On Teachers’ Care

Human existence depends on caring,and caring exists in all areas of society,and education is no exception.Education is a caring business,and teachers are expected to take caring as a value to pursue.However,in reality,the relationship between teachers and students has become increasingly distant,and teachers’ care has become instrumentalized,deviating from the value of care.Based on this,this paper focuses on the question of what teacher care is and seeks ways to realize it.This study analyzes what teacher care is in terms of both value and practice,based on the two dimensions established by Virginia Held in her analysis of care,namely care as value and care as practice.First,teacher care as practice means that teacher care is an emotional labor of teachers and a relational interaction between teachers and students.Teacher care as practice has the following five elements: well-intentioned motivation,clear direction,continuous time,broad space,and diverse expression.Second,there is an interpretation of teacher care as value.The connotation of teacher care as value is that teacher care is a personal virtue of teachers and a value to be pursued by teachers.The value orientation of teacher care is: teacher justice as the direction,to goodness as the pursuit,reasonable self-interest and altruism as the measure,empathy as the psychological basis,and love as the carrier.Third,teacher care is not a separation of practice and value;it is both the pursuit of value and the educational practice of teachers,and teacher care as value and teacher care as practice are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.Teacher care as a value is achieved through action and concretization,and teacher care as practice through reflection and validation.Finally,the analysis of the concept of teacher care in two dimensions,value and practice,shows the direction for the realization of teacher care.At the value level,it is necessary to establish a caring ambition in the future-oriented educational ideal,through the cultivation of a caring heart and the strengthening of caring beliefs.At the practical level,we need to carry out caring actions in the real educational space,and the specific paths are the formation of trusting relationships between teachers and students,the cultivation of teachers’ educational sensitivity,and the improvement of teachers’ rational ability.