This post is inspired by an excellent article by Catherine Denial about the Pedagogy of Kindness. It is certainly not a ‘response’ to this post - not least because I agree with almost all that Prof. Denial says. Nevertheless, I started to think about whether and how a Pedagogy of Care might differ from a Pedagogy of Kindness. I have worked with the Ethics of Care quite a bit - mostly in relation to the management of Health and Social Care - and have recently had cause to revisit an article by Nel Noddings entitled ‘The Caring Relation in Teaching’. Reading the work of Noddings and Denial has prompted me to rethink my approach to teaching (just in time for the start of a new academic year). This post is intended to record some of my thoughts and perhaps prompt discussion.
Denial’s piece starts with a description of the way in which she used to approach teaching. It resonated with me because I shared many of the same thought patterns. Indeed, some of these ideas are embodied in the structures and processes that my (and many other institutions) have laid down. Take this sentence in particular:
I was urged to be on the lookout for plagiarism, to be vigilant for cheaters, to assume that the students wouldn’t do the reading, and to expect to be treated as a cog in a consumerist machine by students who would challenge their grades on a whim.
A broadly similar recollection is also presented in Jesse Stommel’s piece Writing About Teaching where he talks about having been a ‘hard teacher’ with ‘high expectations’. Denial’s reflection on this approach, and her solution - fostered on using compassion to build trust - describes an approach to education that strikes a particular chord with me and which I believe will better support students. Whilst she touches briefly on the importance of building relationships with students, it is this section which I think is worth exploring a little further, drawing on three core elements of the ethic of care.
The first element is the idea of a relational ontology - that is, the understanding that humans are fundamentally relational beings where the proper (or at least a significant) object of our attention is relationships between people. Often, those working within the framework of the ethics of care will focus on ‘caring relationships’ characterised by a person that provides care and one who receives care; although frequently our relationships are more complex than this, particularly in informal, family settings. Within an educational setting, the implication is that our attention should be on the nature and the quality of the relationship between the student and the tutor (although the idea of a provider of education and a receiver of education does not translate to this context). Proper questions therefore might be: ‘what type of relationship is most appropriate?’ and ‘how is this relationship best fostered and maintained?’
Denial talks about building relationships based on trust, rightly noting that there is no need to be defensive about the idea of a relationship between students and tutors. However, this does not provide a response to the question concerning the nature of the relationship. At least one person commenting on her piece raises the question of ‘professionalism’ and whether the kindness she advocates might fail to prepare students for a working environment where they cannot expect similar consideration. I will return to this point later, but absolutely accept the idea that good teaching must be based on effective relationships between the tutor and their students.
Our second element, attentiveness, is a partial answer to questions about the nature and development of these relationships in that it characterises a critical characteristic of our interactions. Noddings describes attentiveness as a deliberate regard to the expressed needs of the person we care for. She cites an example which, again, is familiar to me:
When a teacher works conscientiously, perhaps very hard, to help her students to succeed, we often give her moral credit for caring. She seems to know what her students need, and acts faithfully on those beliefs. However, these are assumed needs, rather than expressed needs, and these teachers are often remembered as saying, ‘Some day you’ll thank me for this!’ I have called such teachers ‘virtue carers’: they do not establish caring relations or engage in ‘caring-for’ as described in care ethics. (Noddings, 2012, 773)
Often, we are guilty of making assumptions about our students – perhaps about what they need from us, or about why they have not engaged or responded in the way that we would like. Whilst Denial’s approach – to believe people and believe in people – is admirable, I think it also needs expanding. Attentiveness requires not just that we listen to students, but that we actively seek understanding from them about their situation, remembering to take each student as an individual. As we do so, we should be particularly cautious about making inferences based on our own experiences rather than seeking an understanding of our students’ lives. Amy Hasinoff expresses this danger here:
When I began teaching, I focused on content and rigor. I made the rookie mistake of designing my first course in ways that would have worked perfectly for me as a student. The problem was that prep school had made me into a different kind of college student than the ones in front of me who mostly came from underfunded public schools, returned after years away, worked full time, and supported families.
