The Abstract Other: Exploring the Care Ethical Potential of Contextualized Abstraction

Two of our greatest educational theorists, John Dewey and Nel Noddings, have been reluctant to admit that some students are simply more talented than others. This was no doubt due to their feeling that such an admission was inconsistent with democratic concern for everyone. But there really is such a thing as superior talent; and the present book explains how that admission is compatible with our ideals of caring (and democracy). Traditionalists confident that some disciplines are more important than others haven’t worried that that way of putting things threatens to make those who are excluded feel quite bad about themselves. But an ethics of care can show us how to make these differences much less hurtful and more morally acceptable than anything that has been proposed by traditionalists. So the present book offers a middle way between the denial of the reality of superior talents and an insensitive insistence on that reality. It argues that care ethics gives us a way to do this, and it bases that claim largely on the promise of such an ethics for moral education in schools and in homes. It is argued on psychological grounds that caring can only take place on the basis of empathy for others, and the book shows in great detail how empathy can be encouraged or develop in school and home contexts. Other approaches to moral education—like Kantian cognitive-developmentalism and Aristotelian character education—can’t account for (increasing) moral motivation in the way that an emphasis on the development of empathy allows. And in the end, it is only students educated via care ethics who will be sensitive to one another in a way that largely undercuts the negative psychological impact of educational institutions and practices that acknowledge the greater talents or creativity that some students have.

Moral Development and Reality explores the nature of morality, moral development, social behavior, and human connection. By comparing, contrasting, and going beyond the prominent theories mainly of Lawrence Kohlberg, Martin Hoffman, and Jonathan Haidt, the author addresses fundamental questions: What is morality, and how broad is the moral domain? Can we speak of moral development (Kohlberg, Hoffman), or is morality entirely relative to diverse cultures (Haidt)? What are the sources of moral motivation? What factors account for prosocial behavior? What are the typical social perspective-taking limitations of antisocial youths, and how can those limitations be remedied? Does moral development, including moments of moral inspiration, reflect a deeper reality? Exploring these questions elucidates the full range of moral development, from superficial perception to a deeper understanding and feeling. Included are foundations of morality and moral motivation; biology, social intuitions, and culture; social perspective-taking and development; the stage construct and developmental delay; moral exemplars and moral identity; cognitive distortions, social skills deficiencies, and cognitive behavioral interventions or moral education; and, finally, near-death experiences and the underpinnings of the social and moral world.

Walker's comprehensive review of claims of gender difference and gender bias in moral cognition concluded 1) that gender explains a negligible amount of the variability in moral reasoning development, 2) that accumulated evidence does not support claims of gender polarity in moral orientations (i.e., an ethic of care and an ethic of justice), and 3) that future research should focus on the range of psychological processes that engender moral maturity. This study examined whether male and female predoctoral dental students who completed an ethics curriculum grounded in Rest's comprehensive model of moral functioning differed on measures of four capacities: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral implementation. From archival data at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, data on sixty females and sixty males were randomly selected from five cohorts (n=386) who completed an ethics curriculum and outcome measures of the four capacities between 1996 and 2000. Gender differences were not apparent for a measure of moral sensitivity, but were evident for one of the moral reasoning indices, for the responsibility dimension of moral motivation, and for the measure of moral implementation. Implications are drawn for future research and for professional ethics education.

Care ethics, and moral sentimentalism more generally, have not developed a picture of moral education that is comparable in scope or depth to the rationalist/Kantian/Rawlsian account of moral education that has been offered by Lawrence Kohlberg. But it is possible to do so if one borrows from the work of Martin Hoffman and makes systematic use of Hume’s earlier sentimentalist ideas. Kohlberg and Rawls offer accounts of moral learning that leave moral motivation largely unexplained or mysterious, but an emphasis on the psychology of empathy can help us to better understand both the content of our morality and the ways in which children and adults can become and be morally motivated. Parents can in a number of ways evoke and strengthen children’s empathic moral tendencies, and such processes can also occur and need to occur in schools and later on in life. In addition, a sentimentalist understanding of the meaning of moral terms can show how moral rules, principles, and injunctions can strongly reinforce the sorts of empathic/moral tendencies that are at least initially based in other elements of human psychology.

