An Ethic of Critical Care in the Midst of Paradoxes of Praxis: A Post-Intentional Phenomenological Investigation of Teacher Care During Ambivalent Teaching Moments

Abstract

Schools have become places of increased expectations. The purposes of schooling have always been multifarious (Kliebard, 2004), but the increase in expectations has led to the intensification of the job of teaching (Apple, 2013) and increased teacher burnout (Chang, 2009). This complex and intensified school context leads to difficult decisions for teachers in the classroom (Gutiérrez, 2015). One common purpose for teachers is care for students (Reinhart, 2000). This purpose is expanded into an ethical framework (Noddings, 2015) that can give direction to frequent and difficult decisions for teachers (Roberts, 2010). This post-intentional phenomenological study (Vagle, 2018) investigated the manifold nature of an ethic of care (Noddings, 2013) in the midst of dilemmas of teaching (Ball, 1993; Lampert, 1985). Nodding’s ethic of care has been adapted and expanded to explicitly focus on care in conjunction with critical race theory (Roberts, 2010; Antrop‐González & De Jesús, 2006). This ethic of critical care was used as a lens to explore teacher praxis (Friere, 2018) in the midst of difficult decisions in the classroom. Teacher dilemmas (e.g. Gutiérrez, 2015; Byers, 1984; Adler, 2001) were reviewed in order to predict possible moments in the classroom. Phenomenological material gathered included classroom observations and interviews with four mathematics teachers at a suburban high school in the midwestern United States. The lived experience of these teachers gave shape to an understanding of their actions through an ethic of critical care. In addition, a survey was administered to all teachers at the high school. The findings showed how mathematics teachers employed acts of critical care while also frequently encountering classroom dilemmas, both matching previous types of paradoxical moments and two new dilemma contexts, called paradoxes of praxis. These two new paradoxes of praxis included acts of care in the midst of dilemmas related to technology and dilemmas related to student choice and freedom. Implications of this study include the organization of difficult moments in teaching that can be used to prepare future teachers and equip current teachers for inevitable difficulties, thereby reducing teacher burnout and increasing positive relationships between students and their mathematics teachers. Common teacher snares of “soft care” (Curry, 2016) and others were also noticed. In addition, an ethic of critical care is shown to be a way in which teachers make decisions in the midst of these inevitable paradoxes of praxis. The way in which these actions were taken give shape to what and how teachers utilize an ethic of critical care. Descriptions of moments of teacher instigated ethic of critical care can serve as examples of how relationship-focused teaching appears in mathematics classrooms.