panel 15Pedagogies of Care
Cultivating Caring Citizenship: Rethinking Democratic Education through a Care Ethics Lens
Lisa Dillinger
This paper from the field of philosophy of education proposes a rethinking of democratic education through the lens of care ethics, highlighting the transformative potential of shifting from a rationalistic and deliberative approach to one centered on relational practices. While conventional democratic education emphasizes the cultivation of individual rationality and critical thinking skills through the discussion of controversial issues, I argue for a re-consideration of the spaces and practices in which such discussions occur. I contend that classrooms are not neutral spaces but are shaped by societal norms, which impact students disparately. By reconceptualizing classrooms as relational practices, educators can help create spaces of repair where students engage in caring communities. Such spaces prioritize collective analysis of social structures that may harm students and working collectively towards educational spaces that are inclusive, empowering and truly democratic.
This relational approach to democratic education goes beyond fostering individual reason and deliberative skills: it prioritizes the cultivation of caring relations between future citizens and an awareness for the shared social responsibility that comes with citizenship. Democracy is reconceptualized as inherently relational, underscoring the importance of fostering caring relations. Spaces of repair require attentiveness to the diverse effects and involvements that certain issues have on different students, underscoring the need for empathetic learning environments. By exploring the intersections of care ethics and democratic education, this paper redefines the objectives of democratic education and argues for educational spaces and practices that are compassionate and equitable, preparing students not only for intellectual engagement but also for active participation in caring, democratic communities.
Lisa Dillinger (she/her) is a PhD student and teaching and research assistant at the chair of “Inclusion and Diversity” at the University of Zurich. For her PhD, Lisa focuses on democratic education and its challenges in polarized and plural societies. Her work belongs to the field of philosophy of education, so her approach is analytical, theoretical, and questions principles, normative assumptions, and modes of conduct of conventional democratic education. She tries to rethink the cultivation of citizenship through a care ethical perspective by conceptualizing democracy as a relational project.
The Art of Caring for Young Children: About Finding Words for the In-Between
Marcy Whitebook & Sabine Hattinger-Allende
Early Childhood Education (ECE) is still colonized by ideas and desires that do not serve young children or the adults entrusted with their well-being. In the US, the attempts at reform in recent decades, led by the activism of ECE practitioners, have failed due to the rigidity of the underlying structures (Whitebook et al, 2014). Instead of substantial improvements of the working conditions and compensation, the so-called professionalization has led to increased regulation and supervision, as well as a further devaluation of care and a deepening of racial stratification of the child care workforce (Austin et al., 2019).
In the discourse of professionalized ECE, care is rarely mentioned, as it is neither measurable nor controllable and therefore seems too messy and intimate to be regarded as a crucial aspect of a professional practice. And yet, ECE education is inconceivable without the intense sensory experiences that not only affect the bodies of the children and caregivers, but also create loving bonds between them. ECE activism in recent decades, while based on practices of artful care and careful art, has not succeeded in making care visible, cultivating it and enhancing its value (ECHOES, 2022).
Together with the ECE workforce we want to think about careful pedagogies that take the becoming and blooming of the caregiver as equally important to the becoming and blooming of the child. Guided by the tradition of storytelling widely used in ECE activism (CSCCE, 1999), we are searching for words for care and the in-between in ECE pedagogy. Understanding care as an art of touch that is informed by both dominant and marginalized sensory norms and cultures (Thompson, 2023), we engage with ECE practitioners in diverse positions and especially with colonized communities whose wisdom is not yet reflected in dominant ECE pedagogy.
Marcy Whitebook is Director Emerita of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Marcy leads ECHOES, a project connecting early care and education today with its history and activism for a more equitable system. Marcy began her professional life as an infant/toddler and preschool teacher in the 1970s, and by participating in a teacher-led compensation movement that culminated in the nationwide Worthy Wage Campaign of the 1990s. Marcy is internationally known for her groundbreaking workforce research and her unwavering efforts to ensure dignity for educators, children, and families participating in the ECE system. Prior to founding CSCCE in 1999 and leading the organization for two decades, Marcy founded the Washington-based Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), an organization she began in 1977 as the Child Care Employee Project. She earned a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Developmental Studies from the UCLA Graduate School of Education.
Sabine Hattinger-Allende is research staff member in the Childhood Research Group at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research focuses on childhood studies, educational women's and gender studies, early childhood education, political participation of children, and social movement studies. She trained as an early childhood educator in Ried im Innkreis, graduated in political science at the University of Vienna, studied photography and audiovisual media at the Graphische in Vienna, and completed a program in educación popular at the Escuela Teatro Sistémico in Madrid.
Pedagogy with a Heartbeat
Jacqueline Goldin
We recognize the transformative power of affect as a social and political project and the relevance of emotions to education and that it is neurobiologically impossible to take in science if you don’t care about it. Understanding that we are not separate from the biosphere and recognizing the interdependency with all life on our planet we cannot disentangle human-nature encounters. We see citizen science with a transformative potential to redress what Bozalek and Pease recognize as privileged irresponsibility and to create, through impactful encounters, response-ability. It offers a way of learning that reverses elite notions of science. Encounters with water are encounters with emotion. Keeping science in laboratories and libraries confirms privileged irresponsibility. Human-non-human entanglement inside and outside classroom learning, attunement, or what Latour refers to as an expansive notion of relatedness to specific contexts, offers ways of learning that reverse elite notions of science. We have seen how watery spaces and images move back and forth caring-with – through human bodies – river to school, school to river, and that the e-motional is fluid and is a becoming with. Citizen science presents us with an opportunity to care-with, to promote response-ability, and to open the heart to science where art and science collide through a pedagogy of the heart.
My name is Jacqueline (Jaqui) Goldin. I have a strong academic and extensive empirical background. I have conducted numerous household poverty surveys and worked in small and large community projects covering a wide range of development topics. I am dedicated to participatory research and have worked extensively on human development and well-being and the interconnections between humans and their environment where I make a strong connection between science, art and feelings. My passion is citizen science – taking science out of the library and the laboratory and into everyday life – with the aim of achieving a more just society through the democratisation of knowledge. I have strong facilitation skills in socio-ecological learning and use art to emphasise new ways of learning and communicating science.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
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