Teaching with Care

Viewpoints Discussion Series

Thursday, October 7 | 1:00PM – 2:00PM

Do we need pedagogies and practices of caring in our teaching and learning environments? Has the pandemic heightened our need for care as we design learning with the integration of technologies?

Teaching with care requires attention and empathy (Noddings, 2012). Designing and teaching with care has become ever more pressing in the past few years, as we have increasingly used technology as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (Grey, 2020). An ethic of care is relatively new (Noddings, 1988; Held, 2006), yet teaching with care pre-dates the pandemic. Teaching with care may be perceived as a form of activism and resistance (Bali, 2015; Hooks, 1994; Noddings, 2021) – a Davidian effort against the Goliath of the higher educational monetary, accountability machine and what some educators see as a dehumanizing presence of educational technology (France, 2020). As a result of the pandemic and global crises, there is a heightened sense of urgency in designing caring communities of learners in our courses, as we model a care for the environment, care for equity and social justice, and care for mental health and well-being.

Is caring part of a moral and ethical teaching practice? Does the integration of technology interfere or enhance our ability to teach with care? Can we balance a teaching practice that is philosophically grounded in morality and an ethic of care, with the current push for accountability and rigor in teaching and learning?

Panelists:

Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault), Adjunct Professor, ECPS

Dr. Surita Jhangiani, Assistant Professor of Teaching, ECPS

Tonje M. Molyneux, M.Ed., M.A.

Moderators:

Helen DeWaard, Learning Designer, ETS

Simone Hausknecht, Learning Designer, ETS

Visit the topic page for this session on the Viewpoints website!