How culture shapes Chinese teacher’s compassionate love

ABSTRACT

Background

Love could play a role in motivating teachers to help students and is closely related to students’ achievement and prosocial behaviour. Though influenced by culture, teachers’ love is not adequately studied.

Purpose

This study explores how Chinese teachers’ compassionate love is expressed and how situational factors such as Chinese culture and history influence or motivate teachers to perceive and express compassionate love for students.

Method

This study adopted a qualitative approach of narrative study by describing and investigating the experience of a Chinese middle school teacher and two middle school students and their parents during COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

Chinese teacher’s compassionate love demonstrates some universal features in terms of emotional response, cognitive understanding and behaviour. Furthermore some Chinese culture-related features are also found: Chinese teachers behave in a caring and supporting way at the cost of sacrificing their own free time and comfort; an enduring long-term teacher-student relationship is valued; the Chinese culture encourages, sustains and motivates Chinese teacher’s compassionate love.

Discussion

Teacher’s compassionate love is a multi-dimensional concept entailing some universal traits in cognition, emotion and behaviour. The perception and enactment of teacher’s love is subject to situational factors. Some measures for compassionate love could be built into teacher’s education programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese culture
• teacher’s love
• narrative study
• emotion
• cognition
• behavior

1. Introduction

Love, as one kind of emotion, has been considered innate to human life (Buscaglia & Short, 1982). In terms of typology, love might be classified into different types. Lee (1977) grouped love into six basic types: Eros (passionate love), Ludus (game-playing love), Storge (friendship love), Pragma (logical love), Mania (possessive and dependent love), and Agape (selfless and compassionate love). Berscheid (2010) further categorized love into four: companionate love, romantic love, compassionate love, adult attachment love. For all typologies, compassion love takes a role. Compassionate love, with aliases such as agape, selfless love, care-giving love, is the kind of love centred on the good for other people with flourishing quality (Underwood & Underwood, 2009). Though compassionate love has been applied in many relational contexts such as hospitals and health care, studies in the education context have been rather inadequate (Virat, 2020).

Compassionate love has been found to be a multi-faceted notion. Though emphasized as a concept associated with attitude and affection (Fehr & Sprecher, 2009), compassionate love is considered to be a contextually grounded construct since people are immersed in the environment (Underwood & Underwood, 2009). The expression of compassionate love might be affected by both macro-level culture-related social environment factors and micro-level relationship-related or individual-related factors. Virat (2020) indicated that perceived organizational support is a predictor of young care workers’ compassionate love. Yet, how different cultures influence compassionate love is not adequately explored. It hence makes a sense to explore how situational factors impact compassionate love in different contexts. China has a tradition of “respecting teacher and highlighting education”. Such a culture might give the construct of teacher’s compassionate love in China more richness; it thus makes sense to explore how Chinese culture could influence teacher’s compassionate

To explore how Chinese culture influences teachers’ compassionate love, this study adopts a narrative approach which enables researchers to describe and analyse activities and words during the pandemic to gain more insightful and systematic understanding of teachers’ compassionate love for their students in China. Narrative study, as one sort of qualitative research method to explore and understand complexities of experiences in disciplines such as education, social sciences and health based on life experience as narrated by those who live them (Chase, 2011). By narrating people’s words, actions events, and meanings underlying are thus revealed. As Chase (2011) indicates, narrative study produces abundant, individual and contextualized accounts of meaning of life experience. To fulfil our research aims of exploring and understanding the complexities and nuances of Chinese teacher’s compassionate love, narrative study is to our knowledge a suitable method (O’Toole, 2018).

2. Loving pedagogy and compassionate love

At the very beginning, philosophers such as Plato claimed that love plays an integral role in education. Love’s role in education is formulated in two aspects: love is an inspirational power that could motivate students to learn; love has the power to unite teachers and students in the quest of knowledge (Cho, 2005). Yet, teacher’s love has been evaded in academia as the word love sounds so sentimental that it might compromise the quality of assessment (Loreman, 2011; Y. Wang et al., 2022).

On the other hand, some scholars have made efforts to make teacher’s love more accepted in educational milieus (Grimmer, 2021; Hooks, 2000; Loreman, 2011). Hooks (2000) holds that love is both emotion and action, which sheds light on love in occupational settings. Loreman (2011) pinpoints that love could be interwoven into pedagogy which includes passion, kindness, empathy, intimacy, bonding, sacrifice, forgiveness, acceptance and community. Accordingly, Yin et al. (2019) constructed a term as teachers’ disposition towards loving pedagogy and developed a validated scale to measure teachers’ loving disposition. Since then more studies have been conducted based upon the construct of teachers’ disposition towards loving pedagogy and loving pedagogy (Derakhshan et al., 2022; Li & Miao, 2022; Y. Wang et al., 2022; Zhao & Li, 2021).

It has to been pointed out that the aforementioned research centres on one core construct: loving pedagogy or pedagogy of love. Loving pedagogy includes elements of kindness and empathy, intimacy and bonding, sacrifice and forgiveness, community and acceptance in the teaching and learning relationship. Just as the name suggests, loving pedagogy is a notion entailing both emotion and action and is conceptualized based upon individual reflection about classroom implementation. Whether loving pedagogy could be a replacement concept for teacher’s love remains to be questioned. Though loving pedagogy and teacher’s love are both multi-faceted constructs related with love, loving pedagogy focuses more on classroom implementation while teacher’s love concentrates more on the teacher. In this case, the notion of teacher’s love needs to be conceptualized.

