love also encompasses commitment, intimacy, and passion, the latter energizing the teacher to earnestly engage with her subject, reinforcing a genuine concern for the truth and a commitment to the good. Furthermore, he adds aspects of philia (friendship), manifested in a mutual relationship that entails fondness and appreciation of the Other and is based on the kindness and willingness of both partners to seek, even promote good for the other [25]. Lastly, he adds aspects of agape, namely unselfishness, equality, creativity, and stability. He maintains that agape balances eros and philia in that it “makes eros responsible, while elevating at the same time the preferential love of philia into universal love” (p 93). By incorporating agape, Halpin’s [25] notion of romantic love comes to encompass a love for the good together with the notion that a person’s love of God is realized in their love for God’s creation.

4.1.2 Ontological romantic love

Aldridge [5, 6] conceptualizes teachers’ love for their subject as a “metaphorically romantic notion” of love. Adopting a distinction offered by Heidegger [37], he opts for an ontological notion of romantic love that draws on Gadamer’s [38] existential hermeneutics. Accordingly, the event of understanding the subject matter is perceived as the teacher, the student, and the subject being involved in an existential dialogue where the latter is approached in an I-Thou relation [38,39,40]. The outcome of this dialogue is that all three interlocutors are transformed, and even, Aldridge [5, 6] contests, that the teacher and student come to “belong’’ to the subject matter. Referring to Weinsheimer and Marshall [38], Aldridge [6] draws attention to the fact that “belonging” (gehören in German) is related to “hear”, and to “obey” (hören in German), and to the additional sense that gehören has of granting what is due. “The disposition required for authentic understanding”, he contends, “is a serious openness to the address of an interlocutor; an acceptance that they might make a claim on us or have something to teach us” (p 39, c f [40, 41]).

4.2 What a romantic love for the subject entails

4.2.1 Driving force

The driving force of romantic love is presented as an intellectual and emotional allure [30], which in turn is driven by a desire and concern for the knowledge and truth that resides in the subject [24, 25, 30]. When enhanced by eros, philia, and agape, a passionate concern for the truth and a commitment to the good is added [25]. In Aldridge’s [5, 6] ontological version of romantic love, it is the existential dialogue between the teacher, the student, and the subject matter—in which “one takes seriously the other’s claim to truth and is prepared to ‘risk’ one’s biases or prejudices” ([5] p 533)—that constitutes the driving force.

4.2.2 Central characteristics

The central characteristics of romantic love that emerge from the material relate to the subject engaging, attracting, intriguing, and holding the teacher intellectually and emotionally [25, 30]. When enhanced by eros, philia, and agape, as in Halpin’s [25] version, sympathy for subject, a perception that the subject is good for the teacher and that she identifies with it, is added. Additionally, the teacher is perceived as being good for the subject and the central characteristics of romantic love include aspects of philia such as openness, sensitivity, sincereness, empathy, tolerance, and respect, together with the idea that Truth is conveyed to the students by the teacher’s love of the subject. Adding agape, Halpin [25] advocates that teachers’ love for their subject should encompass the idea of the good and should “find ways to connect students with the grace of things” ([29] p 97). In Aldridge’s [5] ontological version of romantic love, this connection is taken one step further by means of what he terms “wooing by proxy”: the teacher woos the student on behalf of the subject, that is, she acts as an agent for the subject, which has neither the words nor the status to do so, to “seduce” the student into falling in love with the subject. However, in accordance with the hermeneutical mood of interacting, this is accompanied by yet another central characteristic—what Aldridge [5] terms “ceasing to strive”, which represents an ontological mood that Aldridge, referring to Heidegger’s Gelassenheit [37] suggests be interpreted as “letting be” (c f [40, 41]), “by which not only teacher and student, but also being itself, are disclosed and brought to fulfilment” ([5] p 545).

