By Lori Wright, Media Relations

The idea that educators love children is often taken for granted -- even thought it's often the most common reason teacher education students give for getting into the profession. In “Love’s Return”, educators, critical theorists and clinical psychoanalysts explore the role of love in education.

The book is edited by Paula M. Salvio, associate professor of education at the University of New Hampshire, and Gail Masuchika Boldt, assistant professor of education at the University of Iowa.

The contributors to the collection employ a psychoanalytic framework to examine issues including the absence of an official discourse pertaining to love and education; love and other emotions in forms of teaching and care-giving; and the intersection of love and the classroom.

According to the editors: “We recognize that we are in an era in education when there is little credence given to students’ and teachers’ needs for and experiences of subjectivity, relationship, passionate engagement, and fantasy. We therefore offer this book with the hope that its chapters will support its readers in their effort to create and defend pedagogy, curriculum, and relationships with students that are affectively and socially rich, that support students and teachers in building…the capacity to think, to learn, and to make lives of reparation, gratitude, work, and love.”

Among other things, the book argues that our failure to recognize emotions can surface in the form of conflicts in the classroom and elsewhere. The chapters, grounded in research, draw on autobiographical and narrative case studies.

“The contributors to “Love’s Return” offer readers rich insights into the emotional and cognitive dynamics of teaching and learning. You don’t have to be steeped in the psychoanalytic tradition to delve into or benefit from these perceptive and discerning essays. The authors explore the benefits and shadows of love’s return to our education terrain. We need more work of this sort – scholarship that recognizes the complexity of teachers’ and learners’ loves,” says Daniel Liston, co-editor of “Teaching, Learning, and Loving: Reclaiming Passion in Educational Practice.”

The book is available through Routledge.