Teacher’s love is more frequently related to such qualities as empathy, kindness, affection, value and care about students’ needs, personalities and achievement (Zhao & Li, 2021). Berscheid (2010) categorizes love with empathy and care-giving qualities as compassionate love, a kind of altruistic love and unconditional love motivated by interest in ongoing relationships. Though compassionate love is related to fixed personal dispositions and attributes such as compassion and altruism, many researchers perceive the construct of compassionate love as a more transient attitude (Fehr & Sprecher, 2009; Sprecher & Fehr, 2005; Underwood & Underwood, 2009). Furthermore, Oman (2011) indicates that the emotional engagement distinguishes compassionate love from altruism since compassionate love does not specifically direct to suffering or vulnerable people. In addition, Sprecher and Fehr (2005) suggest that compassionate love is more long-lasting than empathy and not necessarily limited to face-to-face interaction.

To define compassionate love, Underwood (2002, 2009) identified five basic elements for compassionate love: free choice for helping others (selfless motive); some cognitive understanding of the situation, the other and oneself; valuing others at a fundamental level (respect for the other people); openness and receptivity (divine inspiration); responses of the heart (emotional engagement). Different from Underwood’s classical way of defining compassionate love, after conducting six studies Sprecher and Fehr and Sprecher (2009) assert that compassionate love is a prototype concept including cognition (worrying, thinking about others), feelings and emotions, behaviours and motivation.

To analyse compassionate love, Underwood (2002, 2009) proposed a theoretical framework in which interactions between parts of the theoretical framework are displayed though not fully. Compassionate love is presented in attitudes and actions in a context with specific situations and specific relationships. The situational factors are to an extent related with culture, history, family and society. The relationship might be as specific as the teacher-student relationship or clinician-patient relationship. Both situational and relational factors might influence how compassionate love is perceived and expressed. People perceive distinctly towards the sense of “out-group” strangers, which might influence how they relate to those strangers (Pfeifer et al., 2007). Darley and Batson (1973) found that time pressure is a determinant for helping behaviours of experiment participants. Even if we just consider compassionate love as a more emotion-oriented construct, Lim (2016) indicates that emotion is not a universal construct free from social and cultural influences. For instance, Mesquita (2001) revealed that emotion in collectivist culture is more grounded in social value, more likely to reflect reality than the inner world of the individual and emotion in collectivist culture is self-other relationship rather than the subjectivity of self.

In the light of Mesquita (2001), emotion could be such a culture-laden notion. The case of teacher’s love has to be explored in a cultural and social approach. Different from western counterparts, Chinese educationists and scholars have always been recognizing teacher’s love, the understanding of which could be originated from Ren notion in Confucionism (Y. X. Wang, 2001). Fifth century BC, Confucius (a great thinker in China, founder of Confucianism) thought Ren is to love people without discrimination. As the earliest acknowledged educationist, Confucius has left a legacy to Chinese teachers that teachers should have love to conduct teaching and conducting practice. Other Chinese researchers explored further the notions of teacher’s love in acknowledgement of love’s importance in education. Y. X. Wang (2001) considered teacher’s love as a kind of emotion with an integration of both teaching philosophy and teaching practice. The generation of love comes from teachers’ understanding of teaching, belief of teaching, aspirations of teaching and responsibility of teaching. Xie (2021) considered teacher’s love as a notion entailing feeling, cognition and behaviour, which is conducted by teachers, schools and the Chinese government. With increasing attention to emotion in teaching, more scholars also tried to investigate the role of teacher’s love in pedagogy from the perspective of teacher’s disposition towards loving pedagogy (Li & Miao, 2022; Zhao & Li, 2021). Yet this approach to a certain extent is based upon the notion of teacher’s disposition towards loving pedagogy developed upon the understandings of teacher’s love in the scenario of education in western culture, which inevitably neglects the cultural traits brought by the Chinese culture.

With the aforementioned research, it could be concluded that compassionate love is subject to both individual differences related to personality, biological features and development trajectory and situational factors related to culture, society, history and environment.

Thus, it requires us to conduct a study answering the questions: How is teacher’s love perceived in China? How does Chinese culture influence people’s perception of teacher’s love?

3. Methodology

3.1. Research design

The principal research objective for this study is to explore and understand how Chinese teachers express their compassionate love in actions and attitudes, to explore how situational factors such as culture and history could impact the perception and expression of Chinese teacher’s compassionate love.

To achieve these research objectives, this study adopted a qualitative and phenomenological approach to elicit inner feelings and ideas (Pollio et al., 1999). A narrative approach was adopted for this research design, which enabled researchers to reveal underlying meaning by gathering data from words, narrated stories and actions(Chase, 2011). Data was collected from narrative interviews and participant observation in a natural setting (Anderson & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Additionally, narrative analysis could put disparate data together to create a picture of wholeness from which people’s actions are situated in a socio-cultural context.

3.2. Participants

To elicit inner feelings and ideas, a Chinese teacher, students she taught and students’ parents were the best source in this case (Carpenter & Hammell, 2000). For this study, purposive sampling is more feasible (Sim et al., 2018). With this sampling, researchers determined participants based upon how much information participants could provide.

In late November 2022, the Wuhan government implemented an intermittent lockdown policy in the hope of containing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. During lockdown, children attended online classes to sustain education. The school in observation is a middle school with education quality ranked at upper 30% (good school ranking) in the district. For grade 9 teachers and students, they were facing a highly-competitive and high-stake examination half a year away—High School Entrance Exam (Zhong Kao). For them, the High School Entrance Exam mattered as performance in this exam would determine whether students could attend high schools with an academic track or vocational schools with a vocational track. Most Chinese parents hope their children can go to high school in an academic track and go to colleges and universities to earn a more honourable and respectable degree. The high-stakes exam (Zhong Kao) was just half-a-year away, all participants (teacher, parents, students) in this study were worried and concerned as they all considered that classroom teaching was more effective and efficient than online classes.