4.2.3 Consequences for the teacher

Romantic love entails four consequences for the teacher: she becomes immersed in a subject that engages her [30]; she reaches beyond herself for something that is greater, thereby transcending and achieving self-fulfilment [30]; she serves and advocates for the subject [24]; and she becomes part of a community of truth that she joins through her love of the subject [24]. According to Halpin’s [25] expanded notion, the teacher furthermore seeks the good in the subject, and she possesses a capacity to perceive its potential and find ways to draw it out [25], thereby supporting the subject’s self-actualization. Conversely, Halpin [25] asserts that the subject supports the teacher’s self-actualization by drawing out potentials, bestowing value upon them and, referring to Elliott [24], nourishing her soul with the truth that resides in the subject. In Halpin’s [25] version of romantic love, agape channels the otherwise overwhelming features of eros and helps the teacher organize and focus her interests, get to the heart of the subject, share that with her students and convey her passion for the subject; eros contributes to the teacher’s self-actualization and makes her life happier and more meaningful; and philia bestows responsibilities upon the teacher to embrace “the idea of the Good’’ and “to find ways to connect students with the grace of things” ([29] p 97 in [25]). In Aldridge’s [6] version, the teacher’s disposition of openness allows the subject matter to conduct her understanding, and she comes to belong to the subject [6]. Furthermore, Aldridge wants the teacher to “engage passions and ignite desires” [5].

4.2.4 Consequences for the student

The student becomes a new devotee and part of the community of “we who love subject X”, as described by Elliott [24], and slightly reformulated by Liston [30] as a matter of getting invited to take part in and embrace the domains, the worlds, the engagements that the teacher has found so alluring. The consequences for the student of Halpin’s [25] expanded notion of romantic love is that she gets initiated into the love that her teacher has for the truth that resides in the subject, a truth that comes to nourish her soul, subsequently contributing to the creation of her identity. Furthermore, it helps the student to see the true value of the subject and the good therein, since, as Halpin [25] states, the virtue of the teacher’s love of the subject makes the student regard the subject as precious and gets her connected to the grace of things. In Aldridge’s ontological version of romantic love, the student’s understanding is also influenced by the subject matter [6], imparting not merely knowledge to her, but a new understanding of the world and herself in that world.

4.2.5 Consequences for the subject

According to Elliott [24], one of the consequences of romantic love for the subject are that each teacher makes an original contribution to it. Enhanced by eros, philia, and agape, romantic love causes the teacher to seek the good in the subject, revealing potential not yet seen, affirming its value, and even bestowing value on it, thus enabling the subject to reach its full potential [25]. In Aldridge’s ontological notion of romantic love, the roles of the interlocutors are overturned, allowing the subject to influence the teacher and the student in their understandings [6].

4.3 Erotic passion for the subject

Fried [35], an advocate of erotic love for the subject, claims that it is a teacher’s passion that makes the greatest difference to students’ learning and makes a teacher unforgettable. A teacher’s passion for her subject is poetically conveyed by Fried [35] as a matter of being:

…. in love with the poetry of Emily Dickinson or the prose of Marcus Garvey; dazzled by the spiral of DNA or the swirl of Van Gogh’s cypresses; intrigued by the origins of the Milky Way or the demise of the Soviet Empire; delighted by the sound of Mozart or the sonority of French vowels; a maniac for health and fitness or wild about algebraic word problems. ([35] p 20)

However, she claims that it’s not merely a question of love of a field of knowledge, it’s also a matter of care for ideas and values [35].

To Liston [30], passionate love is called upon when “obstacles [are] encountered, frustration felt, anger experienced, and alienation acknowledged and understood” ([30] p 108). He characterizes this love as an emotionally passionate desire to understand and counteract injustice, emphasizing that it involves intellectual as well as emotional criticality, the aim of which is to understand ourselves and our worlds and to locate the sources of pain and heartache in our worlds to raise our consciousness. Liston’s [30] notion of erotic passion for the subject turns the passion into a potential for empowering students.

To Loui [33], erotic love comprises “the connective tissue of reality”. He contends that teacher love for the subject is a passionate interest to which teachers dedicate their lives, and which is manifested in ecstasy:

We academics choose our disciplines because of our passion for atoms or bacteria or computers or democracy or existentialism. We devote years of our lives to advanced study of our subjects. When we discover a new protein altered by a genetic mutation, when we elucidate the structure of a string quartet by Haydn, when we devise a convincing interpretation of an East African ritual, our ecstasy is a manifestation of profound love. ([33] p 285)

4.4 What an erotic passion for the subject entails

4.4.1 Driving force

The driving force behind a teacher’s erotic passion for her subject varies with regard to the intensity of the reviewed texts—for Fried [35] it is a somewhat mild passion in the form of love of a field of knowledge and a care for ideas and values; for Liston [30], a desire influenced by criticality; and for Loui [33], a passionate interest manifested as ecstasy.

