An Alternative to Socio-Economic Injustice

Individuals have responded with a variety of responses to crises such as war, natural disasters, famine, and pandemics. These are times when people have pulled together to overcome these challenges, or sometimes have divided themselves ideologically, politically, and behaviorally. This chapter addresses some of those characteristics within the United States affecting national and global relationships in the 21st century. The authors support the perception that there is a need for behavioral and cultural change—caring. Specifically, the authors propose an alternative paradigm: the development and sustainability of a “culture of care” as an interdisciplinary approach for national behaviors and international collaboration. The work of two American scholars, Nel Noddings and Jean Watson, center on the importance of the philosophy of care, caring theory, and practice in education and nursing. Going forward to more international crises such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and poverty and hunger, the authors look to a more equitable and collaborative means to address these problems.

Primary Head Teachers’ Construction and Re-negotiation of Care in COVID-19 Lockdown in Scotland

This article looks at three primary Head Teachers’ experience of working in COVID-19 lockdown in Scotland. The theoretical framework of this paper builds on Nel Noddings’ ethics of care, with a particular focus on reciprocity, empathy, communication, and community. The three Head Teachers were interviewed during the pandemic lockdown. These interviews are part of a larger study that interviewed teachers and Head Teachers during COVID-19 lockdown in Scotland, asking how this lockdown challenged and influenced their identity as educators. The focus on care is important as during lockdown in Scotland the focus of home learning was on pupils and families’ well-being and care, rather than on performative acts of learning. This paper argues that the pandemic provided an alternative space for the Head Teachers to re-negotiate their caring role and identity in their understanding of being an educational leader.

Higher Education and the Ethic of Care: Finding a Way Forward During a Global Pandemic

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, before we had a chance to acclimate to our world turned upside-down, I was genuinely confounded by the inflexibility of some professors to help students. After all, we had been offered the grace of an extension on tenure-track requirements, and afforded the opportunity, and relative safety, of working from home. How was it possible then, to not understand that students, too, might need grace? And how could anyone be OK with choosing not to help? Far from traditional research questions, my wonderings provoked lively conversations with colleagues, and a lens through which to consider my own positionality and difficulties in dealing with the challenges posed by the pandemic. Framed by Nel Noddings’ Ethic of Care, and through poetic inquiry, this article presents a personal response to teaching in an Educator Preparation Program during a global pandemic.

Exploring the Contributions of Sara Ruddick, Nel Noddings, and Ayya Khema to Care Theory and Peacebuilding

In the Euro-western world, caring is not a new concept in the fields of philosophy or education; we find examples of writings concerning caring that date back to Ancient Greece. Caring, associated with emotions, has never held as high a status as “reason” in Euro-western, male-dominated philosophy. However, there are exceptions that stand out, such as pragmatist John Dewey’s sympathetic understanding and existentialist Martin Buber’s deeply spiritual I–Thou. Attention was drawn to caring in the 1960s and 1970s due to humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Milton Mayeroff. Feminist work on caring began building strength during this same time frame, although it can be dated back to Jane Addams’s educational work with immigration families at Hull House, Chicago, in the 1890s, and her peace activism during World War I, which resulted in her receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. As more women were offered the opportunity to earn college degrees, a space opened up for considering what women might uniquely have to offer to their various fields of study. Care theory in the 1960s and 1970s sought to bring out important ways of knowing associated with care work, which included domestic care (care of homes, families’ health, emotional and physical well-being), and fields of study and work focused on caring such as nursing and teaching. The 1980s and 1990s brought further development of care theory and expansion by scholars such as Carol Gilligan, Sara Ruddick, and Nel Noddings, as well as strong critiques by other scholars who worried that “caring” was honoring the relational work women do by overgeneralizing women, ignoring race and cultural differences, for example, by essentializing women and not recognizing gender differences, by being exclusionary of nonchildrearing women who are not care workers in the home, and by ignoring men who do this kind of work, and more. It is important to give a generous description of the earlier work, consider key critiques, and care theorists’ responses to these critiques, for the strong response by scholars to postcolonial, postmodern, critical race and queer theories’ critiques was to devalue care theory. It is also important to note that attention to care theory is returning. Philosophers of education are responding to more recent [since 2000] student assessment trends by reclaiming the importance of teachers’ diverse caring relationships with students, as well as students’ caring relationships with each other and toward their environment. Ecological concerns are bringing a focus back to care theory that is deeply rooted in humans’ connections to nature, given women’s fundamental physical, reproductive, and maternal roles. Care theory continues to contribute to peacebuilding efforts around the world, through a relational ontology that starts with the assumption that we are all born with relationships with our biological mothers, adoptive families, and extended communities. With each child born comes the renewed hope of peace. As can be seen, due to the size of this topic, we must be selective in addressing particular aspects while pointing the reader to other sources they may want to turn to for more insights.

Raising Conscious Kids

Early experiences in life exposed the author to the harsh realities of racism. These experiences fueled her desire to create a non-profit organization, we are, to challenge and disrupt not only interpersonal racism, but also systemic. Together with a group of parents, educators, doctoral students, and community activists, the author co-created a curriculum for an anti-racism summer camp for children. This camp embodies what Nel Noddings characterizes as caring for the whole child. In this chapter, the author reveals how her experiences with race led to the creation of we are summer camps. She makes connections to Noddings and beliefs about care, provides an overview of the camps, and makes recommendations for parents and educators who are charged with raising conscious kids.

Curricula of Care and Radical Love

Curricula of care and radical love encompass a collective and communal responsibility for education practitioners, leaders, and researchers to meet the needs of the historically marginalized communities they serve and of their work toward social change. These articulations are largely drawn from the ontologies, ways of knowing, communal practices, and traditions of the Global South as articulated by Black and Chicana/Latina women. Starting in the 1980s, Nel Noddings’ work around ethics of care sparked philosophical discussions of care within the education field. Educational scholars, including critical scholars of color, have been influenced by care theories that emphasize care as rooted in relationships and everyday interactions between educators and students. Feminists of color and critical education scholars have expanded theories of care in education by pointing out the ways in which race and other social identifiers impact interpretations of care. Even before the work of current care theorists, by the turn of the twentieth century, Anna Julia Cooper argued for a love-politic that decentered romantic love and instead centered a self-determining and emancipatory form of love. This opened a pathway for a radical, Black feminist conceptualization of love. Black feminist scholars have since further developed and expanded upon conceptualizations of a love-politic contributing to a more robust understanding of care and love. Latina/Chicana feminists have also contributed to onto-theoretical insights that highlight how care is a necessity toward critical understandings, personal connections, self-work, and movement building. Concepts such as convivencia and cariño from Latina/Chicana feminists demonstrate how care is co-constructed through relationship building over time and through the sharing of life experiences. Moreover, practices like othermothering and radical love further reveal how intimate and personal interactions are necessary for critical self-growth and communal love toward liberation. From this view, to love and care in ways that advance justice in education requires an expansive approach to curriculum and pedagogy, which includes spaces beyond classroom walls like the home, families, communities, culture, and non-school organizations. Taken together, scholars, educators, and other stakeholders in education may find use in drawing upon feminist of color conceptions and literature of care and love to reimagine transformative possibilities for education research, policy, practice, and curriculum.