It seems that wherever academics gather, be it virtually on LinkedIn or in faculty meetings and tearooms, it’s hard to move away from topics like AI’s existential threat to Higher Education and Jobs Ready Graduates gutting arts and humanities programs.

The mood feels heavy and grim.

Despite this heaviness, kindness keeps surfacing as something people want more of. However, it’s often framed as just “being a nice person” rather than a serious pedagogical choice, or one that could have structural or systemic impact.

Sadly, when kindness is treated as ‘just’ a personality trait, it becomes uneven, gendered, and unsustainable.

Building on the earlier piece by Gabi Nudelmann on this blog, I’d like to suggest that kindness needs to move from the personal to the structural.

What does the Pedagogy of Kindness (PoK) ask of us?

The PoK, as suggested originally by Catherine Denial, is an ideological approach which asks academics to understand kindness as “believing students” and “believing in students” rather than just being pleasant. There’s an emphasis on justice, trust, and large structures that reduce harm for all students, as opposed to case-by-case benevolence that students need to ask (sometimes beg) for.

In their book Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness, Aidre Grant and Sharon Pittaway explore how you can embed a PoK in your practice by intentionally designing it into orientation, syllabus, assessment, and feedback. They suggest something like assessment flexibility as standard rather than the exception as good practice which benefits all students. This also intersects with Universal Design for Learning philosophies.

If we take Denial, Grant and Pittaway seriously, kindness isn’t who we are: it’s what our systems DO.

The gendered “kindness trap”

This isn’t as straightforward as it first seems. There’s an identifiable pattern: women and people socialised as women are likely to be described as “kind”, “caring” or “like a mum” by students and colleagues, and therefore more likely to shoulder informal pastoral care and flexibility. We’re seen as "academic mum”, and, while on the personal level this is good for students who can get the support they need, it comes at a cost. Kindness on this granular level can be read as softness, reduced rigour, or lack of authority by others viewing these acts of kindness.

I am a millennial woman, teaching first year students in our core major in the Bachelor of Arts.

Personally, I have received many compliments about kindness from my students in unit evaluations and have had a measurable impact in reductions of fail rates and improved satisfaction in those units. Simultaneously, comments from colleagues like ‘that’s not how it was in my day’ or the implication that, by being kind, I am being weak, sting.

When kindness lives only at the level of individual personality, it disproportionately relies on women and other marginalised staff, is invisible in workload models, and is easy to dismiss as non-rigorous.

Systematising kindness is one way to get out of this trap.

From personal trait to system: three design moves

What might it look like to treat kindness as design, not disposition?

Shifting kindness from the individual lecturer to a recognisable system means that we can ‘person proof’ interventions which then takes them off the shoulders of marginalised staff.

Kindness in orientation

In my units, I have an ‘Orientation Module’ that explains the ‘how tos’ of university for my first-year students, many of whom are first-in-family. It sets out how and when to communicate with lecturers, what ‘office hours’ mean, and the many other parts of the academy which rely on culture to understand. This makes the hidden curriculum visible and means students can find the information they need, reducing anxiety. This module is now a centrally supported template which has been trialled in other settings (courses and locations). If we can remove the gatekeeping of institutions in this way, “the kind one” is not just the woman down the corridor.

Kindness in assessment design

This can look like built-in flexibility for all students. It could be token systems, having the lowest grade dropped, formative low-stakes tasks, or structured revision opportunities so students don’t rely on pleading individual exceptions. For the ‘cup of concrete’ crew, this approach is compatible with rigour because standards and learning outcomes remain clear; what shifts is the pathway, not the bar.

Kindness in feedback and communication

This is where Denial’s ‘kindness to self’ also shines. Creating systems of feedback for example banks of feedback stems, shared templates, or LMS announcements that frame feedback as collaboration (“here’s how we can work on this together”) rather than judgement. Since these can be codesigned at program level, it not only saves time for staff, but it shows that compassionate communication is a recognised, shared practice rather than a private emotional side gig.

These are all examples of skilled academic labour and intentional pedagogical design that can be named, supported, and shared.

Why this matters now

Amidst AI anxieties and funding cuts, it’s tempting to see kindness as a luxury or an individual virtue – an ‘add on’ if we have the emotional capacity. If we want kindness to be equitable and sustainable, it must be built into the way courses are designed and resourced, not left to the ‘kind ones’ to quietly shoulder. For me, that’s the real work of a pedagogy of kindness: designing systems that are kinder than any one of us could be on our own.

Banner image generated by ChatGPT.