Nel Noddings

Nel Noddings was an American feminist, educator and philosopher, born in 1929 and died in 2022, best known for her work in the philosophy of education, educational theory and ethics of care. Her 1984 book Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education established her relational approach to ethics, arguing that caring is a more fundamental basis for ethics than justice-based approaches, and centered on the relationship between the one-caring and the cared-for while distinguishing between natural caring and ethical caring. Her ethical framework carried significant implications for education, where she argued that the teacher-student relationship should itself be understood as a caring relationship, advocated for educating the whole child with happiness as a central aim, and called for schools to function as institutions capable of addressing students' overwhelming needs.