Caring and Critical Thinking in the Teaching of Young Adolescents

In this article, I consider what Noddings’ ideas about the critical lessons schools should teach might suggest for social education and critical thinking at the middle school level. Giving particular consideration to Noddings’ calls to engage young people in self-understanding and allow students to pursue their interests, this article explores how the middle school years present an especially rich opportunity to engage students in an examination of the period of young adolescence, allow them to enter the debates about schooling for the middle grades, and use students’ interests as a springboard for examining complex social issues. Considering Noddings’ (2015, p. 1) urging for us to engage in the mission of “producing better adults,” I argue that the critical middle school years offer a generative time in young people’s lives to advance this important work.     

Examining Noddings’ “Educational Malpractice” Assertion: Serious Considerations for Local-Global Issues in Social Studies Education

The article utilizes a decolonizing theoretical lens to advocate for the need to engage in a more nuanced approach to conceptualizing local/global aspect of social justice discussions within social studies education. The article engages with questions of social justice by utilizing Noddings’s (2006) argument that “educational malpractice” (p. 250) is a daily occurrence in US classrooms because students are expected to reproduce textbook answers, rather than generate their own questions and reasoned research and deliberation. Kumashiro’s (2004) writings on antioppressive education speak of how the repetition of mainstream narratives normalize what ought to be taught and learned in schools. We propose that educators cannot avoid questions of racism and Islamophobia as critically important issues within social studies classrooms. Therefore, through engaging in critical inquiry on the prevalence of racism and Islamophobia, educators can disrupt the continued educational malpractice within the social studies.     

诺丁斯关心教育思想研究

美国教育哲学家内尔·诺丁斯以关怀伦理学为理论基础，对一系列教育基本问题提出了独特见解。她认为，学校要培养会关心的人，要以关心为主题组织课程，建立关心型师生关系，建立充满关心的环境，使有各种才能的学生都能得到发展。诺丁斯的关心教育思想具有时代性、道德性、人本性、情感性等基本特点。     

Does a Sentiment‐Based Ethics of Caring Improve upon a Principles‐Based One? The problem of impartial morality

My task in this paper is to demonstrate, contra Nel Noddings, that Kantian ethics does not have an expectation of treating those closest to one the same as one would a stranger. In fact, Kantian ethics has what I would consider a robust statement of how it is that those around us come to figure prominently in the development of one's ethics. To push the point even further, I argue that Kantian ethics has an even stronger claim to treating those closest to oneself as imperative than Noddings and sentiment‐based ethical theory in general, proposes.     

Teaching Kids to Care about Jewish Problems: A Noddings’ Approach

Drawing on Noddings’ work on religion and education (1993), moral education (2002), and citizenship education (2005\, 2015), this article contemplates how educators both in public schools and parochial Jewish schools might teach students to care about critical issues confronting the Jewish community historically and contemporarily. Its premise is that the teaching of the Jewish experience is presently deficient in both school settings. The article suggests ways that Noddings’ conceptions of caring (1992), pedagogical neutrality (1993), and critical lessons (2006) can be adapted and applied to the teaching of Jewish civilization in more appropriate, holistic, and nuanced ways. Its implications are applicable to many other American subgroups whose treatment in the social studies curriculum is typically inadequate.     

Does a Sentiment-Based Ethics of Caring Improve upon a Principles-Based One? The problem of impartial morality

My task in this paper is to demonstrate, contra Nel Noddings, that Kantian ethics does not have an expectation of treating those closest to one the same as one would a stranger. In fact, Kantian ethics has what I would consider a robust statement of how it is that those around us come to figure prominently in the development of one's ethics. To push the point even further, I argue that Kantian ethics has an even stronger claim to treating those closest to oneself as imperative than Noddings and sentiment-based ethical theory in general, proposes.     

Touching the challenge: Embodied solutions enabling humanistic moral education

One of the main educational challenges we still face today—more than ever—is the humanistic challenge, namely how to promote humanistic moral values, how to strengthen in students the motivation to be morally active, and especially how to help them recognize the other as a human subject. I adopt Nel Noddings’ approach of relational ethics of care as a solution to the problem of motivation. I elaborate on her approach while presenting the concept of the embodied human subject posited by Merleau-Ponty as an additional channel for communication and empathy between people. The embodied subjectivity serves also as a solution for the problem of recognition. I offer some practical recommendations that apply Merleau-Ponty’s analysis to the practice of moral education.     

