Taking care: Understanding the roles of caregiver and being cared for in a kindergarten classroom

Abstract

Despite concerns about the importance of teachers learning to care for their students, most teacher education programs do not utilize relational pedagogy and place little emphasis on caring. In the current study, the authors used conversational interviews with one kindergarten teacher and photo-elicitation interviews with her 22 kindergarten students to explore ways in which this teacher in a public, all-girls’ school employed caring and how her students viewed being cared for. The authors utilized Noddings’ work on the ethic of care to guide our project and the methodological approach is feministic. In this study, we discovered the ways this teacher cared and how that was translated for the students. Ultimately, we feel these ways of caring have implications for early childhood teacher preparation programs.