There were 5 participants for this study, Ms Li (pseudonym) (a middle-school maths teacher), parent A (the parent of girl student), a girl student, parent B (the parent of boy student), a boy student. To better understand Chinese teacher’s compassionate love, an exemplary figure with compassionate love quality was the best option. In most cases, mothers are major caretakers of their children in China, so this study selected mothers as participants. Plus, students were intentionally chosen in light of academic success. Generally, teachers might favour those top students over those less academically successful students. Additionally perceptions from students and students’ parents who are recipients of teacher’s compassionate love could give us multiple perspectives, thus allowing us to better understand the richness of compassionate love in Chinese culture.

Ms Li was responsible for a class in grade 9. Ms Li was head teacher in charge of a class in grade 9, about 35 years old and married with two children. She has been working in a public middle school for over ten years and has won several awards for her achievement. She won “School Excellent Teacher” and “Teacher of Merits” several times. Recipients of those awards are teachers who have made outstanding achievements in teaching and have earned recognition for their exemplary behaviour of showing love and concern for their students. She is also noted for her great compassion and patience with students.

Parent A is the mother of the girl student participant in this study. She is an English teacher working in a local university.

The girl student is 14 years old as an academic high-achiever in the school, ranked in the top 10%.

Parent B is the mother of the boy student participant in this study. She is an office worker in a company.

The boy student is 14 years old as an academic low-achiever in the school, ranked in the low 10%.

Background information for participants is summarized in Table I.

Table I. participants background information.

participant	gender	age	relationship	note
Ms Li	female	35	teacher	over ten years of teaching experience, a mother of two children,noted for her compassion and responsibility, and “excellent teacher” award winner
parent A	female	42	parent of girl student	an English teacher in a local university
girl student	female	14	student	top student in Ms Li’s class
parent B	female	40	parent of boy student	an office worker without college education
boy student	male	14	student	academic low-achiever at lower 10% in ranking

3.3. Data collection and analysis

Data were collected over a course of three weeks when all classes were conducted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Events were recorded in the form of screenshots and texts. Pilot interviews were implemented before formally conducting interviews with research participants. Researchers engaged in pilot interviews with experts in education who were familiar with interview design. Conducting pilot interview is a process in which researchers ask interview questions with experts to collect feedback about perceptions regarding the to-do-interview. With pilot interviews, researchers were better prepared for the interviews and possible bias and drawbacks might be avoided. Afterwards, interviews were conducted to collect data.

The Events were described in the form of screenshots and texts were collected during 3 weeks of online schooling. Additionally, 15 interviews with the five participants were conducted. Each participant had 3 interviews in the first week, the second week and the third week, amounting to 15 interviews for each participant. Researchers (Hennink et al., 2019) hold that 5 interviews or more could achieve meaningful saturation. All interviews were conducted by online communication with QQ (a Chinese instant messenging client) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since QQ is very popular in China, all participants were comfortable with the digital way of communication especially during a pandemic.

The interviews were phased in three parts: an introduction, perceptions related with compassionate love, follow-up questions about the events that occurred. Each interview lasted for about 40–70 minutes. All interviews were conducted individually by the first author. The subsequent transcriptions, reflections and discussions were conducted by both authors.

Open questions related to compassionate love were constructed to explore feelings, actions, perceptions, motives, behaviours related with teacher’s compassionate love. Interviews with open questions could promote participants to share experiences from their own. The questions are listed as follows:

1. Could you please share your understandings of teacher’s compassionate love for students?

2. Could you think of things you did to show your care and concern for students/Could you think of experiences that teachers displayed compassionate love?

3. How do you feel when you care for your students?/How do you feel when you are treated this way by your teacher?

4. Why are you treating your students in this way?/Why do you think that way?

5. Could you describe your relationships with student/teacher?

6. How do you get along with your students/teachers?

Follow-up questions of events are like the following: what do you think of it?

After data were collected, field notes and interviews were transcribed and analysed with narrative analysis which highlighted the importance of understanding important events (Josephsson & Alsaker, 2015). This could keep experiences coherent rather than as fragments.

Afterwards, a systematic text condensation strategy was adopted in four steps (Malterud, 2012). Step one, researchers read the script for an overall impression of themes; step two, researchers identified meaningful units with codes; step three, researchers condensed information from codes; step four, researchers synthesized in abstracted terms. To validate the data analysis, authors worked together to discuss coding, categorization and interpretation for consensus.

3.4. Trustworthiness and reflexivity

Patton (2015) thinks that reflexivity is the most significant element to ensure qualities of a qualitative inquiry since researcher is a research tool through the research process. Both authors are experienced researchers in conducting qualitative research by organizing and conducting interviews. This research experience helped researchers to understand deeper meanings of studied phenomenon. Furthermore, the two researchers are teachers working in a university. This professional background helped researchers to gain trust from participants.

When analysing the data, two authors took effort to understand assumptions and possible biased knowledge about the studied phenomenon. Discussions occurred between researchers for all possible data interpretations.

4. Ethics

This study involves personal experience and stories which might invoke risks. Before conducting the field investigation, researchers spent time talking with Ms Li, the two students and their parents to illustrate how the research would be implemented and how their personal information would be removed. After learning the fact that personal and contextual information would be removed, the participants agreed to take part in the research. Participants in this study have read the revised Chinese version of this paper. After obtaining participants’ consent, the authenticity of the events narration has been verified and approved for publication.