4.4.2 Central characteristics

The central characteristics of erotic passion also vary. While Fried’s [35] notion is characterized by love of a field of knowledge and care for its ideas and values, Liston’s [30] by intellectual and emotional criticality, Loui’s [33] is a matter of life dedication.

4.4.3 Consequences for the teacher

What consequences does an erotic love for the subject entail for the teacher then? According to Fried [35], erotic love is a gift that teachers grant themselves, entertaining values to be clarified and verbalized and connections between one's values and the subject area to be uncovered. Furthermore, a passionate teacher conveys her passion for the subject to her students [35]. For Loui [33], erotic love entails the teacher dedicating her life to the subject, while for Liston [30], it is about consciousness raising, a matter of becoming critical and taking a stance against oppression together with the students.

4.4.4 Consequences for the student

According to Fried [35], a teacher’s erotic love for her subject entails that the student gets to share in some of the heart of the subject matter as the teacher’s passion is conveyed to her. For Liston [30], the student’s critical consciousness is raised, empowering her to take a stance against oppression.

4.4.5 Consequences for the subject

It is Fried [35] alone who describes consequences for the subject, in terms of the heart of the subject matter being revealed.

4.5 Friendly love for the subject

In the reviewed material, it is only Elliott [24] who emphasizes friendship as pertinent to the teacher’s intention to know the objects of her subject. For Elliot (1974), this kind of love represents a contemplative stance, stemming from a willingness to patiently and kindly allow the object to be itself, to show itself as it is. Elliott [24] regards this relation as a sort of intimacy, which he calls “participation”, based on

a true intellectual love or friendship as a directedness of the mind towards the object, in the steadfast intention of entering into a communion with the object, on the part of one who has an affinity with the object, to which in some sense he ‘belongs’ and which in some sense ‘belongs’ to him. (p 142)

But he cautions that the object in question needs to remain distant, to conduce a relation similar to friendship, where one encourages the partner to ‘be oneself’ in one’s company, thus enabling the object to begin revealing itself.

4.6 What a friendly love for the subject entails

4.6.1 Driving force

The force that drives the teacher’s love for her subject is, in this case, according to Elliott [24], true intellectual directedness of the mind and a steadfast intention to enter into communion.

4.6.2 Consequences for the teacher

Elliott’s [24] notion of friendship affords the teacher a transcendence through which a relevance for the life of the teacher arises in terms of “joy, wonder, astonishment, awe, … [and] being moved to one’s depth’’ ([24], p 144), an experience, as he puts it, that “nourishes the soul” of the teacher [24].

4.6.3 Consequences for the subject

Elliott [24] does not mention what friendly love for the subject entails for the student but maintains that friendly love enables the subject to begin to reveal itself and that this revealing in turn enhances the friendship.

4.7 Divine love for the subject

Hogan’s [26, 27] notion of teacher love for her subject rests on reverence for the world. He claims that agape, with its proper moral energy, is the kind of love that provides education; educational practice as a “courtship of sensibility”. While stressing the importance of sensibility for the possibility of doing justice to the subject, he characterizes the teacher’s approach to the subject as a “wooing”. This is a stance dependent on the teacher’s understanding of the subject as “something active … that addresses us and calls forth a response” ([27] p 60). The subject’s voice engages the teacher’s sensibility, “…calls deeply on a teacher’s originality and imaginativeness” ([27] p 57), and demands she be “responsive in a variety of active but perceptive ways” ([27] p 88).

Furthermore, a teacher’s authority hinges on “the originality of their own relationships to the subjects they teach” ([27] p 59), which means that.

