Illuminating Care:
The Pedagogy and Practice of Care in
Early Childhood Communities
Featuring Carol Garboden Murray
Tuesday - May 26, 2021 - 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
In her new book, Illuminating Care (2021, Exchange Press) Carol Garboden Murray examines early childhood care through the lens of feminist care ethics and seeks to dispel the false dichotomy between education and care. In this presentation, Carol will share her experience writing about care alongside many years teaching and directing early childhood programs. She has discovered that early childhood teachers are surprised by the amount of time they spend in caring rituals, and although they have learned about social-emotional skills, and the importance of relationships, they still view care as subordinate to education and treat care as drudgery, which results in care that is uncaring. Carol believes that by naming care as a pedagogy and practice, we can unite care with education and dispel the myth that care is just natural or that care is something that anybody can do. We can invent a new language and name care as an honorable and powerful intellectual exchange and an essential competency for early childhood teachers.
Carol Garboden Murray, M.Ed, has enjoyed a life long practice teaching young children and leading innovative early childhood programs in Oregon, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts and New York. She has worked as an early interventionist, toddler and preschool teacher, parent educator, teacher coach, and field supervisor and adjunct instructor at Dutchess Community College and Bard College. She is currently the director of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School at Bard College at Annandale on the Hudson, NY.