5. Findings

Findings are thus summarized in different aspects: feelings of compassionate love; cognition of compassionate love; behaviours of compassionate love; society and culture factors; relationships; perceptions of teacher’s love.

5.1. Feelings of compassionate love

Emotional responses towards other people, or responses of the heart, are core part of compassionate love, which could motivate people to help and support others (Underwood, 2002, 2009).

As a compassionate love producer, Ms Li showed her strong concern for her student’s struggle in maths subject.

I feel so sorry for those students who are struggling with maths. It reminds me of my schooling days when I struggled with maths. Sometimes, I am so anxious that some students might stand little chance to attend better high schools just because of their failure in maths.

As a compassionate recipient, parent A showed her appreciation and gratitude for the teacher’s help.

Once Ms Li really impressed me. After the quarantine policy was lifted, we were informed that we could go back to school to attend classes on the condition that students could provide 3-day consecutive Negative Test results of the COVID-19 virus. My girl (the girl student participant) could not provide negative nucleic test results for 3 consecutive days. Ms Li telephoned the headmaster of the school and tried to work out a plan to help my girl to return to school. Then at about 10 PM at night, Ms Li telephoned me and told me to go to a local community clinic that provided nucleic test service for the latest test results. Thanks to her suggestion, my girl returned to school to attend class on time. No one was left behind. I texted Ms Li at 6:20 AM, and instantly she texted back with a message. It was 6:20 AM!. I was so moved as I was fully aware that she did not have to do that. She did this only out of concern for my girl. She thought no one should be left behind at this critical moment.

As a compassionate recipient, the girl student showed gratitude.

I was so disappointed when I was informed that I might not be able to return to school. It’s much better to sit in a real classroom to attend class than to attend class online. I could learn better. When Ms Li told me I could go back to school, I was so happy. I really appreciated her help. I know she did this all for my good.

From their remarks, Ms Li showed strong concern and care for her students because her students experience of struggling with maths reminded her of her schooling years. The emotional response was quite apparent as she said she was sorry and anxious for her students. For the girl student and parent A, they consented that Ms Li was doing all her effort for student’s interest and good. They all displayed appreciation, gratitude and understanding of Ms Li’s behaviour.

5.2. Cognition of compassionate love

Cognitive understanding of other’s situation makes up another part of compassionate love (Underwood, 2002, 2009).

Ms Li presented her intense concern and understanding of needs of teenage boys and girls, their personality development, prosocial moral cultivation and academic success for their future. She tried to understand not only her students but also the condition her students were in.

For those 9-grade students, they will face a high-stakes exam half a year away. This exam is Zhong Kao (High School Entrance Exam). The exam results will determine their future lives. If they fail the exam, they could not attend high school. They will go to vocational schools. This means many professions are inaccessible to them. I want them to go to colleges and universities. I want them to have opportunities to make a choice as for what they want to do when they grow older and become more mature. Yet, so many students, especially boy students, are unaware of the critical situation. They still hang around and kill time in an insensible way. For students from low-income families, their academic success means a lot for their families.

Ms Li shared her understanding of punishment,

For teenagers, they are highly self-esteemed and they are likely to act on impulse. It is a crucial time for them to develop their values about what is right and what is wrong. They must know what mistakes can never be made. I only punish my students in critical situations. They need to learn the bottom line for their behaviors. Not all mistakes will be forgiven.

5.3. Behaviors of compassionate love

Support, helpfulness and sacrifice are representative features for compassionate love (Fehr & Sprecher, 2009).

Ms Li organized online class soon after the lockdown policy was announced. She tried different strategies to help students stay attentive to online classes. She kept communicating with students and parents often at the cost of sacrificing her personal time and comfort.

At about 4:35 PM on October 7^th, the last day of National Holiday in China, Ms Li informed parents in the QQ group (a social media in China) that students had to attend online class because of the fast-spreading virus. Along with the notice, she also put on a note to ask parents to get prepared for online class. At about 8 PM that night, another piece of notice was put on the QQ group. The notice included information on dress code, school hours and school supplies. Students were grouped and the team leader was assigned to every group.

October 7^th was the first day of online class. During the online class days, Ms Li tried different strategies to keep students engaged and principled in online classes.

Strategy 1: teachers were assigned different roles during class hours. If maths teacher was delivering class, English teacher kept watching the whole class through cameras. Those unlucky absent-minded students were recorded and reported to the class teacher. Then the class teacher communicated to the parents of the absent-minded students in a QQ group. The class teacher not only kept a close watch on students’ performance in class, but also reported issues related to device failure to their parents and urged their parents to solve the problems.

Strategy 2: teachers kept a record of students’ performance in online classes. Students earned one credit if they answered one question right or volunteered to solve a hard problem. Based on the record, teachers added credits up and presented it at the close of a day’s school together with a written feedback about students performance of the day.

Strategy 3: Ms Li held class online meetings on weekends. During those weekend meetings, teachers and students chatted with each other and shared their quarantine experiences. Sometimes, they showed pictures of family food.

Strategy 4: Ms Li provided a free online tutoring service. During the tutoring service time, she tutored students one by one. Students were encouraged to ask questions even after 8 at night. Ms Li was always available whenever her students needed her help.

For all those measures, Ms Li explained as this.

I know it is hard for students to be self-disciplined. I tried my every effort to keep them engaged by holding meetings, by treating them with some drinks and food. I know it matters to keep close cooperation with parents. I have my students’ parents’ cell phone numbers. If it is necessary, I would instantly ring up their parents and reported their children’s situation in school.