The population aging and consequent epidemiological changes in elderly population create new challenges for physiotherapists’ intervention and their decision-making process [1]. Ethical issues are ...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of a culturally sensitive and end‐user‐centric software architectural framework for the development of eService applications in information and communication technologies for development (ICTD) contexts. The research is undertaken within the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachAction research is the approach undertaken in this research with an extensive literature review to inform the development of the architecture, which is later qualitatively and quantitavely validated.FindingsVarious factors have to be taken into consideration for technology solutions to be effective in their context of deployment. The authors have provided an architecture that intrinsically enables software solutions to be developed from the ground up with concern for flexibility for context sensitivity. The PIASK architecture separates the presentation, interaction, access, social networking and knowledge base components into five distinct functional layers. This architecture is validated for: technical viability through a development of a knowledge portal in SLL; cultural sensitivity through Dooyeweerd's theory of modal aspects; and user centricity using a SALUTA‐based evaluation.Practical implicationsThe successful evolution of any society towards a knowledge society is predicated on technology solutions that embrace and that are sensitive to the socio‐cultural diversity of that society. The PIASK architecture developed in this research is a tool that can be used in the realization of services and applications for ICTD contexts in South Africa and other third‐world countries.Originality/valueThe software architecture developed specifically for ICTD contexts to encapsulate context sensitivity and user centricity is the primary and novel contribution of this research.

With the deepening of China’s reform and opening up and the continuous development of the market economy, interest-driven makes moral individuals present a phenomenon of moral indifference. The moral indifference separates the moral participants into independent individuals, ignores the interpersonal interaction and assembly, and leads to the alienation of human relations and the mistrust between people, which affects the harmony and development of society and has become the bottleneck of restricting China’s moral development. How to resolve moral indifference is a social issue that is urgently needed to be solved in China. This paper tries to propose a theoretical possible solution of resolving contemporary moral indifference, that is, Care ethics. The concept of “Care Ethics” was first put forward by professor Nel. Noddings of American Stanford University in 1980, which highlights the perceptual level of care and emphasizes the intrinsic relational care. The basic idea of care ethical solution to resolve moral indifference performs in four aspects: highlighting the displacement of caregiver’s moral motivation based on moral emotion; emphasizing the construction of the ethical relationship between self and others based on the relation; meeting the real psychological needs of the cared person in a targeted manner; consolidating care behavior based on contextual factors. This paper finally finds that these possible paths will help to liberate the human nature that is currently suppressed, get out of the moral indifference, establish a good social and moral relationship, and achieve harmonious social development.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift in history education away from a view of history as the pursuit of an objective, universal story about the past toward ‘historical consciousness,’ which seeks to cultivate an understanding of the past as something that makes moral demands on us here and now. According to Roger Simon, historical consciousness calls us to ‘live historically’ – to live in a particular kind of ethical relationship with the past. However, no matter how much educators might believe in the importance of learning to live historically, if students do not see it that way, even the most thoughtfully designed program in history education will never get off the ground. This paper is an attempt to see whether the notion of ‘caring for the past,’ based on Nel Noddings' ethic of care, might help us begin to address the problem of moral motivation in educating for historical consciousness.

Ecology, Ontology, and Pedagogy at Camp Coorong

Keywords: caring; ethics of care; occupational therapy; occupational therapy history; professional ethics

This chapter looks at how some feminists, especially Carol Gilligan, believe that women are more relational than men. These theorists claim that because of their greater concern with relationships, women are guided in their moral judgments by the ethic of care; men are guided by the principle of justice. According to separate-spheres arguments, the public domain of work, achievement, and self-assertion, built on a notion of self as independent and autonomous, was deemed the male sphere, and the private domain of home, care, harmony, and relationships was deemed the female sphere. Gilligan claims that the experiences of inequality and subordination, which circumscribe the lives of women, also give rise to a moral self grounded in human connections and characterized by concerns relationship. Gilligan tried to revalue women by celebrating ways in which they are different from men. Her attempt failed.

