Interviews from an ethnographic study of elementary school teachers and students are cited to support the conclusion that an ethic of caring is essential to the definition of effective teaching. A process for restructuring teacher education programs on the basis of an ethic of caring is described. Seven characteristics of a teacher education program designed to promote the development of an ethic of caring are described: curriculum construction, modeling, dialogue, reflection, confirmation, practice, and continuity.
The primary purpose of this article is to describe how school administrators operating from an ethic of care conduct their daily practice and how that practice differs from administrators operating solely from traditional leadership models. Via a secondary analysis of data that were gathered in our previous work with career assistant principals, we show how the practices of these assistant principals do not fit traditional administrative theories. Instead, the ethic of care was evident. Because it is difficult to separate administrative practice from organizational structure and professional norms, a secondary purpose of this article is to identify how the demands of both the organization and the profession interfere with enactment of caring.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.