Actually, what Ms Li said has been re-confirmed by the parents and students. Parent A and B said they often communicated with Ms Li about their children’s situations in school.

The boy student shared his personal interaction with Ms Li.

Ms Li has tried her best to help me. I have gained some improvement, though not enough. Ms Li often encouraged me and sent me small gifts to cheer me up when I felt so discouraged. I owe her if I really make something one day. I know I am still not good enough but I want to try my best, anyway, this is the last year of junior middle school. I don’t want to regret for working not hard enough. She treats us equally, those top students do not have any privilege in her class. I admire that.”

His mother, the parent B acknowledged her gratitude for Ms Li’s effort. She even felt sorry for her complaint.

I am very busy with my office work. My boy is doing much better in maths than in other subjects. Once my boy was left in school to redo his homework after the school was dismissed. I complained about it as it was getting dark and my boy was still in school. Then I felt a little sorry to think that way because I got to know Ms Li was also staying in her office and was helping my boy with maths. It’s free! Do you know how much money I have to pay if I want to find a competent maths tutor? It might cost me over 200 yuan an hour. I appreciated her help! It’s not easy for her to be a head teacher for a class with 57 boys and girls at this puberty age. This is a volcano age. My head aches with just one boy. She is dealing with 57. Think about it! The job is not easy. Now, I won’t doubt her any decisions, I trust her. I think she would make decision just for the good of her students. I am happy with my boy’s grading. He is working hard and I’m not expecting my boy to be a top student. Anyway, not everyone is good in academic work.

Yet, not all help and care come in a tender way. Sometimes, love hurts. Help could be disguised in the form of punishment. The girl student, a top student in the class, shared her story. The girl student recalled an incident that took place during online classes.

I was caught red-handed in class opening other apps on my Ipad during an English class. Ms Li mentioned my mother in the QQ group. I got punished because I broke the Class Code. I was kept out of online class until my written letter of apology was accepted by the English teacher. I had to write a letter of apology in English. I tried my best to write a letter of apology with some help from my mother. It was a joke. Ms Li thought I should totally be attentive to class. But you know, having 10-hours of online classes, I could not help it though I know it is not the right thing to do.

As for this little punishment, parent A had a slight disagreement as for the way to punish her girl, yet she expressed her reluctance to talk about her disagreement with Ms Li because her concern might not be so Chinese.

Sometimes, I really thought that the head teacher was too tough with my girl. After all, my girl is a good student and she knows what to do. A Child is a child. She is not always disciplined. Since it is not too much, I might just let it go and give her a break. The competition is so intense that she might need some private time and some rest. I don’t know if Ms Li’s toughness is proper for my girl. But you know what, I really don’t quite much like to talk with Ms Li about it. I am worried that my disagreement could hurt her feelings. After all, she has high expectations of my girl, yet what she did makes no harm. I self-doubt if I might be too kind and am spoiling my child. I have tried to work together with Ms Li. Ms Li once texted me telling me that she spanked my girl in the palm in the school that day and asked me to comfort her when she returned home. She even asked me to speak ill about her to make my girl feel better. You know, I was so moved! I might not quite agree with her about the way she disciplined my girl, but I could not doubt her good intentions to help my girl. I am a teacher too, but I don’t think I could be as devoted as she does. I even want to send her a gift to show my gratitude. She asked my girl to write an English letter of apology. It’s so funny! I don’t even think it is a punishment, I think it is just a reminder of good intention, telling my girl you are doing wrong things.”

When asked about the spanking experience, the girl student considered it as impressive and refused to talk about why she got the punishment.

It was shameful. I felt so frustrated and furious. I made a big mistake. When I returned home, my mom hugged me and comforted me. Days later I felt much better. Afterwards, I admit that was a serious mistake. I should have never done that.

From the narration, Ms Li was very devoted to her job, sacrificing her spare time. She extended help, concern and encouragement by sending gifts to her students. Yet, Ms Li’s help sometimes hurt. Obviously, Ms Li considered punishment as a very important part in education. She thought bottom line should be explicitly set for teenagers and should never be transgressed. As Ms Li said, “punishment is for help and growth, not for insult”. Actually punishment is allowed in China in very limited conditions as elaborated in Rules of Punishment in Elementary and Middle School issued by Ministry of Education on January 25^th 2021, yet issues occur as for what punishment is unaccepted. For instance, time-out is permitted; yet spanking in the palm is not permitted but still remains in practice as an old custom. For instance, the parent of the girl student expressed her disagreement, though understanding why the teacher did so. Additionally, Ms Li treated her students fairly, treating nobody with privilege. Students understood why they got punished and nobody could break the code; it was important that students should be fairly treated in the light of Classroom Rules.

5.4. Society and social cultures

Social cultures might impact compassionate love as some researchers have indicated (Graber et al., 2009; Underwood, 2002, 2009; Virat, 2020).

Ms Li’s statement revealed how much her behaviour and perception of teacher’s compassionate love was heavily influenced by culture and her personal experience. Just as Mesquita (2001) asserts, emotions in collectivist culture are more grounded in the social value. From Ms Li’s statement, her behaviours were justified. As a teacher, she had the responsibility to help her students to grow into talents that could help China to develop and to help people in need. Her motivation of expressing compassionate love for her students was related with a sort of legacy inherited from her teachers.

