Nel Noddings Research Articles

More Than Just a “Nod” to Care: Expanding Nel Noddings’ Ethics of Care Framework to Sustain Educator Resilience

ABSTRACT This year-long, iterative, school-research project investigated how educators working in a U.S. alternative school are resilient and flourish in their work. The study yielded timely findings critical to inform relevant education policies and practices in light of the current educator attrition crisis: 1) an expansion of Nel Noddings’ model of care ethics in education; 2) the centrality of expanded adult-to-adult care relations, across multiple socio-ecological levels within schools, to educator resilience, and 3) the need for policies supporting expanded care-centric leadership practices which are attentive and responsive to the “emotional calendar” and situational contexts across the academic year.

The Maternal Bond in Ethics and Evolution

The scope of the humanities has been broadened by tracing the evolutionary roots of human biology. A salient example of the move in this direction is the philosophical study of ethics. Specifically, Nel Noddings’ theory of Care Ethics has made contributions to an evolutionary understanding of morality as having developed through several paths, one of them stemming from the maternal instinct. Recent scientific research on the brains of pregnant women supports Noddings’ philosophical sketch. Thus, Noddings’ work contributes to the Explaining Morality Program (EMP). The scientific models of morality in the EMP can become stronger if they can incorporate Noddings’ insights about a maternal evolutionary path to morality.

A Comparative Study between the View of Nel Nodding and Gilligan on Ethics of Care and Moral Education

One of the earliest comprehensive theories of care was offered by American philosopher Nel Nodding, who also contended that caring is the basis of morality. According to her, connections are an essential part of being it is to be human, and one's relationships with other people help determine who they are as a person. Modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation are the four main elements of education from the standpoint of care, according to Nel Nodding. The purpose of this research was to find out the nature of the ethics of care proposed by Nel Nodding, analyze Nodding’s Moral Education and find out different components of it, and Compare the perception Nel Nodding and Gilligan with respect to ethics of care and moral education. It is qualitative research. The researcher used different Primary and secondary data sources to gather data for this research. As primary sources, the researcher used different published documents by Nel Nodding [1-8] and Gilligan [9-11] and as secondary sources [12,13,14,15] the researcher different journal articles. The findings of this study were Nodding can provide a framework for addressing a wide range of ethical issues, from interpersonal interactions to universal problems like poverty and environmental degradation. In addition to her work, a more comprehensive and compassionate approach to ethics has resulted from her emphasis on the value of loving relationships and emotional intelligence in moral decision-making.

Service-Learning Practices and Reflections in the Perspective of Nel Noddings’ Theory of Caring Education: The “Care for the Elderly” Service-Learning Program as an Example

Nel Noddings’ ethics of care is an important lineage of Western moral education thought, which contains deep humanistic values. Service-learning advocates the equal importance of service and learning, and emphasizes more on the discovery of educational connotations in practice. Based on the social background of aging, this paper takes the “Care for the Elderly” service-learning program as an example, attempts to take the care ethics as the entry point, adopts interviews,questionnaires, and other research methods, and opens-up the service-learning practice path under the threshold of Nel Noddings’ care education theory.

AN EXAMINATION OF WOMEN THINKERS WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED SOCIOLOGICALLY, PSYCHOLOGICALLY OR PHILOSOPHICALLY TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FROM A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

This study is a research conducted by using the document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, in order to examine women thinkers who have contributed to curriculum studies in sociological, psychological or philosophical terms by revealing the place of women in education throughout history. Although there are many scientists who have contributed to the field of educational programs, nine women who are considered to have contributed the most are included in the research. These women are Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Addams, Maria Montessori, Melanie Klein, Hilda Taba, Nel Noddings, Jane Roland Martin and Fatma Varış from Turkey. As a result of the research, the following results emerged. Although there are women who have contributed to education programs, their number is not very high in the history of education. This is due to the fact that women's rights to education were taken away from them or that women's actions and thoughts are considered insignificant in historiography. It is also a fact that their work is often overshadowed. Nevertheless, the research shows that these women scientists have carried out important studies in many fields such as learning processes, curriculum development and teaching methods. Hypatia's experimental-based understanding of education pioneered the creation of content. Mary Wollstonecraft's views on the importance of individual development and physical activities in education were included in the programs. Addams' experimental studies, the idea that these experiments should go from concrete to abstract and that students should establish activities with each other have been guiding the development of educational programs. The Montessori method continues to be applied in many schools. Her ideas contribute to the determination of materials in the preparation of programs. Klein's developmental stages have guided the design of parent programs and the content of the programs. Taba's curriculum development model, which adopts an inductive approach and consists of eight stages, is still used in curriculum development studies today. Noddings' views were utilized in determining the aims of education and paved the way for raising more democratic and tolerant individuals. Martin's ideas have been useful in making education programs emphasize the equality of women and men in education. While Varış's curriculum stages and his emphasis on this subject are still used in curriculum development studies today, she has also been a pioneer with his egalitarian and secular views.