… the relationship between the teacher and a … subject is more than a question of competence. That’s to say, it is a recurrent interplay, just as much as interpersonal relations are. If the relationship is buoyant and balanced, it is one in which the teacher is continually attentive and responsive to new influences—a relationship that nurtures and relishes an ever richer fluency on the teacher’s part. If it is neither buoyant nor balanced, something else displaces fluency—most often, a conformity to a regime of textbooks, notes and drill. ([11, 27] p 61)

However, for the student to learn, the richness of the teacher’s rapport with the subject needs to become “embodied in the learning environment and in the enactments of the teacher” ([27] p 76).

4.8 What divine love for the subject entails

4.8.1 Driving force

The driving force behind divine love for a subject is, according to Hogan (1993) [27], reverence for the world and the teacher perceiving the subject as a voice that addresses her and calls forth a response.

4.8.2 Central characteristic

Hogan [26] concludes that the central characteristic of his notion of divine pedagogical love is a matter of conceiving the teacher’s efforts as “… a courtship on behalf of the authentic voice of the subject being taught, of the singular appeal and flavour of the discipline of learning being explored, of recurrent possibilities of self-disclosure and self-appropriation” ([26] p 14). He goes on to specify that the teacher’s wooing proceeds from a desire to bring the authentic voice of the subject in question into communion with the student [26].

4.8.3 Consequences for the teacher

What does this notion of pedagogical love entail for the teacher? According to Hogan [27] the teacher’s ability to perceive the subject as a voice and to respond sensibly to that voice, demands abilities of vibrant understanding of the subject paired with self-understanding that combines fluency with the teacher’s responsiveness. Hogan (2009) emphasizes subtleness with regard to insights together with patience and conscientious judgement in responses, approaches that will build a characteristic originality of each teacher’s relationship to the subject she teaches, which is the characteristic originality associated with her authority.

Because it is through the teacher’s enactments that the subject addresses the student according to this notion of pedagogical love, there is a demand for the teacher’s resourcefulness—“a fertile repertoire of ideas, stories and examples that reflects the imaginative richness of her or his relationship to the topic being taught” ([27] p 80).

4.8.4 Consequences for the student

By perceiving that the teacher believes that the subject has something rich and enduring to offer, the student comes to share the teacher’s enthusiasm for the subject [26]. While the subject makes its address through the enactments of the teacher and in such an idiom that the sensibilities of the student are addressed, this is done invitingly to elicit a questioning kind of interest. The voice of the subject is one of invitation to explore and to raise critical questions, which enables the student not only to learn more engagingly and confidently [27], but also to gradually discover her own potential and limitations, so that she feels “at home” in a subject [27].

4.8.5 Consequences for the subject

From Hogan’s [26, 27] notion of pedagogical love it follows that a subject is understood as a voice rather than as a repository of knowledge, theories, and procedures. This entails giving a particular significance to the teacher’s or student’s relationship to a subject, while not denying the subject’s knowledge, theories, and procedures.

4.9 An ontological mixture of eros and agape

In explicitly developing and arguing for an ontological account of educational love, Vlieghe and Zamojski [10, 11] advocate for educational love to be perceived as a fundamental way of relating to the world, and they express teachers’ love for the subject as a mixture of eros and agape. As such, it is a love that is similar to eros in that it includes “falling in love, being seduced, finding pleasure and giving in to the risk of betrayal and abuse” ([10] p 40), with eros being perceived as representing a precondition for curiosity and desire to study the subject [10]. The agapeic dimension of Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [10, 11] educational love is conveyed as a matter of full and unconditional devotion to the subject matter. Drawing on Badiou (2003 in [11]), they argue that teachers experience “an event” of falling in love with a subject, and that teaching is a matter of staying truthful and faithful to this event. Educational love, as advocated by Vlieghe and Zamojski [11], discloses the subject in particular ways dependent on the teacher’s initiative, therefore forcing responsibility upon her in terms of an ontological responsibility related to the fundamental relation of each human being as bound with being. Therefore, Vlieghe and Zamojski [10] assert, education and teaching are only meaningfully understood in relation to a logic of responsibility and care for the world and its things, making educational love characterized by agape and eros on the ontological level the essence of teaching.