诺丁斯德育观的身体问题

身心二元论确立以来,身体一直被处于放逐的边缘。但自从存在先于本质这一理念确立后,身体在哲学领域中逐渐受到关注。在此背景之下,诺丁斯把身体哲学延展到德育中,形成了自己的德育理论特色。这种特色主要表现为:一是身体哲学与德育的同一性;二是身体哲学对德育的超越性。     

Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education

Efforts to evaluate and improve student engagement have been pervasive in higher education over recent years. Critics argue, however, that troubling affinities are evident between student engagement efforts and a neoliberal agenda which emphasises accountability through performativity. Neoliberalism manifests in policies that focus on the economic benefit to individuals of higher education, rather than the broader social or intrinsic benefits. In this conceptual article, we draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Nel Noddings in arguing that efforts aimed at promoting engagement and commitment to learn by students should include developing a capacity to care about others and things. Through the lens of care, our aim is to extend current notions of what engagement of students in their learning might look like. Challenging and supporting students entail encouraging them to take a stand on what they are learning and who they are becoming. This enriched conceptualisation has the potential to re-orient student engagement away from a narrow neoliberal agenda, while enabling students to realise the full benefits a higher education can provide.     

Challenging a Teacher's Perceptions of Mathematical Smartness Through Reflections on Students’ Thinking

Creating equitable opportunities so all students can learn and succeed mathematically has been a key focus of mathematics education across several decades. Central to student achievement are students’ mathematical identity and their feelings of success during instruction. Researchers (e.g., Boaler & Staples, 2008) have shown that teachers can be particularly powerful in shaping students’ beliefs, feelings of success, and achievement, but few studies have investigated how teachers frame what it means to be successful or “smart” in mathematics. Through the social construct of smartness (Hatt, 2012) and the learning perspectives of incremental and entity theories (Blackwell, Trzesnieski, & Dweck, 2007; Yeager & Dweck, 2012), I examine how one teacher, Mrs. Purl, conceptualized what it meant to be smart in mathematics and how this perception changed slowly, over time, through repeated examination and discussion of individual student's thinking. As Mrs. Purl came to know her students at a personal level, she began to see that her perceptions were not always accurate and warranted reexamination.     

Care of the Self in a Knowledge Economy: Higher education,vocation and the ethics of Michel Foucault

Recognising the relevance of Iris Marion Young's work to education, this article poses the question: given Iris Young's commitment to both social justice and to recognition of the political and ethical significance of difference, to what extent does her position allow for transnational interventions in education to foster democracy? First, it explores some of Iris Young's arguments on the relationship between democracy and social justice, with particular reference to their implications for education. Second, I argue that if her ideas are extended to the issue of global justice, the strategies which she offers should be extended, at least when it comes to educational intervention, to allow for a wider range of actions in support of global justice through education for democracy than Iris Young's work so far seems to allow. The wider range of strategies which I propose call on western feminists and their governments to do more to promote democracy and social justice globally. This can be done in ways that are consistent with Iris Young's stipulation that transnational interference is permissible if undertaken against dominative harm.     

Reconsidering Happiness in the Context of Social Justice Education

That happiness leads to lack of harm and suffering, representing both a good and a means to good, is promoted, for example, by educational philosophers such as Nel Noddings. But happiness should not be seen as an unproblematic goal, for education or otherwise. In this article, we critically investigate the importance of happiness in the educational context. More specifically, we emphasize the necessity of problematizing happiness as an emotional practice in social justice education. In order to contextualize our analysis, we enumerate two theoretical perspectives that endorse happiness in education. These are the educational philosophy of Noddings and the paradigm of positive psychology. After exploring how happiness is promoted theoretically and practically, we elaborate a critical perspective on happiness in relation to education. We use the work of Sara Ahmed, among others, to illustrate some ways in which happiness can function to serve unjust relations in education. We thus explore happiness as an intersubjective affect, as opposed to considering it as an intrasubjective feeling. We argue that educators who want to foster social justice in education need to consider the positive and the negative consequences of encouraging happiness in education. Fostering happiness can be progressive and empowering, but it can also be regressive and unjust.     

Just like my nanny: troubling teacher’s social identities in the classroom

Teacher-researcher narrative accounts are essential and insightful for the science education field, yet they are few and far-between. In this forum, I engage in dialogue with Nicole Grimes’s auto-ethnographic narrative on the affordances her femme-Carribean identity allowed for some students to engage more deeply in science. While I agree with and applaud Grimes’s reflection on how her perceived social identity had positive effects on some students’ engagement in science, I trouble the notion of such a social identity being framed solely as an asset to student learning by examining the power dynamics inherent in the enacted nanny-child relationship. I also propose the need for deeper analyses on how a teacher’s social identity can impact students’ learning experiences in the science classroom by looking at how the boundaries of the science classroom are redefined and what additional resources are recruited that can foster deeper engagement.     