I've Got Your Back! the Importance of Care in Student Teaching in Urban Environments

Research has found that the use of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) can improve academic outcomes for students in urban environments. As teacher educators, we are driven by such findings to understand how to best prepare teacher education students to enact CRP. The Elementary Education department in our university offers an urban immersive program that is meant to prepare students to engage in CRP and work successfully with children from a variety of backgrounds. To investigate what helped students in our program successfully enact CRP, we conducted a series of interviews after they completed the program. While we found that not all of our students enacted CRP, we discovered that our participants valued feeling cared for, and we utilized Nel Noddings’ ethic of care to understand how that care helps our preservice teachers (PSTs) care for their students in a way that could lead to the creation of culturally relevant lessons.

Moral Emotions – Pedagogical Perspective

The aim of the article is to identify the status of emotions in the processes of passing judgements and taking moral decisions as well as to indicate the importance of emotional competence in moral development. In the first part of the text, we review the concept of morality, with particular reference to the emotivism of Alfred J. Ayer, Alan Gibbard’s emotivism, and trends in the ethics of care by Nel Noddings as viewpoints that emphasize the affective factor. In the second part, using the concept of social, related to self-awareness and moral emotions, we argue for the role of emotions in the processes possessing moral significance. On that basis, we cautiously assume that people who have developed high emotional competence are also more morally competent. The last part is the search for pedagogical implications and justification of the thesis about the meaningful and functional relationship of emotional and moral development in the processes of upbringing. Since ethics concerns how we should live and since these areas are so much concerned with how we live, moral education ought to focus on developing moral skills (virtues), thanks to which moral feelings will guide children and adolescents.

Care ethics, needs-recognition, and teaching encounters

Abstract Care ethics takes as central the discerning of needs in those being cared for and attempts to meet those needs. Perceptive caring agents are more likely to be able to identify needs in those for whom they are caring. The identification of needs is no small matter, not least in teaching encounters. This paper modestly proposes that at least some of the needs a caring agent should attempt to meet are a function of the identity of the patient of caring action. Taking Nel Noddings’ account of care ethics as representative, I present it in outline. This leads to the needs-identification problematic. Following this I turn to Soran Reader’s account of needs. I interpret this to offer what I designate as identity as ‘what-ness’. Such an understanding of identity-based needs is a starting point for the caring agent but a more nuanced account, of identity as ‘who-ness’, is argued to be preferable. Identity as ‘who-ness’, as expressed in Paul Ricoeur’s work, advances the discussion, culminating in his concept of the ‘capable human being’. Having brought this aspect of Ricoeur’s thought into conversation with care ethics, I offer an account of identity-based needs conducive to the broader aims of the care ethical project. Finally, I consider what this bolstered account of care ethics might say about a brief and illustrative teaching encounter.

Leading with care: four mentor metaphors in collaboration between teachers and researchers in action research (Translated from the Swedish and revised by the authors)

ABSTRACT Mentoring is a central aspect of action research processes and raises ethical issues concerning roles and responsibilities, particularly when teachers and researchers collaborate. The purpose of the study is to explore mentoring and the roles of mentors in action research from an ethical stance. The theoretical basis is the philosophy of care ethics developed by the American educational philosopher, Nel Noddings. Participants in the study included one researcher and three teachers with experience serving as mentors in action research. Data collection included written reflections and collegial conversations on mentoring. Thematic analysis and the domain interactional model were used in the analysis, where four mentor metaphors in action research emerged: the gardener, the shepherd, the teacher and the bridge-builder. All roles can be practiced at the same time; sensitivity determines when a mentor moves in and out of different roles. The study finds that care ethics can contribute to an increased understanding of mentoring as something situated and relational, where a symmetrical approach between mentor and mentee is emphasized. The goal of mentoring should not be to treat everyone equally, but instead to build relationships on the individual level in order to establish mutual trust based on individual needs. The study shows that the four mentor metaphors can serve as a useful tool for critical reflection on the complexity of the mentor role and accordingly, the renegotiation of stereotypical mentor roles in relation to the quality of teaching.

