Pedagogies of Care and Applied Social Sciences

Dr Maeve O'Brien Head of School of Human Development was invited to work with staff of School of Applied Sciences LIT on Pedagogies of Care and Applied Social Sciences at their staff away day in Loch Derg. Maeve's book on Freire with Andrew O'Shea and specifically her chapter "Towards a Pedagogy of Care and Wellbeing: Restoring the vocation of becoming human through care and relationality" inspired the invite to work with the staff in LIT. The presentation with the staff of the school of applied social sciences explored the tensions and relationship between social justice pedagogy and care pedagogy, and focused on theoretical and empirical work that supports critical care pedagogy as significant to educating for a caring professional identity. In Human development we are interested in developing new higher education networks that enable us to dialogue on the relationship between caring and academic identity and to understand how these support student and teacher wellbeing.