(Page 1 of 11) - Who Cares: How Teachers Can Scaffold Children�s Ability to Care authored by Peloso, Jeanne., McNamee, Abigail. and Mercurio, Mia.

Who Cares: How Teachers Can Scaffold Children’s Ability to Care

Section 1: Content

A. Statement of the Issue

The ability to feel caring, to think caring thoughts about other persons or objects, and to

behave in a caring manner may or may not be apparent in the children whom we teach. Likewise
to feel cared for, to think of oneself as worthy of being cared for, to recognize and accept the
caring behavior of others may or may not be apparent in the children whom we teach. For
Emma and William, the ability to give and receive caring behaviors is well under way as they
enter kindergarten. The implementation of caring classrooms and school communities that
encourage children to continue to develop caring feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, or to feel,
think, and practice them anew, has become the subject of recent academic publications which
will be cited in this presentation. Attention to caring has been stimulated by national and world
events which emphasize the apparent dearth of caring among individuals as well as raise
complex questions: What is meant by caring? How do people develop the ability to care, the
ability to become Care-full, “full of care” rather that Care-less, people without care? How do
people decide who and what to care for? Who are the teachers...is the development of caring the
province of home, religious institutions, schools? If caring is the business of teachers, how can
we facilitate the develop of caring in the children whom we teach?

We see these questions as key questions of relationship and connection for our world in

both its private and public domains. It is these questions that underlie our deep concerns about
the devastating increase in violence in every sphere of our society, our concerns about the
disturbing increase of children and adults seemingly without conscience or without the ability to
care. Noddings (1992) writes that to care and be cared for are basic human needs but that not all
of us learn to care for ourselves, for near and distant others, animals, plants, human-made
objects, or ideas.. Some “impoverished and dangerous people care for nothing; their lives are not
directed by care or ultimate concern. Still others develop a distorted notion of care and do
dreadful things in its name. The need to care in our culture is acute. . . . Not only is the need for
caregiving great and rapidly growing, but the need for that special relation—caring—is felt most
acutely” (p. xi).

B. Literature Review

To move towards answering questions related to caring, there are three central ideas that

teacher might consider about caring and its development:

1) caring as a concept requires definition;
2) caring behavior develops through interaction over time;

3) the ability to care develops over time in our private and public domains.

What is Caring?

Rogers writes, “When we think of caring, we usually think of gentle smiles and warm

hugs” (1994, p. 33). Goldstein, however, contends that such simplistic, yet commonly held,
definitions of caring position it only in the affective domain: a feeling, a personality trait, a
temperament, rather than an intellectual act which has “deeply ethical, philosophical and
experimental roots” (1998, pp.1-2). Goldstein and others (Jaggar, 1989; Freedman, 1990) assert
that caring cannot be divorced from thought and is both an emotional and an intellectual act;