Care for education

This Special Issue on Education in the Present Age needs a reflection on what nurtures education, holds it together: care. This essay is an account of our experiences with care in education. It is based on our contribution to the International Doctoral Summer School in Granada in June 2022. Thinking about education and care is not new, but gained renewed attention in the pandemic, when the lines between students and teachers blurred because of the collective experience we were going through. Before that, since the early 199o’s, Nel Noddings’ work is key for those wanting to reaffirm the caring dimensions of education. She analyzed care and its place in ethics, and developed a view on the importance of care in schooling and learning in general. Since then, care ethicists further developed notions of what is good care, turning those to institutional and societal contexts that promote caring communities and societies. Our essay builds on that work. It is an encounter between Robert Stake’s notions of education and responsive approaches to evaluation and Merel Visse’s experiences with the field of care ethics, translated for a general audience of people who are not necessarily ethicists. Our encounter resulted in the book A Paradigm of Care, and in Spain, resulted in a leaflet with fourteen facets of care we shared with the graduate faculty and students. These insights are meant to evoke and stimulate reflection, deliberation and listening: important to care.

Teatralność troski. Spektakl Kochana Wisełko, Najdroższy Zbyszku jako egzemplifikacja feministycznej etyki troski

This article undertakes an attempt to prove validity of the claim that the play Kochana Wisełko, Najdroższy Zbyszku can be seen as an exemplification of feminist ethics of care, especially in reference to its interpretation by the theorist Nel Noddings. The methodological tools used, include the textual analysis of the script as well as the adaptation of phenomenological approach. The categories of a general assessment introduced alongside this reflection are as follows: relationality and receptivity, as well as the practice of empathy, care, understanding and attunement to other people’s needs. The article proved the adequacy of the assumption that the aforementioned categories had been expressed in the play and that they can be clearly ascertained in its reception by the viewers.

Affect, Alpha Function, and the Very Small: A Reconsideration of Teacher Workload

In this paper, I draw together myriad theoretical and philosophical sources to think through the intensification of emotion amid and emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. I begin with three narratives from my own teaching and learning, which ground the subsequent conversation. I then characterize the current movement in educational theorizing known as the affective turn. The affective turn, I suggest, attunes educational inquiry to small, yet vital, moments of classroom interaction often taken for granted in public education. Toward considering those vital moments in more nuance, I discuss psychoanalyst Wilfred R. Bion’s notion of the alpha function – a nonconscious digestion of emotion we perform for others when they are overwhelmed. When coupled with Nel Noddings’ evocation of the ethics of care in education, the alpha function offers an understanding of the hidden emotional labour in teaching. This hidden dimension of the teacher’s task, the portion of the job that deals in regulating our own emotions and in helping students make sense of theirs, I suggest, is becoming more difficult amid the affective situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. I conclude the paper by gesturing toward a threefold response to be taken up more fully elsewhere: humility before the task of teaching, a reverence for the work of feeling, and a willingness to organize toward a more caring school system.

‘Doing well’ and ‘being well’—secondary school teachers’ perspectives

AbstractThe mental health and wellbeing of young people is increasingly a concern in schools. This study explores how English secondary school teachers perceive and engage with the concept of wellbeing. By asking teachers to reflect on their practice, we can draw out their relational experience and knowledge about wellbeing in the classroom. Twenty teachers were interviewed about their practice in the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic and during the academic year 2020–21. Reflexive thematic analysis reveals the challenges experienced by teachers. Specifically, we find a perceived role conflict for teachers between giving care and purveying knowledge. We draw on recent policy research and the work of Nel Noddings to account for this conflict in terms of conceptualisations of teaching practice and purpose. We illustrate how an emphasis within schools on ‘doing well’ academically undermines and marginalises a more holistic sense of ‘being well’, which contributes to a set of strains on teachers personally, professionally and relationally in terms of their interactions with students and colleagues. We propose that ‘doing well’ arises out of ‘being well’, rather than the converse, and should hence be an educational policy priority. Finally, we offer implications for how wellbeing may be woven into school culture.

The Exploration and Practice of the Construction Path of Female Engineering Students' Employment Confidence

In order to solve the employment pressure and psychological dilemma faced by female engineering students, based on the theory of Nel Noddings care circle, following the spiraling upwards curve law, this paper explores the construction path of employment confidence for female engineering students in practice on the four levels of Individual, interpersonal, academic and achievement confidence. Following the logic approach of knowledge, emotion, intention and action, help engineering girls break through multiple self-limitations, gradually build up appropriate employment confidence and cognition.The practices of collaborative innovation of employment guidance, professional teaching and psychological education in universities with systematic thinking can further implement the goal of moral education.

