Emotionally Responsive Teaching in Aging Education: A Framework for Transformative Pedagogy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a teaching framework that uses emotional engagement to help students better understand aging through collaboration with older immigrants.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel pedagogical framework centered on emotional presence and cultural humility to foster transformative learning in aging education.

Findings

Students showed increased empathy and cultural awareness through co-design with older Asian immigrants.

Emotionally responsive teaching led to deeper understanding of aging as a social and lived experience.

The framework offers practical strategies for educators to create emotionally attuned classroom environments.

Abstract

As aging education increasingly intersects with design, community practice, and care, the emotional dimension of teaching remains under-recognized. This presentation introduces a framework for emotionally responsive teaching—a pedagogical approach that centers emotional presence, vulnerability, and cultural humility as catalysts for transformative learning. Grounded in a multi-year Aging & Design course series, this framework emerged from immersive collaborations between university students and older Asian immigrants in Philadelphia. Students engaged in community-based co-design not only developed inclusive design responses, but also confronted personal assumptions, ageism, and deep cultural difference. Through structured reflection and experiential learning, students showed significant shifts in empathy, cultural awareness, and their understanding of aging as a lived and social experience. The presentation shares practical strategies for cultivating emotionally attuned classroom environments, drawing from student reflections, pedagogical tools, and qualitative and quantitative insights. It proposes that emotionally responsive teaching is not ancillary, but foundational: enabling students to engage more fully, listen more deeply, and reimagine aging not just as a demographic issue, but a human one. This session is designed for educators in gerontology, design, social work, and health professions seeking to bridge knowledge and care, and to reshape the classroom into a space of intergenerational connection, inclusion, and ethical growth.