Nel Noddings (American philosopher) Add a review

Nel Noddings (; January 19, 1929 – August 25, 2022) was an American feminist, educator, and philosopher best known for her work in philosophy of education, educational theory, and ethics of care.

Noddings is best known for her 1984 book Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, which established her relational approach to ethics. Noddings argued that caring is a more fundamental basis for ethics than justice-based approaches. Her framework centers on the relationship between the one-caring and the cared-for, and distinguishes between natural caring and ethical caring.

Her ethical framework had significant implications for education, where she argued that the teacher-student relationship should be understood as a caring relationship. She advocated for educating the whole child, with happiness as a central aim of education, and called for schools to function as an institution capable of addressing students' overwhelming needs.