Application of Nursing Intervention Based on Nel Noddings Care Theory for School-Aged Asthmatic Children

Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of nursing intervention based on Nel Noddings care theory on self-management behavior and symptomatic improvement in school-age asthmatic children in China. Methods: In this study, a sample of 100 school-aged children suffering from asthma was chosen, and divided into two groups: observation group and control group. Both groups received routine nursing but the observation group was combined with nursing intervention based on Nel Noddings theory.Results:The total scores of social psychologies, daily life, disease medicine and self-management in the observation group before intervention were similar to those in the control group. The self-management scores of the observation group after intervention were higher than those of the control group. The improvement time of wheezing and cough in the observation group was shorter than that in the control group. The total number of complete compliance and partial compliance in the observation group was higher than that in the control group. Conclusion: The application of nursing intervention based on Nel Noddings care theory to the nursing of school-age asthmatic children can improve the self-management ability of children, promote the recovery of cough, wheezing and other symptoms, and is of great significance to improve the compliance and nursing effect of children, with high popularization and application value.

Care and attunement in artistic collaboration: two cases in Hong Kong

This paper discusses the collaborative activities in two projects: Hong Kong-based artist Suifong Yim’s Assembly of Disquiet (2019) and Japan-based artist Shitamichi Motoyuki’s ongoing project 14 Years Old and the World and Borders (2013–). They inform and complicate deliberations on whether artistic collaboration should be evaluated on aesthetic or ethical grounds, or both. These projects demonstrate that the quality and process of collaboration and how the artists are affected are as important as their impact on the collaborators. The personal experiences of artists who initiate and frame the projects also demonstrate the importance of the affective in the collaboration. I juxtapose Nel Noddings’s (2003) notion of care and Lisbeth Lipari’s (2014) notion of attunement to demonstrate how the projects are experimental, affective, and discursive sites for sharing the evolving ethical ideals of the artists. In the projects, it is less the artist’s autonomy and authority, but more the quality of caring attention that they bring out of themselves and their collaborators which contributes to the intrinsic value of the collaboration.

The Three Epochs of Education: Outlining Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Montessori and Nel Noddings

Every country is currently concerned with education since it alone has the power to create a new world and offer up possibilities for positive outcomes. Three notable female educators from three separate eras who contributed to the advancement of education in the west have been recognised. Through their quick work in education, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), Maria Montessori (1870–1952), and Nel Noddings (1929–2022) have brought important concerns relating to women and children's education to light. These three women educators were connected by their interest in education despite being born in various eras and regions of the world. In this paper the researchers have tried to bring the educational thoughts of these iconic educationalists into one frame, making it a comprehensive study of educators from different eras. Keywords: Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Montessori, Nel Noddings, Education, Women Educators

Collective obituary for Nel Noddings

Collective obituary for Nel Noddings

Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

AbstractCare ethics has attracted much scholarly attention since its inception in the 1980s. As befits a moral theory, which is how it is frequently perceived, those working in the field have increasingly sought to clarify and make robust elements central to the project. This article hopes to offer a small but important contribution to this iterative process. I make a case for resisting what is characterized as the recognition claim found in the work of Joan Tronto, Nel Noddings, and Eva Feder Kittay. This is the claim that for an action to be caring it is necessarily recognized as such by whomever is being cared for. I explicate the arguments pertaining to this issue in these authors’ writings and conclude that not only do the arguments fall short of showing the necessity for including this aspect in an ethics of care, but I make preliminary arguments as to the implications for resisting the inclusion of the recognition claim. The thrust of these suggestions is that care ethics is a better moral theory when it admits to degrees of care rather than taking a binary view.

More than Humans

Two foundational ethicists of care, Nel Noddings and Eva Feder Kittay, limit the moral community of care to humans. Noddings claims that the reciprocity required for her care ethic cannot be universally present in human relationships with non-humans. Kittay advances that her care ethic requires the cared-for’s assent, or “taking up” of the care, in response to the carer’s actions, which she claims is impossible with non-human cared-fors. But these claims can be disputed. I offer a few examples to contend that ethically meaningful reciprocity is possible in some human relationships with more-than-human entities and that some non-human cared-fors can assent to carers’ actions. Following from the work of Mary Anne Warren and others on moral personhood, “humans” and “persons” can refer to different things: biological organisms and a designation of moral status respectively. There can be persons that are not humans (e.g., legal persons like corporations and chimpanzees, and moral persons like whales and dolphins). Because the concerns of Noddings and Kittay can be addressed and there are non-human persons, I argue that we should reject the human restriction within care ethics. Humans have morally significant relationships with non-human persons and we need to open the realm of care ethics to legitimize and enhance these other relationships in our rich communities.