When I was a student, my teacher would do this to me. Every time I met a problem, she would helped me out. She sometimes patted me on my shoulder, sometimes made a joke with me. I felt so grateful to her. For teachers, we should consider long-term benefits for our students. A good teacher should be helpful. Love without punishment would spoil those teenagers. You should never step back when confronting with students for misbehaviour and problems. Most of my students come from regular families, and their parents are regular people. I have been expecting high of my students. I hope they win in the High-School Entrance Exams and attend a high-school with good education environment. I hope my students would be people of value and make some contribution to our country’s development.”

Both parents expressed their consent with Ms Li as they stated that teaching is a profession related with sacrifice, responsibility and concern; teachers tend to treat their students like their own children; teachers have right to punish children when necessary.

5.5. Relationships

Graber et al. (2009) found that clinicians with compassionate love for their patients reported meaningful relationships that might even last for several years.

When inquired into perceptions of the teacher-student relationship, Ms Li expected a long-term relationship with her students.

I do not expect every student in my class to understand what I am doing and why I am doing it. When they grow older, they would understand everything. Some of my former students still remain in contact with me even years after their graduation. Without my supervision, concern, support and discipline, sometimes tough and hard, sometimes tender and soft, they would never gain such accomplishments. I feel so happy and fulfilled when my former students come back to school and pay me a visit. I feel so happy and fruitful when my former students text me and inquire me about life problems and choices. After graduation, my former students are not my students. They become my children.

Parent A expressed her understanding of the teacher-student relationship.

We often maintain a good relationship with teachers who once helped us. When holding high-school classmate gatherings, we sometimes extended invitations to our subject teachers especially the head teacher. As for Ms Li, if possible, I would like to invite her out for a meal to show my gratitude for her help. She is a responsible teacher. She deserves our respect. I hope my girl could keep contact with Ms Li since Ms Li is such an admirable woman and I believe my girl could learn a lot from her.

Parent B expressed very similar ideas as for the teacher-student relationship.

I appreciate her help! ………Now, I won’t doubt her any decision, I trust her. I think she would make decisions just for the interests and good of students. She understands me, as a mother of a boy.

For the boy student and the girl student, when asking their perceptions of Ms Li, they both smiled. They understood the way in which Ms Li educated them, yet they did not feel close to Ms Li.

The girl student made the following statement.

Do you know we sneakily nicknamed her as Devil Li. She is so tough and all my friends have been punished for various reasons. My friend, the top student in the class, was punished to transcribe Class Code for ten times just because of a minor mistake in her math homework. It’s scary! But she is a good teacher, I admit it. She is very responsible and she is good in teaching math. I just hope she could be more gentle and more amiable.

Of course, I might return to school and pay her a visit after graduation. I visited my head teacher after graduating from elementary school. I might visit Ms Li after graduation.

The boy student asserted that he would pay his teacher a visit after graduation on the condition that he was in company of other classmates.

I will pay her visit if I have friends to come along. It is quite embarrassing to visit Ms Li alone.

It is concluded that a long-term relationship is expected mutually by both the teacher and the parents and the students. It is quite regular for Chinese teachers to maintain a long-term relationship with former students. Sometimes, cooperation with teachers to educate children makes it possible for Chinese parents to maintain a long-term relationship. Teachers, students and parents value long-term relationship in China. For them, a long-term relationship is meaningful for all parties involved.

5.6. Perceptions of teacher’s love

As for teacher’s love, different qualities might be perceived from different parties. That is to say, students, parents, teachers might see teacher’s love from different perspectives and consequently relate teacher’s compassionate love with qualities. Care and support are universal elements. For instance, Ms Li considered love entailing discipline while parent A considered discipline unnecessary since her students were grown-ups.

Ms Li considered teacher’s love as a complex notion, entailing both discipline and care.

Here, I think love is complex, especially teacher’s love for students. It’s a word related with responsibility, support, understanding, care, and discipline. Encouragement and support are not everything. Sometimes, teachers have to be tough. I don’t mean to give my students hard time. I love them, and I know what they should do and what is for their best interest. Or they will repent wasting time and hate me for not leading them to the right way.

Parent A, as a teacher too, shared her understanding of being a teacher.

I am also a teacher. I think teacher’s love entails concern, support and responsibility. I also care for my students and I am willing to support them to fulfill their dreams. I think empathy and compassion plays a role as for teacher’s love. If a teacher feels and thinks in the shoes of students, he or she might be very likely to help students out of their problems. My students are all grown-ups, so I do not think I have the responsibility to discipline them in a harsh way. I don’t give my students hard time. I often encourage them and motivate them by visualizing prospects for them if they work hard.”

Parent B showed her perception of teacher’s love.

In China, teachers have the responsibility to teach and guide their students. If spanking works, then it makes no harm for the student. Anyhow, if the punishment is not implemented in an insulting way, a teacher could spank students if needed. As far as I could recall, Exemplary Chinese teachers tend to give up personal comfort and free time to help students. They treat students as their own children.

For both students, they seemed to think little about teacher’s love. They stated that if a teacher loves students, she must be very willing to help students.

6. Discussion

Teacher’s compassionate love is a concept with multi-dimensional meanings. As the study shows, compassionate love occurs when a teacher focuses on students’ interest and well-being. Teacher’s compassionate love displays the following universal features in terms of emotion, cognition and behaviour. Emotionally, teachers feel empathy, compassionate and concerned for their students; cognitively, teachers think of the long-term interest and good for students, understand the conditions and students’ needs to grow; behaviourally, teachers help and support their students to grow and develop. Yet, some situational factors such as culture and history play a role in shaping teacher’s love.

