Collection

Extending an Ethic of Care across Pedagogy, Practice, and Action

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Noddings (2005) and her groundbreaking philosophical work on the “ethic of care” emphasizes a focus on caring as the compass in the teaching profession and an emphasis on “recognition of and longing for relatedness.” Briefly, Noddings (2005) captured how care is a central dimension and foundation to human morality. Embedded within this theory, is that the concept of care is a core of teaching and learning and that care is a response-based ethic based on the individual needs of students (Persky, 2021). The ethic of care supports students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and highlights teaching as situational, and connected to the individual characteristics’ students possess, including their social-emotional needs, instructional needs, their strengths, and linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

The effects of the pandemic have shown the globe the ever-great capacity of teachers and their ability to adapt instruction, and to cultivate caring communities both in and out of schools to support young children and their families. As schools face intense pressure to bolster student achievement and make instructional gains to overcome the widening disparities that have resulted given the recent pandemic (Wyse et al., 2020), understanding how an ethic of care intersects with pedagogy, practice, and action in schools today is vital.

The premise of this special issue of Early Childhood Education Journal is that accepting an ethic of care builds a sense of agency, belonging, and identity in young children. Specifically, as teachers embrace an ethic of care, they work alongside of their students to co-construct learning environments supportive of their students’ interests, ideas, and beliefs. “Caring involves stepping out of one 's own personal frame of reference and into the other's" (Noddings, 1984, p. 24). Although caring has been long associated in early childhood settings, the theoretical construct of care extends beyond “gentle smiles and warm hugs” (Goldstein, 1998). The ethic of care is instrumental in understanding how teachers and administrators construct equitable instructional opportunities (Rivera-McCutchen, 2021), instantiate students’ power and agency (Curry, 2016; Warren, 2021), and how young children particularly young children from historically marginalized populations can take up such spaces (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006). For example, what does an ethic of care mean in today’s political and educational landscape and across communities? What does possessing an ethic of care mean today and how do other affective dimensions such as love, empathy, and compassion intersect in discussions of an ethic of care? Are specific instructional materials and tools better suited to translate a theory of care into educational practice? Are different content areas in early childhood settings more conducive to developing an ethic of care? How can a focus on an ethic of care reignite and support teachers post pandemic? What can we learn from teachers and students who interact daily in contexts where there is an ethic of care present? What collaborative relationships within communities promote an ethic of care? In addition, how does the ethic of care interact in preparing early childhood teacher candidates?

Editors

  • Margaret Vaughn Margaret Vaughn

    Margaret Vaughn

    Dr. Margaret Vaughn is an Associate Professor in the College of Education, at Washington State University. She has published extensively on equitable and adaptive classrooms contexts supportive of promoting young children’s sense of agency. She has served as guest editor for several themed issues and has recently published books with Guilford Press and Teachers College Press.

Articles (12 in this collection)