The ethics of care as a pedagogical approach: Implications for education for democratic citizenship

Abstract

Both education for democratic citizenship and human rights education tend to emphasise political and legal learning. In both human rights education and moral education in Japan, however, there has been a tendency to give particular attention to interpersonal elements of learning such as kindness and sympathy. This article draws on feminist thinking and on Nel Noddings’ concept of the ethics of care to propose a learning framework that combines emotional and socio-political elements, arguing that since motivation is an important element in acting for social justice, learning for social justice must be cognisant of emotional learning. The authors then present the case of a university teacher in a gender studies classroom to consider how these two elements, the emotional and the political, might be combined to enhance students’ commitment to social justice when the topic under consideration is LGTBQ+ rights.