Caring, Concept Of

A caring perspective in the curriculum recognizes that learning is most likely to develop in students who feel cared for and takes into account both the cognitive and moral dimensions of the curriculum. Although the term care has sources in ancient literature, mythology, and philosophy, recent attention to the notion of care increased significantly after the publication of Carol Gilligan's groundbreaking work, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Gilligan's thesis that there are two different moral voices—one of impartiality or justice and one of relationships and care—fueled further work on what variously became known as caring, a care perspective, or an ethics of care. These discourses were further elucidated and vigorously debated in a variety of locations including bioethics, women's studies, psychology, education, and curriculum studies.

Nel Noddings's Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Development was one of the most important works to follow Gilligan. Like Gilligan, Noddings makes distinctions between thinking guided by rules and principles and thinking guided by relationships. The former, what Noddings refers to as the approach of the father, is grounded in abstraction, away from complicating factors; the latter approach of the mother is grounded in those very complicating factors such as context, feelings, and personal histories. These approaches relate, then, to the distinction between acting on the basis of reason and acting on the basis of feeling. Indeed, all caring, be it that of parents, nurses, or teachers, entails what Noddings calls engrossment and motivational displacement. The former involves a deep-seated receptivity and responsiveness to others; the latter involves putting oneself at the service of the other, an approach that has significant implications to teaching and the learning environment. Arising in part from the phenomenological tradition, Noddings's theorizing has naturally found a warm reception in the fields of nursing and education. It has, however, received criticism by some feminists who argue that her conception of caring reinforces traditional female roles of giving and neglect of the self—Noddings's theorizing is infused with the language and experience of the mother—and thus may lead to or sustain unequal relationships between the caregiver and the one receiving care.

Noddings believes that the principal goal of education is to produce caring and competent persons. In The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, one of her most significant [Page 102]contributions to curriculum theory, Noddings argues for a curriculum design that begins with a belief in multiple intelligences, similar to those proposed by Howard Gardner, and the unique talents, abilities, and interests of each child, similar to the goals of what she refers to as progressive education. Such a curriculum eschews a traditional design emphasis on academic disciplines in favor of a curriculum to be organized around centers and themes of care. These include caring for self; caring in the inner circle (for family and friends); caring for strangers and distant others; caring for animals, plants, and the earth; caring for the human-made world; and caring for ideas. A curriculum so designed is by definition interdisciplinary; it also releases traditional conceptions of the educated person as one who has merely mastered the academic disciplines separate from their personal experiences, capacities, and interests.

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