诺丁斯以关怀为核心的道德教育理论及其启示

当代美国教育家内尔·诺丁斯基于西方关怀伦理的思想传统,形成了具有时代特征的以关怀为核心的道德教育理论。诺丁斯的关怀所具有的具体性、个体性、主体间性等特征彰显了鲜明的时代个性。诺丁斯的关怀道德教育理论强调对学生生命的尊重、对学生体验和感受的重视、教师的榜样作用和道德教育的实践性特征;提出了道德教育的四种方法,以身作则、对话、实践和认可。诺丁斯的关怀道德教育理论告诉我们,尊重每个学生的生命就要尊重并合理引导生命的个性、差异性;即便每个人都实现了最好的自我,差异仍然难免。     

Back to the Future: We Listened and We Learned

Being asked to give the 39^th Amy Morris Homans Commemorative Lecture at NAKPEHE is a tremendous honor. While certainly aware of Miss Homans' legacy related to the promotion of women, physical education, and the training of teachers, I admit it has been many years since revisiting details of her life and her work. In order to prepare my comments for this lecture, it seemed critical that I do so, and what a remarkable journey it has been these past months. It allowed me to come to know my own background more thoroughly, recognize where my own beliefs were developed, and understand what I hope is the impact of my work on prospective teachers and subsequently their pupils. Born 100 years almost to the day after Miss Homans, I too am a teacher educator. With this in mind, teaching and teacher education seemed an appropriate focus for this lecture today.     

诺丁斯关心理论及其对辅导员工作的启示

诺丁斯关心理论是在国际上颇具影响力的道德教育理论,它着重强调＂关心＂的关系性,认为关心教育有榜样、对话、实践、证实这四种主要的方法。诺丁斯关心教育理论突出＂关心＂在教育领域中的价值,它重视被关心者的反应,强调教师的榜样作用。高校辅导员是大学生成长的领路者和引路人,诺丁斯的关心理论对于当前高校辅导员工作具有很重要的借鉴意义。     

Teacher knowledge: The relationship between caring and knowing

While everyone acknowledges the importance of the “caring teacher,” little acknowledgment of caring as an issue exists at the level of educational policymaking. This paper presents teacher and researcher stories which describe a teacher's knowledge in practice and argues for recognition of an epistemological role for caring in teaching. The teacher's narratives describe what she knows from caring and being in relationship with her students - her relational knowing (Hollingsworth et al., 1993, 1994)- and how this knowledge alters her pedagogy and the curriculum that is constructed with each student. Caring for the person (Noddings, 1984, 1992) is revealed as central to what the teacher knows. The findings of this research suggest that for the teacher, the relationship between caring and knowing is complex and involves a constant reflective process. In attempting to situate caring within existing theories for teacher knowledge, Elbaz' (1983) structures are found to be too neat and the boundaries too well defined. A construct of teacher knowledge as relational and dynamic is described. This builds upon Lyons' provisional characterization of the epistemological relationship between students and teachers as nested knowing: “that is, students and teachers are considered to have nested, interacting epistemological perspectives” (1990a, p. 162). In this view, knowledge is not limited to what one person knows, but the intersection where the knowing of two persons in-relation overlap and the consequences for student learning (and teacher development) when one of those persons is a teacher.     

Fugitive Practices: Learning in a Settler Colony

In this article, I connect the ways that learning is fundamental to life, for human and nonhuman beings. I write this article at a time of crystalline xenophobic backlash, the rise of several totalitarian regimes across the planet, as well as the formation and action from many social movements. I argue that in this moment, it is even more important for education and education studies to distinguish between the achievement-measured desires of a settler state from what learning itself is and how it is intertwined with live and sovereignty. To highlight learning as fugitive practice, I connect the ways that learning has been maintained and protected even when it has been forbidden, foreclosed and seemingly withered through colonialism.     

Talking about Practice: photography students,photographic culture and professional identities

Despite the social and cultural importance of photography in modern societies, photographic education is an area that has inspired very little in the way of academic research. Photographic education is generally perceived in very narrow terms, as an area of technical training, lacking any broader intellectual significance. It is the argument of this paper that in his/her many guises the photographer is an important figure in contemporary culture, and that the impoverished, or total lack of, understanding of photographic education is a significant omission. The aim of the paper is to begin to address this gap through a qualitative look at the way in which professional photography students talk about their practice. It is argued that photographic education has its own professionalised discourse, which students are encouraged to adopt, thereby excluding alternative perspectives. I discuss examples of students’ talk about practice as evidence of this discourse. In the final section of the paper I consider some alternative approaches that have been developed outside the context of mainstream photographic education, and the possibilities they offer for rethinking what it means to teach photography.