Primum non nocere is only the beginning… ‘First do no harm’ is considered one of the primary ethical principles of medical practice. Originating in a time when physicians made most decisions and options were severely limited, it served well as a touchstone of medical practice. Today, paediatricans are faced daily with complex issues involving clinical and ethical judgement. While the dilemmas experienced in the community paediatrician’s office may vary in specific details from those in the neonatal intensive care unit, the ethical principles that guide us to a resolution will be the same. The present article is the first in a new forum intended to provide readers of Paediatrics & Child Health with the opportunity to reflect on ethical aspects, dilemmas and issues that arise in the care of infants, children and adolescents. The heightened awareness of ethics in health care in Canada, and the complexities faced by paediatricians in community practice settings and teaching hospitals, necessitates expanding our ethics armamentarium beyond the basic principles of nonmaleficence (‘do no harm’), beneficence, autonomy and justice to include values such as trust and respect for different social and cultural perspectives. This approach is theoretically inadequate as an approach to ethical reasoning in the context of children and families. Respectful, trusting relationships are fundamental to providing the best possible care. Children are embedded in families, and when a child needs medical treatment, health care providers have the privilege of being invited into the family unit. Families may differ from each other and from their professional health care providers in configuration, parenting norms, values and beliefs. If we are to maintain good relationships with families – which we must do to provide care to their children – we must find ways to recognize and accommodate different views while providing responsible medical advice and treatment. The developing autonomy, values and independence of children and adolescents create ethical challenges as well. Paediatricians may experience conflict between their tendency toward paternalistic protection of their patients who are suddenly young adults, and the recognition that these patients are persons to whom duties of confidentiality, preservation of privacy and respect for treatment decisions are owed. In addition, they may sometimes be placed in the position of having to mediate conflict between adolescent patients and their parents. Several factors have shaped the context in which ethics in health care is currently situated: For the past decade, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada has required residency programs, including paediatrics, to include bioethics in their curricula as a condition of accreditation (http://rcpsc.medical.org/ethics/index.php). The Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation includes standards related to ethics in informed decision-making and consent, end-of-life care and administration (www.cchsa.ca). We continue to learn more about the effects of social factors, including cultural and religious practices and values, on health and well-being. This is particularly significant in the Canadian context where our deeply held value of respect for diversity, as manifested in parents’ decisions for their children, may conflict with our personal or professional view of what is in the child’s best interests. Ethics committees and consultants, or bioethicists, are increasingly seen as having an important role in supporting organizations, clinicians, patients and families in ethical decision-making, education and policy development. New medical and scientific knowledge and advances bring with them ethical questions for consideration and investigation, including the generation of economic-related issues such as timely access to care, and regional discrepancies in available services. The pressure to include individual children in research studies, so that children as a group may someday benefit from new safe and effective therapies and drugs, has raised research ethics questions and concerns for consideration by the research community and Research Ethics Boards. Ethical issues in paediatrics are numerous and varied. A cross-Canada group of bioethicists practising in children’s hospitals recently identified common topics arising in paediatric ethics consultation (1): Cultural and religious values-based conflicts; Reporting of child abuse; Determining the capacity of a child or adolescent to consent to treatment; Nonadherence to recommended treatment plans; Genetic testing of children; Withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment; Organ transplantation (eg, adolescents as living donors); Conflicts regarding the appropriate treatment for children, especially withdrawal of treatment; Rights and responsibilities of substitute decision makers/professional caregivers; Jehovah’s Witnesses and refusal of treatment; Confidentiality (eg, in the care of adolescents); Treatment of patients with eating disorders; and Truthtelling (eg, withholding ‘bad news’ from a child). These topics, and the many more that paediatricians, family physicians and other child health practitioners experience in their practice, will be the focus of Ethics in Paediatric Practice. The Editors invite your suggestions for future articles and welcome submissions, which will undergo peer review and revision at the discretion of the Editors and the advice of the CPS Bioethics Committee. Submissions should not exceed 1200 words and should describe an ethical issue or dilemma, and offer a reasoned argument for a conclusion and a practical approach to a resolution. We hope, with your help, to stimulate reflection and discussion about this important aspect of paediatric practice.

Set in contemporary Ireland, Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) focuses on the relationship dynamics between characters who struggle with intimacy and human connection, against the backdrop of the individualist ethos and existential anxieties induced by current neoliberal systems. Drawing on care ethics, vulnerability and relationality theory, this analysis of Beautiful World underscores how Rooney constructs her characters’ psychological evolution through their progressive, albeit irregular, adoption of care virtues within relationships. The analysis shall apply Khader’s taxonomy of care virtues (2011), which include “loving attention” –a willingness to appreciate and accommodate the particular nature of the other–, “the transparent self” –an awareness of how our self-interests block our recognition of the other’s needs–, and “narrative understanding”, a desire to engage with the other’s personal history so as to make decisions that promote his/her well-being.

The final chapter concludes our use of Kohlberg’s, Hoffman’s, and Haidt’s theories to ponder the moral domain and explore growth beyond the superficial in morality. We recap our critique of Haidt’s theory. We culminate our argument for a coprimacy in moral motivation by relating Kohlberg’s and Hoffman’s theories to motivationally and qualitatively distinct categories of knowledge (logico-mathematical, empirical). We relate logical-moral ideals to an analysis of adaptation and evolution (Piaget, Singer) that is less reductionistic than the pragmatic version offered by Haidt and others. We conclude with some final thoughts on moral development, perception, and behavior vis-à-vis a deeper reality of human connection.

This ecofeminist-inspired research study, influenced by an ethic of care, engaged the participants in photo-elicitation and interviews. Ecofeminism originated as a theory and movement related to women and the environment (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia, 2018), while an ethic of care stems from relational ethics that assumes human connectedness in context (Clement, 1996; Noddings, 2013). Thematic and visual narrative analysis of collected data supported the establishment of findings. The study aimed to contribute to the idea that a place-based approach can be taken to developing a holistic, meaningful and balanced local curriculum – one that privileges a ‘sense of place’ and the relationship between humans and their environments as co-habitors.