Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Slow pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that follows similar principles to the slow food movement, emphasising quality over quantity and pleasure over productivity. Slow pedagogy offers strategies to resist the commercialisation and commodification of higher education, prompting a re-evaluation of research methods, publishing expectations and career trajectories within a context of employment precarity, the mental health crisis, and growing awareness of neurodiversity and accessibility. Scholars from disciplines as diverse as sociology and physics have adopted “going slow” in relation to research outputs and in-person teaching. Yet the importance of slow pedagogy to eLearning – online, asynchronous or digital learning – has received little attention. As a component of HE institutions’ offer to students, eLearning is often assumed to present speedier, more economical, or more efficient formats for disseminating information. Many academics complement their in-person teaching with eLearning elements to provide an “active blended offer” and online resources enable greater accessibility. However, eLearning has at times undoubtedly (and uncomfortably) served neoliberal desires, appearing as the fast-food burger and fries of university education. Taking as an example the online guides in the University of Manchester’s My Learning Essentials programme, this paper interrogates the possibilities and limitations of slow pedagogy for eLearning in higher education contexts. I explore the potential of going slow in the context of online asynchronous academic skills support, asking how more deliberate and critical thinking in this area might disrupt assumptions about eLearning and cultural norms that demand busyness at the expense of deep learning.