4.10 What an ontological mixture of eros and agape entails

4.10.1 Driving force

Referring to Arendt’s (1961 in [10, 11]) notion of natality, Vlieghe and Zamojski argue that the driving force behind educational love the existing generation introducing and welcoming the next generation to the world, expressed through teaching in a way that affirms that a particular thing is interesting and therefore worth being studied and cared for.

4.10.2 Central characteristic

Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [10, 11] notion of educational love is characterized by its ontological understanding of the student as a representative of the new generation, and of teaching in terms of an answer one must give to an ontological condition of natality. It is a pure and unconditional love coupled with the necessity of sharing it with the new generation, however, in the sense of a gift that leaves it up to the new generation to decide how it will be received and taken further, but nonetheless a gift without which the teacher’s life becomes meaningless.

4.10.3 Consequences for the teacher

For the teacher, Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [10, 11] educational love entails an ontological responsibility—the teacher being someone who represents the subject she is specialized in, responsible for keeping the thing “alive” by “performing the most fundamental teacherly gesture, such as pointing out, drawing students’ attention to something …: ‘come closer, and have a look, this is fascinating! It is worthy of your effort. I invite you to engage with it’” ([11] p 527). For the teacher, who is understood as a “militant of truth”, this testification entails self-exposure and vulnerability which makes educational love encompass generosity [11].

As an ontological approach to educational love, this further means that being a teacher is a question of deciding to recognize one’s love for a particular thing in the world, to maintain an affirmative attitude towards it, and to fully commit to living the life of someone in love with that thing to assert and sustain this love. This acknowledgement means.

that one recognizes that one cannot imagine living without studying this thing, and hence, one cannot possibly tolerate that the new generation remains deprived of a chance to study this thing, and that there would be no opportunity for this thing to be renewed by the new generation. ([10] p 36)

At the same time, teaching entails testifying to a self-care that makes life meaningful [10].

4.10.4 Consequences for the student

In Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [11] conceptualization of educational love, students are addressed primarily as members of a new generation and secondarily as individual persons. As a newcomer, a student is someone who has the opportunity and capacity to rejuvenate the world, has the possibility of a new beginning, not only on behalf of “the thing” by studying and starting anew with it, but also by realizing the value for her own life of caring for that thing. According to Vlieghe and Zamojski [10], it is because the teacher testifies to her love for the thing that the thing imposes itself on, attracts, and speaks to the student, thereby making it possible for the student to understand the study of a thing in terms of exposing oneself to it, even to losing oneself in that move, thereby allowing for learning to be conceptualized in terms of a transformation.

4.10.5 Consequences for the subject

What then, does this notion of educational love entail for the subject? First, the teacher’s unreserved affirmation, her unequivocally assenting attitude, opens the world and allows the subject to disclose its true self [11]. The subject can thereby truly be part of the teacher’s life and render the life meaningful. Vlieghe and Zamojski [10] describe the subject as being “alive” and as such imposes itself upon, attracts, and speaks to the teacher [11]. The same goes for the student—the thing becomes a part of the student’s life as it is freed and passed on by the teacher. To study a thing then, involves nothing less than listening to and “letting a thing appear on its own terms, being attuned to it, and exposing oneself to its appeal” ([10] p 56).

4.11 Ontological passion

Palmer [42] advocates for educational love to be a matter of spiritual passion, which I understand as ontological in nature. According to Palmer [4], teachers and students “gather around a great thing” in “a community of truth”; they enter with empathy into and image its inner perspective. The subjects, or what Palmer [4] calls “the great things”, call us together to know, to teach, and to learn in communities of truth. Palmer’s [4] version of educational love grants subjects a life of their own, with identity and integrity, grace, and power, rendering to them “a quality of being and agency that does not rely on us and our thoughts about them” (p 112). He asserts that subjects hold teachers accountable, that teachers have a responsibility for the subject and that an educational community—teachers and students gathered around a subject—owes its character to the grace of the subject, because—as a “great thing”—it evokes virtues that lead participants to invite diversity, embrace ambiguity, welcome creative conflict, practice honesty, experience humility, and have respect for the great things of the world.

