Care Ethics in Online Teaching

Abstract

As a teacher educator, I sought to understand how to cultivate care ethics in my online teaching over a three-year period. Through surveys, student work, interviews, my course materials and teaching journal, and video-ed synchronous class sessions with seven cohorts of teacher candidates, the lenses of care ethics revealed particular challenges and possibilities for care with authentic modeling through story, practice and continuity, dialogue, and addressing power and confirmation in assessment. The self-study process helped me uncover my own assumptions to carve out better ways to cultivate caring relationships in the distanced and disembodied online environment.