While discussions of the moral dimensions of the caring relation and their implications for teaching and learning are well developed within the literature, there has not been much analysis of the place of inquiry within our understanding of caring and the education inspired by it. Previous discussions offer important insight into what care-inspired education might entail, but they do not address how inquiry itself may be enhanced by an ethic of care. After arguing that we should consider reason to be (...) more central to the caring relation than has been previously recognized, Peter Nelsen seeks to ameliorate the apparent rift between reason and the affective dimensions of caring through what John Dewey described as the body-mind. According to this view, reason and affect are inseparable aspects of the process of inquiry; they are both always present in our caring encounters. Nelsen then explores the educational implications of envisioning the caring relation as body-mind grounded inquiry. (shrink)

From the start, John Dewey's ideas about education have been prone to misunderstanding. One of the greatest casualties has been "experience," a term so routinely misappropriated that Dewey ultimately decided to abandon it. He wrote, "I would abandon the term 'experience' because of my growing realization that the historical obstacles which prevented understanding of my use of 'experience' are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term 'culture' because with its meanings as now firmly established it can fully (...) and freely carry my philosophy of experience" (1981, p. 361). Dewey evidently recognized that a main challenge to understanding experience was the conceptual weight the term had .. (shrink)

While Democracy and Education is often cited within the scholarship on and teaching of social justice education, it and Dewey's work generally remain underutilized. Peter Nelsen argues in this essay that Deweyan pragmatism offers rich resources for social justice education by exploring how Dewey's three-part conception of growth has both analytical and normative force. Nelsen makes this case by examining student resistance to engagement with social justice issues, and concludes from this analysis that resistance is an opportunity for growth. Furthermore, (...) rather than being a precursor to critical engagement with ideas, Nelsen contends that creating collaborative environments that foster interdependence across group memberships might be as important as the critical engagement itself. (shrink)

This paper argues for a conception of autonomy that takes social oppression seriously without sapping autonomy of its valuable focus on individual self-direction. Building on recent work in relational accounts of autonomy, the paper argues that current conceptions of autonomy from liberal, feminist and critical theorists do not adequately account for the social features of belief formation. The paper then develops an alternative conception of relational autonomy that focuses on how autonomy contains both individualistic and social epistemic features. Rather than (...) consider autonomy to reside in an impenetrable inner citadel, a place immune from external influences, the paper argues that we must acknowledge the hermeneutic relationship between individual and social processes of belief adjudication. Taking such an argument seriously results in the need to alter our conception of autonomy and the schooling needed to foster its growth. (shrink)

Background Preserving persons’ dignity is integral to nursing. More research is needed to explore how a diversity of patients, particularly those that experience illness from a young age, experience dignity. Aim Describe the characteristics of dignity for persons living with serious illness. Research design Using a secondary data set of twenty audio-recorded interviews, a thematic content analysis was conducted to identify characteristics of dignity. The research team employed van Gennip et al.’s, 2013 “Model of Dignity in Illness” (1) to create (...) a codebook, which the authors utilized to independently code twenty narrative interview transcripts. Participants and research context Twenty persons living with serious illness of heart failure and/or dialysis-dependent renal failure who were admitted in an acute care hospital. Ethical considerations This study was approved on August 26, 2019, by the Colorado Multiple Institutional Review Board (COMIRB) IRB Protocol #19-1874. Findings Early-onset participants expressed markedly different dignity concerns than late-onset participants. In the individual domain, early-onset participants felt that their illness was “normal”; they did not experience the “healthy person to patient” transition described by older onset participants. In the relational domain, early-onset participants expressed that their relationships had already integrated their illness while late-onset participants felt that their illness harmed many of their relationships. In the societal domain, early-onset participants described dignity concerns related to how society impacted their ability to financially support themselves during their illness. Discussion Differences in the dignity experience of early-onset and late-onset participants are informed by Erikson’s “Model of Development” and by Aranda and Jones feminist critique of dignity in healthcare. Conclusions Persons with early-onset illness experience dignity differently. Awareness of the importance of work and financial independence to the experience of dignity for seriously ill patients may enhance persons’ dignity experience. (shrink)

This article develops the notion of resistance as articulated in the literature of critical pedagogy as being both culturally sponsored and cognitively manifested. To do so, the authors draw upon John Dewey's conception of tools for inquiry. Dewey provides a way to conceptualize student resistance not as a form of willful disputation, but instead as a function of socialization into cultural models of thought that actively truncate inquiry. In other words, resistance can be construed as the cognitive and emotive dimensions (...) of the ongoing failure of institutions to provide ideas that help individuals both recognize social problems and imagine possible solutions. Focusing on Dewey's epistemological framework, specifically tools for inquiry, provides a way to grasp this problem. It also affords some innovative solutions; for instance, it helps conceive of possible links between the regular curriculum and the study of specific social justice issues, a relationship that is often under-examined. The aims of critical pedagogy depend upon students developing dexterity with the conceptual tools they use to make meaning of the evidence they confront; these are background skills that the regular curriculum can be made to serve even outside social justice-focused curricula. Furthermore, the article concludes that because such inquiry involves the exploration and potential revision of students' world-ordering beliefs, developing flexibility in how one thinks may be better achieved within academic subjects and topics that are not so intimately connected to students' current social lives, especially where students may be directly implicated. (shrink)

David Nelsen [[sic]] follows the well-trodden path beaten by those who object to an over-universalized and over-deductive version of St. Thomas Aquinas's ethics. Focusing on the "priority" of prudence and the virtues vis à vis more speculative considerations of natural law, the book admirably stresses the role of prudence in enhancing human knowledge of ends. Inasmuch as one end is often ordered in act to another, prudence--which rightly concerns means-nonetheless clearly extends to the deepening and enrichment of our acquaintance with (...) the right order of ends. Basing his case for the priority of prudence upon the indeterminacy of the will regarding any created good and the presumed consequent lack of any natural ordering save to the final end, Nelsen argues that knowledge of the primary precepts of the natural law is too vague and abstract to be helpful in determining action. According to this interpretation, St. Thomas does not intend natural law considerations as "a source of concrete moral information" supplementing a prudential ethics of virtue. (shrink)

Scientists typically do something other than accept or reject their theories, they pursue them. Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century numerous chemists devoted their research energy and resources to the development of Daltonian theory, declaring themselves willing to make use of the atomic theory in their research but reluctant or unwilling to accept it. When Frankland, for example, declared that he did not want to be considered a “blind believer” in the atomic theory and could not “accept it (...) as true”, but that he had been—and planned to continue—using it “as a useful ladder”, he had arrived at a decision shared by many of his colleagues that while the theory was not acceptable, it was promising and worthy of pursuit.1 And when Van’t Hoff measured the kinetic-molecular theory by its fruits in the 1880’s, he judged that it barely gave the then-current 4% interest rate, and so was an unpromising theory, unworthy of pursuit (van Nelsen 1960. p. 151). (shrink)