6.1. Chinese culture plays as motive to express teacher’s love

Chinese culture of “respecting teachers and valuing education” is an explicit motive for Chinese teachers to express their compassionate love for their students. Conventionally, teachers are highly respected and teaching has been considered a very respectable profession. Nationally, teaching institutions, government, parents and students show their respect and gratitude to teachers on September 10th. Teachers also enjoy some privileges such as a discounted ticket purchase for some resorts and scenic spots. In such a “respecting teachers and valuing education” atmosphere, love is also advocated as an inseparable part of the teaching profession officially and unofficially in nearly all educational institutions. Chinese government, formally proclaims that love should be a part of Chinese teacher’s ethics. The Ethics Code for Chinese Teachers was hence issued by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China in 2008, stating “Teachers should care for and love their students. Teachers should care for their students, consider students’ needs, respect students, treat students equally. Teachers should be tough and nice, should act as both students’ great helpers and friends. Teachers should care for students’ health, safeguard in students’ interest. Teachers should not satirize and discriminate students. Teachers should not physically punish students for not a sufficient account.” For schools of all levels, exemplary teachers are awarded for devotion and sacrifice. If a teacher sacrifices all personal interests just for education, she or he will be awarded and respected across China. Zhang Guimei is such an exemplary teacher. Zhang is a woman born in HeilongJiang province in the Northern part of China. After witnessing dire poverty and tragedy, she was determined to devote her whole life to the girl education. She said “To educate a girl is to change the destiny of three generations. A responsible mother won’t let her daughter drop out of school”(X. N. Wang & Zheng, 2021).

6.2. Chinese culture influences the way to express teacher’s love

The Chinese culture influences how Chinese teachers express compassionate love. Regularly, teacher’s compassionate love is displayed with understanding and actions of support and help. In China, however, compassionate love also entails sacrifice. If a Chinese teacher wins an award “excellent teacher”, she is noted for devoting her time and energy to her students at the cost of personal time and comfort. Sacrifice actually becomes an integral part of teacher’s image in China. Yet, whether the sacrifice of personal time and comfort for a job could be sustainable remains in question. The whole Chinese society acknowledges the value of the teaching profession; the whole Chinese society also considers the sacrifice as a part of the teaching profession, which could be seen from exemplary teacher figures. Those teachers were rewarded by the government and the whole society not only for students success but also for how much they are devoted to the profession. Zhang Guimei is such a typical Chinese teacher (X. N. Wang & Zheng, 2021). Zhang went to Li Jiang, a remote county in Yunnan Province after her husband passed away. She has been staying there since then. She acts both as a teacher and as a mother for those girl students who are deserted by their families for gender or economic reasons. She has donated nearly every penny she has earned from her payment, a number amounting to over 400,000 RMB (equals 58,000 US dollars). She does not even care for her health either. She even refused to go to hospital for a tumour operation just because she wanted to stay with her students to prepare for the High School Entrance Examination. She has won nation-wide respect and appraise for her sacrifice and devotion. This is how Chinese people see a respectable teacher—a teacher might be respected for their knowledge; a teacher might be more worth respect and value for their sacrifice. Here, we might say teacher like Zhang is a martyr rather than a teacher in the regular sense. Teachers are so much devoted that we cannot even say whether this is sustainable since teacher as a profession has been the embodiment of Chinese people’s highest standard for a perfect man.

Though sacrifice by teaching profession workers is expected, encouraged and awarded by the whole Chinese society, it is not without challenge and criticism. Firstly, many teachers are doubtful about what is worthy of their sacrifice. It has been reported that teachers are facing increasing responsibilities beyond teaching duties from other government departments. Most teachers are doubtful of those extra duties and responsibilities though they consider it worthy of their time and effort to help a student to grow and develop. Those unwelcomed responsibilities have become so much a burden that Chinese local education authorities have issued a load-reduction list to alleviate the working burden on teachers. The burden of dealing with teaching-unrelated duties also undermines teachers’ faith in the teaching profession to a certain degree. Secondly, the teaching profession is shifting to a culture which emphasizes rationality. A teacher could get promoted with profession titles for achievement which is technically measurable such as students’ academic achievement, and awards in high-level teaching skill contests rather than for immeasurable qualities such as compassionate love. This trend is modelling what an exemplary teacher is like in China. Research (Huang et al., 2023) found that teachers’ increasing turnover is related to such profession culture.

In addition to the sacrifice, Chinese teacher’s compassionate love also entails responsibility when Chinese teachers express their love to students. Chinese teachers attach responsibilities with social value and personal development value. The sense of responsibility is so much deep-rooted in Chinese teacher’s minds that they think their jobs are the core part of national development and the future well-being for all Chinese people. Chinese teachers are working not only for individual students to fulfil their potentials but also for the prospect and welling-being of all Chinese people. It thus justifies the way in which Chinese teachers support and help students. Punishment, for instance, is considered one way of helping and supporting students to grow and develop. A teacher’s punishment power has been approved and elaborated in the Rules for Disciplinary Actions in Elementary and Middle School issued by the Ministry of Education on January 25^th 2021. The Rules have elaborated on a teacher’s punishment power based on rationality, illustration of implementation conditions, punishment intensities and procedure of implementing punishment. The introduction of the Rules is a response to the controversial issue about educational punishment. Many teachers have been punished by the education authority once their punishments are considered improper. Consequently, many Chinese teachers have refrained from punishing students.

