Welcome to Unit 5: Practicing Care-full scholarship

Welcome to Unit 5! Across this and the next Unit we wish to go deeper into the ways of working, competences and attitudes that characterise care-full practice, and try to understand deeply and in detail how we can do things so that we actually engage people (e.g. research participants, students, colleagues, etc.) in a care-full and response-able way.

In so doing, in this and the next Unit we especially delve further into the dimensions of care giving, care receiving, response-ability and caring with.

In Unit 5 we will propose frameworks and tools to support your thinking and practice, and we will also draw from the concept of ‘design’ which literally means “to prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for (a work to be executed)” [Ref:dictionary.com]. All of us are busy designing many things in our daily lives, based on our ideas and needs. And we all have different styles and attitudes as ‘everyday designers’.

Why is it important to think about design in the context of scholarship?

‘Design thinking’ has become really popular in recent times, and it is taught in many universities, as it gives the opportunity to look at issues from completely different perspectives. In this Unit, our intention is to think about design in broader terms (beyond design thinking) and especially from a care-full perspective.

Our goal is to explore WHAT we do, WHY we do it, and HOW we do it, making sure that our care-full principles and values are reflected in the way we practice care in research, teaching, doctoral supervision and/or collaboration.

Please find the blank Unit 5 worksheets below should you like to use them for this Unit.