Comparative Cultures of Care:
An Interdisciplinary Project
Work Package 3:
Pedagogy of Care
Education has been criticized for focusing too much on the technical parts of teaching and overlooking the human aspects, according to Velasquez et al (2013). Instructors must balance opposing demands when preparing to teach in online and mixed learning environments: knowing the technology tools they will use to teach, designing learning outcomes, and creating content and assignments. Instructors must, however, pay attention to the human components of the learning process, because students will attend to their emotional needs before engaging in cognitive and metacognitive processes (Goralnik et al, 2012). Paying attention to the human components necessitates thought on the “ethics of care” in the learning environment, as well as when we provoke pedagogical discussions.
In designing a pedagogy of care, education theorists have often evoked the work of Nel Noddings (1984, 1992, 2005), who is arguably one of the premier philosophers of moral education in the English‐speaking world today. Her body of work is unrivalled for originality of insight, comprehensiveness, and coherence, despite being outside the mainstream theory and research traditions of cognitive developmentalism.
Focus
Learning Resources & New GEIC
Oct 2023 - March 2024
Together, the department representatives will develop the learning resources based in part on Noddings’ theory of care, in areas that are pertinent to the 3 sub-themes under “Theorizing Care,” namely green creativity, care agents in humanistic expressions, and critical care in education.
To prepare undergraduate students with “care literacy and ethics,” several new general education interdisciplinary courses (GEIC) will be proposed. Furthermore, key elements of care literacy and ethics will be integrated into the curriculum of existing, as well as newly proposed, programmes, minors, and professional development programmes.