caring teaching as a moral practice an exploratory study on perceived dimensions of caring teaching护理教学道德实践感知维度关心教学的探索性研究.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Education Research International Volume 2012, Article ID 954274, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2012/954274 Research Article Caring Teaching as a Moral Practice: An Exploratory Study on Perceived Dimensions of Caring Teaching Khalil Gholami1, 2 and Kirsi Tirri2 1 Department of Education, University of Kurdistan, P.O. Box 416, Sanandaj 15177-66177, Iran 2 Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 5), 00014 Helsinki, Finland Correspondence should be addressed to Khalil Gholami, khalil.gholami@helsinki.fi Received 21 February 2012; Revised 11 June 2012; Accepted 12 June 2012 Academic Editor: Terence J. Lovat Copyright © 2012 K. Gholami and K. Tirri. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Caring teaching is a conceptual framework used to gain an insight into the moral aspect of teaching. Using a quantitative research approach, we studied 556 teachers in order to explore their perceived dimensions of caring teaching. Drawing on existing literature, we found that caring teaching has been elaborated in line with two broad concepts: personal care and academic care. Considering these concepts, we developed the Caring Teaching Scale with which we identified four dimensions of caring teaching: the nurturing of a student’s character, didactical bias, awareness, and respectful didactics. A meta-analysis reflection suggests that the nurturing of students’ characters and awareness represent personal care while didactical bias and respectful didactics call for academic care. Further analysis showed that these teachers attached more pedagogical value to