“Sure you can draw, but can you…”

The Challenge Continues: A Tribute to the work of

Dr. Nel Noddings

October 5, 2001

Dr. Allison Nazzal, State University of West Georgia

American Association for Teaching and Curriculum Annual Conference, Denver, Co.

Dr. Noddings’ Challenge To Educators:

• To reconceptualize our taken-for-granted conceptions of the purposes of schooling and the value of the liberal arts curriculum

• To transform education, through an ethic of care, to produce competent, caring, loving, and lovable people

Feminist Philosophy and Dr. Noddings: Implications for Purposes of Schooling

• Purpose of schooling reconceptualized as a moral one - a reformulation of male constructs of competition, rights, and duty that have dominated schools

• The aim should be to develop competent, caring, loving and lovable persons

• Democracy dependent on the development of a just and moral society that recognizes mind, body, and spirit

Moral Education:Character Education & More!

• Moral Purpose: To prepare students for all of their social roles, personal and public

• Moral Policy: To provide choice in the type of education one receives

• Moral Method: Individuals teachers caring for their students in long-term, continuous relationships

“We cannot ignore our children-their purposes, anxieties, and relationships-in the service of

making them more competent in academic skills” (p.10)

Noddings, N. (1992) Challenge to care in schools:

An alternative approach to education.

What type of education is important in a democracy?

“I have never worried much about whether my neighbors voted….I have always been far more concerned about the basic human qualities of my prospective neighbors: Will they rob or harm me?” (p. 54)

Noddings, N. (1992) Challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education.

A Feminist View of the Liberal Arts Curriculum

• Liberal arts curriculum and control in a democracy

• Liberal arts curriculum and the dehumanization of children

• Liberal arts curriculum and the devaluation of work and values associated with women-false duality of public/private world

Transforming Education through an Ethic of Care

• Curriculum arranged around centers of care emanating out from self

• Care for ideas, the liberal arts curriculum, plays a supporting role

• Structure of school changes to allow development of meaningful caring relationships

The Significance of Dr. Noddings’ Work

• “Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some ‘ism about education’….” (John Dewey, Experience and Education, p.6)

• “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker

Reflections from the Field: Meeting the Challenge

• Citizenship: No Children Allowed

• Teaching them to Care– To “get about” in our democracy – To experience citizenship through all of their

social roles– To use the tools of the disciplines to inquire

about issues concerning care

Reflections from the Field: The Challenge Continues

• Continue to develop within ourselves and future teachers new understandings of control in school and the classroom

• Model for our students caring relationships and choice in the classroom

Reflections from the Field: The Challenge Continues

• Continued efforts to transform curriculum and minimize testing might be more useful from the bottom-up– Parental involvement in resistance– Individual teacher resistance to standardized

curriculum and testing – Connect with the feelings of Americans to

promote care in schools

Reflections from the Field: The Challenge Continues

• Continue research on looping, school within a school etc.

• Continue academic pressure on political agents to support middle school concept, integration, and exploratories

Reflections from the Field: The Challenge Continues

• Continue academic support for programs such as Learn and Serve America that foster caring through service

• Continue academic research that gives voice to students on the effects of standardized curriculum and testing on students