Punishment has remained controversial. Before China has issued national laws such as the Teachers Law (1994 version), the Compulsory Education Law (2021 version) which stipulate that teachers have rights in instructing and managing students in educational practice. Yet, article 8 of the Teachers Law (1994) also stipulates that a teacher has the obligation of stopping behaviours harmful to students or other behaviours infringing upon students’ legitimate rights and interests. And article 44 of the Compulsory Education Law (2021 version) states that education-receivers (students) has the right of appealing to relevant department and filing a lawsuit if a school or a teacher infringes upon students lawful rights and personal interests. Those laws acknowledge that a teacher has right to punish students in necessary conditions and acknowledge that students have rights to petition in case of personal rights and interests infringement. Yet, in reality, conflicts often arise when both parties have disagreements on necessary punishments and personal rights infringement. What’s worse, those conflicts have been exaggerated with social media. In some cases, teachers abused their power in overusing corporal punishment; in other cases, parents abused their power in appealing to superintendents for assumed infringement of students’ rights. Many teachers hence have given up their rights of punishment even in necessary conditions. In consequence, the Ministry of Education promulgated the Rules for Disciplinary Actions in Primary and Secondary Schools on December 30^th 2020. The Rule explicitly endows teachers with the right to implement educational punishment on students. In the Rule, allowed punishments are listed such as school suspension, admonition and time-out standing. Additionally, the Rule also explicitly prescribes that punishment does not equal to corporal punishment. Behaviours are forbidden like hitting students to cause physical pain and personal humiliation and insulting. Despite all those laws and rules, teachers in China are becoming increasingly reluctant to implement punishment in education for fear of hard-to-define troubles. Yang and Qi (2023) argues that the Rules for Disciplinary Actions in Primary and Secondary Schools are just rules issued by the Ministry of Education, lacking effectiveness in implementation. Laws recognize teachers’ right of punishment in such a vague form that the operation has become a problem; the Rule tells teachers what could be done and what could not be done when punishing students, yet the Rule itself is not legal empowerment. When conflicts arise, teachers find it hard to safeguard their legitimate rights. Punishment implementation has become a risky endeavour in the teaching profession. Then it is no wonder why so many teachers just tend to give up the right even in necessary conditions.

Though Chinese society seems to be attached to old education tenet that punishment is one part of education, education practitioners like teachers have become more and more aware of potential risks brought forward by the implementation of punishment. When teachers are willing to punish students at the risk of their career, those teachers are considered different in parents eyes. In some parents eyes, teachers are doing so because they want to help their children so much that they even take the risk of their teaching career. It is the embodiment of teacher’s love and care. Only if the punishment is not meant to be humiliation, the teacher’s behaviour is acceptable. Consequently, a tender spank in the palm thus seems to be a good-intentional reminder rather than an insulting and hurting punishment. This could explain why both the girl student and her mother seemed to be tolerant of the punishment though with some disagreement.

6.3. Chinese culture values long-term teacher-student relationship

The Chinese culture integrates closeness into the teacher-student relationship and the long-term teacher-student relationship is considered meaningful for both teachers and students. To illustrate how the teacher-student relationship is perceived, one old Chinese proverb is a good example stating “Respect your teachers as the way you respect your father.”. It is even a tradition for Chinese students to pay their teachers visits long after their graduation. And it is not rare to hear stories about long-term teacher-student relationships. The teacher-student relationship is reciprocal and meaningful.

7. Implications

In the twentieth century, education embraced technical knowledge and scientific achievement (Graber et al., 2009). Education, though traditionally extolling the importance of compassion, is also shifting away from its more humanistic approach. The profession’s culture has become increasingly more rationality-oriented (Graber & Johnson, 2001). In this setting, teacher’s compassionate love should be re-extolled and encouraged and teacher’s compassionate love should be instilled into teaching education. To better prepare our teachers for their future career, topics such as teacher’s compassionate love should be brought into a teacher’s educational curriculum. Uplifting stories or anecdotes could be used as examples for student teachers. Additionally, the construct of teacher’s compassionate love should be built into teaching competency models. This could be fulfilled at the outset of designing a teacher’s education programme by integrating the construct of teacher’s compassionate love as a programme objective.

As Virat (2020) indicated that social support could influence the generation and expression of teacher’s compassionate love, teacher’s compassionate love needs to be advocated nation-wide or as a professional requirement. The Chinese government has explicitly stated that “love students” should be the foundation for teacher’s professional ethics. Institutions also play a role in providing a micro-atmosphere of loving students. Teachers noted for expressing compassionate love should be praised and encouraged within an educational institution.

8. Limitations and future research

While validating some universal features for compassionate love as for the teaching profession, the study also explores the richness that the Chinese culture has interwoven into teacher’s compassionate love. The limitation of this study comes from the design which prevents us from making causality conclusions. Another limitation comes from the data collection. The interviews were conducted online as the COVID-19 pandemic kept us from meeting research participants face to face. Though participants were quite familiar with communicating online, face-to-face communication could encourage participants to produce more responses.

Though some interventions have been recommended accordingly to develop compassionate love for teacher’s education programmes, the lasting effect of intervention programmes remains to be studied. Nor do we know what specific methods or strategies might work in enhancing teacher’s compassionate love. Another important research pursuit is how teacher’s compassionate love is improved in organizations.

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2024.2357147

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Education Ministry of Hubei province, with grant number 2022GA076” and “Research Start-up Funding of Hubei University of Education Grant” and open-end fund project of Hubei Teacher Education Research Center of Social Science Research Foundation (jsjy202315) and Hubei University of Education (x2023063).

Notes on contributors

Ling Lin

Ling Lin, associate professor, has been working in Hubei University of education since 2021. Her research interests are positive psychology and second language learning and teaching, student teacher development.

Meng Chen

Meng Chen, lecturer, is working in institute of educational science of Hubei University of education. She earned her doctor degree in major of Higher Education from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests are higher education administration, student teacher training and development.