Interrogating education of the heart

Abstract

This paper reports students’ responses to a curriculum focused on integrating critical approaches, and evidence-based knowledge, with an education of the heart pedagogy. A focus group was conducted with 12 student representatives from a large first year undergraduate sociology of health and illness topic taught to a number of health professional students. Discussion centred on student views and feelings about the emotional or lived experience components of the topic portrayed through films, plays and poetry as well as the arts-based assessment exercise. Student responses indicate that they found the arts-based portrayals of the lived experience insightful for developing their own theory of care, but this was tempered by feelings of insecurity in completing these forms of assessment in the competitive environment where grades are important for achieving transfer to their program of choice.