Teaching in times of disruption and the ethics of care

I follow with huge interest how universities worldwide are moving their teaching and learning online. I am fascinated by how fast they move, how well prepared they seem (at least from afar) and mostly, how uncritical they are about issues of access and social justice when it comes to online learning.

Here at in South Africa, and in particular at CPUT, any attempt to introduce online or even blended learning has to be mindful of our learners, often not able to access digital resources from home, or not necessarily digitally literate enough to follow this kind of learning. I see very little critical engagement at the moment from around the world, with the exception of articles such as shared a few days ago on Facebook: Please do a bad job of putting your courses online, by Rebecca Barett-Fox. So far she is the one of the few who considers how students might be differently positioned, as she writes: "They will be accessing the internet on their phones. They have limited data. They need to reserve it for things more important than online lectures." She talks about students' multiple responsibilities, towards children who are at home, or their parents who might be affected by the virus. They might have to work more rather than less to pay for medical bills.

In our own work, we have thought about how to act in times of disruptions, be it student protests or the Coronavirus, for many years. I have found Joan Tronto's (1993; 2013) Ethic of Care framework very helpful when confronted with taking decisions around whether and how to continue teaching when campuses close. Tronto defines ethics as

...a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web (see Tronto 1993, 103; Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40).

 

The Ethic of Care framework sees ethics as something we do, rather than based on certain dispositions or fixed values, as a practice. Ethical practices are contextual, there is no one size fits all, and most importantly, it's relational, negotiated between all partners involved. She suggests five moral elements of care and their respective phases (in brackets), to help us think through ethical decision-making moments.

1. Attentiveness (caring about): noticing unmet needs, suspending one’s own judgement and being able to see the world from the perspective of the one in need.
2. Responsibility (caring for): taking on the burden of responding to this need.
3. Competence (care giving): being competent to care, which is always both a technical and a moral and political issue.
4. Responsiveness (care receiving): listening to the response of the person/group that was cared for, sometimes resulting in new unmet needs.
5. Solidarity (caring with): taking collective responsibility, to think of citizens as both receivers and givers of care, and to think seriously about the nature of caring needs in society

I wrote a paper with two colleagues to think through their decision to continue teaching during the student protests in 2016 (Swartz, Gachago, & Belford, 2018; the paper can be found here).

In our conclusions, we stated that:

Typically blended learning during the academic year is supported by resources accessible on campus, such as free Wi-Fi and access to computer labs, which reduces some level of disparity in students’ access to technology and consequently the delivery of the academic project. However in times of disruption the access to everyday resources is limited and the ethics of continuing the academic project through online and open learning is brought to the fore. What we miss in the discussion on the ethics of blended or online learning is a focus on nuance, context, relationship and practice. What we experienced over the last year were difficult conversations which left us with the frustration of not being able to provide answers. The more we spoke about our practices, the more we discovered the complexities and nuanced understandings, experiences and entangled relationships of lecturers and students involved.

My colleagues were two of the few lecturers who successfully completed their teaching although campuses were closed, due to their previous experience with online learning and strong relationship with their students, which allowed them to listen to their needs and quickly respond to them (moral elements 1-4). However, Tronto asks us to consider both the smaller and larger contexts the care relationship is set in. What we did not consider enough in our practice, is the larger context our practices are set in: our practices were not in solidarity with the larger student movement, their demands and needs.  Which needs did we serve? Which needs should be served? The immediate needs of their students to complete their course or the needs of students across the country? Students who were prepared to risk everything to effect sustained change?

We conclude our paper with the following words:

Thinking about access and success is not enough in our context ‒ the decision to continue teaching was not just one based on technical issues, such as student access and digital literacies. Continuing and supporting the continuation of the academic project by means of blended or open learning must be seen as a conscious decision and a political act ‒ from the side of management, lecturers, students and academic staff developers.

I am wondering how much thought goes into the politics of moving learning online in times of the Coronavirus. What does solidarity mean in these times ? Do we provide learning for the majority of students? For all students? Different models for different student groups based on their level of access?

References:

Swartz, B., Gachago, D. & Belford, C. 2018. To care or not to care - reflections on the ethics of blended learning in times of disruption. South African Journal of Higher Education, 36(6), pp. 49-64.
Tronto, J. 2013. Caring democracy. New York and London: New York University Press.
Tronto, J. 2001. An Ethic of Care. In Ethics in community-based elder care, ed. M. Holstein, P. Mitzen, 60‒68. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Tronto, J. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York & London:
Routledge