4.12 What an ontological passion entail

4.12.1 Driving force

For Palmer [4], the driving force behind a teacher’s passion is the power of the subject, a grace of “great things”, an agency expressed as a calling, even as a gravitational pull that continually calls her deeper into its secret. Palmer ([4] p 108), vitalizes the subject:

We say that knowing begins in our intrigue about some subject, but that intrigue is the result of the subject’s action upon us: geologists are people who hear rocks speak, historians are people who hear the voices of the long dead, writers are people who hear the music of words. The things of the world call to us, and we are drawn to them – each of us to different things, as each is drawn to different friends. Once we have heard that call and responded, the subject calls us out of ourselves and into its own selfhood.

4.12.2 Central characteristics

The subject continually refuses to be reduced to our conclusions about it [4]. The community of truth is perceived as being in constant transformation, a passionate yet disciplined process of inquiry and dialogue, the community being involved in “a complex and eternal dance of intimacy and distance, of speaking and listening, of knowing and not knowing” ([4] p 109), a process wherein the subject, by way of the strength of its own identity, corrects claims of truth, resists false framings and refuses naming which limits it. Although there is progress in the truth-seeking process —because “as our insight deepens, the subject yields to a certain naming, and we conclude that we know it” ([4] p 109)—“the (…) subject always stands ready to take us by surprise, calling us into new observations, interpretations, and namings and into the mystery that can never be fully named” ([4] p 109).

4.12.3 Consequences for the teacher

For the teacher, this spiritual passion entails what he characterizes as an ontological significance in terms of the identity of the subject influencing the teacher’s identity. He writes that “the things I teach are things I care about—and what I care about helps define my selfhood” ([4] p 17).

It also falls on the teacher to engage students in the dynamics that characterize a community of truth, that is, to replicate the process of knowing in a space in which the community of truth is practised. In such a subject-centred classroom, the teacher’s central task is to give the subject an independent voice—a capacity to speak its truth quite apart from the teacher’s voice in terms that students can hear and understand. When the subject speaks for itself, Palmer [4] contends, teachers and students are more likely to come into a genuine learning community where students can have a conversation with the subject and with each other.

4.12.4 Consequences for the students

For students, Palmer’s [4] passionate version of educational love entails that they become “introduced to a world larger than their own experiences and egos, a world that expands their personal boundaries and enlarges their sense of community” (p 122). Students also become who they are as knowers and learners when they participate in the community of truth characterized by diversity, ambiguity, creative conflict, honesty, and humility [4].

4.12.5 Consequences for the subject

What does this educational love in the character of ontological passion entail for the subject then? Palmer [4] maintains that the attention of the community of truth that places the subject at the centre of attention bestows on the subject respect, authority, and ontological significance. The subject is not dependent on the truth seekers because, as a “great thing”, it does not rely on us and our thoughts about it. On the contrary, it represents a vivid and vocal presence with a capacity to speak its truth while refusing to be reduced to our claims about it, as such rendering to every discipline “a gestalt, an internal logic, a patterned way of relating to the great things at its core” ([4], p 125).

5 Summary of notions and key aspects

In Table 1, the specific characteristics entailing the different kinds of passion that was found is summarised.

Table 1 Specific characteristics of the teacher-subject relation in different types of passion
Full size table

The review revealed that the different notions of passion differ not only in terms of the driving force and intensity of the teacher’s passion, but also in terms of the character of the relation between the teacher and the subject. Romantic love and three of the notions of erotic love are driven by a search for the Truth and for the Good. While romantic love for the subject is characterized as an intellectual and emotional allure that engages the teacher in a search built on a sensitive, sincere, empathic, tolerant, and respectful stance, the three erotic notions are conveyed as searching for the Truth and committing to the Good in slightly different ways—by love of wisdom combined with romantic passion mediated through an responsible eros; by a love of a field of knowledge and a care for ideas and values expressed as being dazzled, intrigued, delighted, a maniac; or as an emotional passion driven by intellectual and emotional criticality. The third erotic notion goes so far as to claim that erotic love is recognized as an ecstasy for a subject to which teachers dedicate their lives.

