Institutionalizing an “Ethic of Care” into the Teaching of Ethics for Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

<p>This paper calls for the acknowledgement and institutionalization of an ethic of care into the education of decision-making processes for pre-service teachers. The impetus for this paper came from the author's experiences with teaching a mandatory ethics and law course for pre-service teachers. Over the course of their teaching and as expounded upon in this paper, the authors illustrate how the course goals, aims, objectives and readings ignore discussions on gender in the teaching profession. Using a critical feminist policy analysis, the authors analyse the ethical perspectives taught in the required textbooks. Findings suggest that the absence of the “ethic of care” perpetuates a gender regime and teaching as “women’s work” while ignoring ethical perspectives founded outside of the rational male perspectives. This notion of mandating an ethic of care into the teaching of ethics for pre-service teachers is our attempt to address issues of power and privilege by pointing to a gap in the curriculum of university ethics courses.</p>