Introducing a framework for navigating Care-full scholarship

The pioneering work of Fisher and Tronto (1990) on the political, intersectional, and situated dimensions of care and caring practices is still prominent and continues to inspire the most recent work around care, including this MOOC.

As we introduced in Unit 2, ethics of care scholar Joan Tronto explains that caring is a process, not a one-time intervention, and happens through various iterative stages. Each of these stages is characterised by a practice, which is underlined by a moral principle [Ref. Tronto 2013].

Moriggi 2021 uses the five dimensions of caring inspired by Tronto, to create an analytical framework on care-full scholarship, namely a set of questions that can help us to reflect upon our care-full practice. In this MOOC we use an adapted seven dimensions version as the principal analytical tool to guide our collective further exploration of what it means to be a care-full scholar.

As with the case of Tronto’s original work, the seven components of our analytical framework are not to be thought of as necessarily occurring in sequential order, or as a linear process that always happens orderly. This more iterative, circular relationship is illustrated in the below summative figure.

On the next page you will be able to view the accompanying care-full scholarship framework in full.