Two of the notions revealed a more cautious stance with regard to teachers’ love for their subjects. Friendship, it is contended, stems from a willingness—by being contemplative, by patiently and in a friendly way insisting that the object show itself as it is—to let the object be itself, with the intention of entering into a communion with the subject. Agape, divine love, is conveyed either as that which is driven by charity and characterized by unselfishness and equality, or as that which is driven by reverence and characterized as an “honourable courtship”, a matter of the teacher “wooing” the subject, which in turn addresses the teacher and calls forth a response.

The two ontological notions, namely Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [10, 11] mixture of erotic and divine love and Palmer’s [4] ontological passion, embody a more life-influencing dialogical relation between the teacher and her subject. The first is conveyed as that which is driven by erotic curiosity and a desire to study the subject, a passion which includes seduction, pleasure, and conceivably betrayal, and which is combined with an agapeic dimension of unconditional devotion to the subject. Although characterized by responsibility and care for the world and its things, it is perceived as a necessity for the teacher’s life to be meaningful. The second, ontological passion, is conveyed as that which is driven by the subject—a “great thing”—calling teachers and students to “gather around a great thing” in “a community of truth”. By accommodating empathy and responsibility for the subject, teachers and students experience the grace and the power of these great things, resulting in their virtues being awakened through inviting diversity, embracing ambiguity, welcoming creative conflict, practicing honesty, experiencing humility, and respecting the great things of the world.

For the teacher, the different notions of passion entail both demands and gifts. Romantic love demands that she advocates and seeks for the Good in the subject and that she mediates the Truth to students in a way that engages their passions and ignites their desires. Of the two versions of erotic love, one entails that the teacher dedicates her life to the subject and convey her passion for it to her students, and the other requires that she raises consciousness, encourages criticality, and takes a stance against oppression. In return, Romantic love allows the teacher to reach her full potential, the good of the subject contributing to her identity and completing her; the gift of friendly love is experiences of joy, wonder, astonishment, and awe, being deeply moved, having her soul enriched; and erotic love stirs, dazzles, intrigues, delights her; makes her a maniac for a field of knowledge.

The divine and ontological notions of love for a subject place greater demands on the teacher and have a greater influence on her life. Divine love requires the ability to perceive the subject as a voice, an ability building on inventive energies and a vibrant understanding of the subject with a self-understanding that combines fluency, responsiveness in terms of subtle insightfulness, patience, and conscientious judgement. Ontological notions entail an ontological responsibility impregnated with self-exposure and vulnerability so that, by means of teaching, the teacher keeps the subject “alive”. It furthermore requires the teacher to replicate the process of knowing while giving the subject an independent voice, a capacity to speak its truth quite apart from the teacher’s voice. Divine love instigates a relationship between the subject and the teacher where the teacher is continually attentive and responsive to new influences, whereas ontological passion encompasses the idea that the subject makes the teacher’s life meaningful and influences her identity.

This review has shown that a teacher’s passion for her subject affects the student’s passion for and learning of the subject, although in different ways according to the different kind of passion the teacher embraces. When romantical passion reigns, the student becomes initiated into her teacher’s love for the truth that resides in the subject and becomes part of the community of “we who love subject X”. This truth comes to nourish the student’s soul, contribute to the creation of her identity, connect her with the grace of things, and impart a new understanding of the world and of herself in that world. A teacher’s erotic love for the subject may entail the student sharing in some of the heart of the subject matter, or that the student’s consciousness is raised, she becomes critical, and is thus empowered.

As regards the effect that different kinds of love for the subject have on the teacher, divine and ontological love are more profitable for the student than romantic and erotic love. It is contended that a teacher’s divine love for her subject engages the student’s sensibility and helps her understand the subject as a voice. She comes to share the teacher’s enthusiasm for the subject while the subject’s voice arouses a questioning interest which subsequently leads to the student gradually discovering her own potentials and limitations, guiding her to being “at home” in a subject (a “homecoming of selfhood”). When a teacher professes ontological love, students are addressed primarily as members of a new generation that has both opportunity and capacity to rejuvenate the world, to perform a new beginning on behalf of “the thing” by studying and starting anew with it. The student comes to experience the grace and power of the subject, and, as the subject affects her identity, she realizes the personal value in caring for it.

