How do I remain caring?: a reflective inquiry by an initial teacher educator in Irish higher education

A value on caring (Teaching Council 2017, 2016a) is asked of educators in higher education (HE) in Ireland, in an era when market values, performativity, and accountability structures in the system (Ball 2016, 2012; Lynch et al. 2012) also co-occur under neoliberalism (Lolich 2011). Accordingly, this places a series of pressures or contradictions on educators who strive to value caring. As a lecturer in initial teacher education (ITE), for a period of ten years in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Ireland, I found myself increasingly confused and feeling under stress in ways that challenged my sense of professional identity and sense of self as a caring person. The aim of this dissertation is to explore how I attempt to remain caring as a teacher educator. To do this, I selected reflective inquiry methodology (Lyons et al. 2013), as embedded in teacher research and self study (Loughran 2007). I kept reflective research diaries systematically over a year (2016 – 2017), which allowed me to capture daily routines and feelings. To understand these routines and feelings more fully, I framed my dilemmas against a critical consideration of Noddings’ caring ethic (2013), which rests upon relational, experiential, and concrete caring. I engaged in a critical, personal, and reflective inquiry to respond to the core question: how can I remain caring in Irish HE, during these contemporary times? <br/><br/>During analysis, I reflected upon my diary entries and followed Tripp’s analytic construction to develop sets of critical incidents (2012). Meta reflection helped me to select three critical incidents that permitted me to unravel how the market impetus constrains my capacity to care in my role. The first critical incident, Joyous Tears, captures a potential caring encounter, and calls up the challenge of relational learning and genuine caring, most specifically in my role as a lecturer in charge of placement. The second, The Silent Drone, characterises the tacit acceptance of the neoliberal encroachment of market values, and my performativity, which enacts that culture. Finally, A Mothering Dad allows me to unpack my emergent perspective of emotions, compassion and biography as caring value signifiers for myself in relationships, and helps me to consider my place as a male who cares in HE. <br/><br/>My position in teaching and administration in HE provided me with a context and an opportunity to examine my experiences, and to develop a critically informed personal perspective of myself as a caring, but moral, male educator, who is experiencing the impact of a system-wide movement towards individualism and the market, associated with neoliberalism. This inquiry has led me to question personal assumptions and become conscious of the dominant market value discourse in HE, and how this has affected me over time. Although my main contribution to knowledge may rest with the detailed examination of Noddings’ ethic of caring (2013), an associated critical and sustained self-examination of my caring that used reflective inquiry and critical incidents, and insight into how this may impact on my professional role in terms of valuing policy and a compassionate perspective, also became evident.<br/>

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Education

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral Thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Queen's University Belfast

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Mitchell, Eamonn

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• MacKenzie, Alison
• Leitch, Myra

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/0b62d147-dcbc-4125-bc49-33d336817c8f

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/0b62d147-dcbc-4125-bc49-33d336817c8f