Importantly, whilst attentiveness requires us to understand the circumstances of our students, it does not require us simply to fulfill all their desires. The professional has a responsibility to consider and acknowledge the wishes of the student (or the person in receipt of care) but not just to do everything that is demanded of them. In a care setting this might mean rejecting requests that would put the person in receipt of care in danger. In a university setting there is a similar expectation that tutors will act professionally as they consider the expressed needs of their students. As Barrow notes, it can be painful to have to fail a hard-working student with whom one has worked hard to establish a close relationship – but it is part of the job (Barrow, 2015, 55).
A partial answer to questions about the nature of the tutor:student relationship is found through the application of attentiveness. Proper relationships are built on a foundation of active engagement with the needs of individual students mediated through the professionalism of the tutor.
Doing this is not easy. One reason for this are the complex and interwoven power imbalances that exist within the university system. An awareness of, and an attention to, these imbalances is the third concept I wish to bring from the ethics of care. Students are in a power-less position: tutors and administrators have a great deal of power in respect to the experience of students. Equally, there will be variation in the degree and nature of the power-lessness that students face. Some, perhaps those with friends and family who have been to university, will experience these concerns far less than others. The ethic of care reminds us to pay attention to the impact of power imbalances that are built into the systems we operate and demands that we attempt to disarm those parts of the system that sustain power imbalances unnecessarily. Again, Barrow reinforced the value of this approach:
A care ethic is especially important in the community college setting where students are traditionally underprepared or academically inexperienced, and where low self-esteem abound and societal and personal stresses often lead to low retention and unrealized dreams. (Barrow, 2015, 50)
Whilst Barrow discusses a particular setting we might suggest that similar attention to power imbalances is required in all educational environments - perhaps most particularly those where assumptions about confidence, ability and preparedness are most often made. Denial’s call for compassion and trust goes some way towards addressing our concerns but does not acknowledge the impact of power imbalances directly. She describes simply believing students who say that they have flu, or that a relative has died rather than asking for proof before providing support. Where institutions require detailed evidence for claims such as this they do more than just fail a test of compassion; they reinforce power imbalances between the university and the student that get in the way of an effective teaching relationship.
These demands may also require students to pay to secure evidence; to navigate complex bureaucratic machinery (often as someone who has English as an additional language); or to try and fulfil expectations of proper paperwork and certification. All this is more than uncompassionate – it acts to place the university, or the tutor, in a position of greater power and the student in a position where they are power-less. This stymies a proper educational relationship because it breaks the principle of reciprocity whereby both sides acknowledge and respect the goodwill and endeavours of the other. It would be hard, as a student facing this bureaucratic nightmare, to interpret these actions as those of an organisation seeking to support them as they develop personally and professionally towards a fulfilling graduate career.
It would be easy to dismiss the ideas of a pedagogy of care as being soft, weak, unprofessional or ‘coddling’. Whilst there is a requirement to respond to the situation and needs of individual students this does not imply that one should cater to every demand. This approach requires that tutors seek to understand the expressed needs of the individual student, but also to use their professional judgement in assessing how to respond. There is no requirement to accept mediocrity (Anderson et al, 2019) – simply to put the conditions in place that allow all students to succeed. One might argue that this is a more satisfactory position than if we understand students as customers whose satisfaction is our primary concern. In this interpretation of our present situation it is hard to see what the role of the professional educator is at all.
The ethic of care, from which this pedagogical approach is derived, is a normative moral theory that makes claims about the responsibilities of managers towards their staff as well as between providers and recipients of care (see, for example, Kittay 1999). At the same time as it offers a way to understand what makes for a productive educational relationship it makes similar claims about how working relationships more generally should be. So, whilst it may be true that these ideas do not reflect the world of work as it is, they reflect something of how this world ought to be.
There is, I suspect, much more to say on this – and many more authors writing on this subject that I have not drawn on. Nevertheless, I hope this that piece prompts discussion and debate and perhaps even makes our university teaching just a little more caring.
Anderson, V et al (2019) ‘Good Teaching as Care in Higher Education’, Higher Education, published online
Barrow, M (2015) ‘Caring in Teaching: A Complicated Relationship’, The Journal of Effective Teaching, 15:2, 45-59
Kittay, E (1999) Love’s Labor, New York: Routledge
Noddings, N (2012) ‘The Caring Relation in Teaching’, Oxford Review of Education, 38:6,771-781