Last, different kinds of passion a teacher has for her subject entail different perceptions of the subject’s agency, friendly and erotic love seemingly rendering less agency to the subject than romantic love, which in turn seems to provide less agency than the ontological notions. While friendly love is perceived as enabling the subject to begin to reveal itself and erotic love is conveyed as a matter of the heart of the subject being revealed, romantic love, according to the reviewed accounts, entails a relation where the teacher and the subject seek for the good in each other, bestow value upon each other, and as such enable each other to reach their full potential. Divine love, in furnishing the subject with yet more agency, claims that each subject has its own voice, or voices. Vlieghe and Zamojski’s [10, 11] account of ontological love goes one step further as regards the agency of the subject—it is allowed to disclose its true self as “alive”, and as such imposes itself on, attracts, and speaks to teachers and students.

The subject is perceived as becoming part of and providing meaning to the teacher’s life, to be rendered authority by the teacher, and as such coming to define both the teacher and the student. In a similar vein, Palmer’s [4] ontological passion is perceived as rendering subjects identity and integrity, granting them a life of their own by which they hold teachers and students accountable and awakening their virtues.

6 Conclusions

The review shows that a teacher’s passion for her subject can be romantic, erotic, friendly, or divine in character; sometimes a combination of these, sometimes ontological in nature. The study further shows that these different notions entail consequences for the teacher, the student, and the subject that have bearing not merely on teaching and learning, but also on the way the subject is perceived, on the teacher’s and the student’s self-understanding, and even, in some cases, on how they experience the meaning of life.

Some of the notions identified have been considered unsuitable for an educational context. Palmer has, for example, rejected romantic love as improper on the grounds that it represents but “a soft and sentimental virtue, … a fuzzy feeling of romance” ([33] p 8–9). The character of romantic love found in the reviewed texts here, however, show something other than soft sentimentality and fuzziness—for example, a requirement for the teacher to be sensitive, sincere, empathic, tolerant, and respectful; that she mediates the Truth to students in a way that engages their passions and ignites their desires.

Erotic love carries even stronger cautions. Several scholars deem erotic love to be inappropriate in an educational context, contending that it represents a desire to seize, acquire, and possess the beloved one [24, 27], or that it represents a one-way relationship [25] in which the teacher takes delight in the subject to the full and “falls captive to her passions, experiencing an intoxicating thrall and loses her composure” ([27] p 82). The notions of love found in this review, however, steer clear of this trap – by mediating eros with philia and agape [25]; by connecting erotic love with a care for ideas and values inherent in the subject [35]; by binding erotism to intellectual and emotional criticism [30]; and by transforming ecstatic passion into a life dedication [33].

It is hoped that the identification and thematization presented here contributes knowledge both to teacher education and to research focusing on the passionate relationship between the teacher and her subject. However, a prerequisite for this is a recognition of what, for example, Aldridge [5, 6], Depaepe and colleagues [1], Palmer [4], and Vlieghe and Zamojski [10, 11] contend, namely, that emotions and passion impact on both teachers and students, learning and teaching. This acknowledgement is not new. In 1945, Aldous Huxley (p 81 in [33]) claimed that “we can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love”. Palmer (1983 in [33]) contended that “the act of knowing is an act of love”. Maybe this would require what Liston advocates for, namely, that educational scholars “recall the emotions, the feel, the sense of what was so engaging and alluring about our learning” ([30], p 99).

Additionally, findings show that love, identity, and authenticity are insolubly intertwined in the teacher’s relationship with her subject. Linda Hobbs (2012) found that student teachers’ love for their subject aligns them personally and professionally with the character of the beloved subject, thus transforming their identity. Similarly, Brooks [20] found that teacher identity is grounded in early experience of a subject, and that the desire to enter teaching is largely driven by a love of, and desire to continue working with the subject. Kreber and colleagues [19, 28, 43] provide empirical support for the claim that both faculty and students consider love of the subject to be an essential characteristic of good teachers, by influencing their feelings of authenticity, their identity, and their values.

The findings of this study represent teacher passion for her subject in terms of ideas found in academic literature. The theme will benefit from being further investigated, for example in terms of what aspects of passion teachers actually express when interviewed. Or in terms of possible differences between cohorts of teachers—men/women, different subjects, different educational levels—regarding their passion for their subject.