James was informed that his foster placement had broken down and that he would be relocated to a local children’s home for the foreseeable future. We, his teachers, reacted immediately. We offered support, spent time with him, and helped him to reframe his thoughts so that he recognised the positives in the imminent move. We provided a huge amount of bespoke work to help James remain resilient in the face of this traumatic experience. And we recognised our role in being the only consistent influence on his life, so we ensured we were always there when he needed us.

Underpinning all of this was a deliberate and explicit effort to show that we “care”.

This is not unusual in education. It is an example located towards one end of a spectrum of care that is offered every day, in all schools and across all age ranges, by teachers. Many different authors have described caring as one of the fundamental reasons people become teachers (eg, Goldstein, 1999; Hargreaves and Tucker, 1991), with the influential US education reformer Horace Mann recognising, as far back as the 19th century, that “teachers teach because they care”.

Indeed, just ask any teacher why they work the hours they do, why they put up with the downsides of the job, why they come to work every day. Almost always, the answer will be: “Because I care”. And “caring” has been described as the bedrock of all successful education (Noddings, 1992), integral to effective teaching and ultimately responsible for producing better outcomes for pupils (Nguyen, 2016).

But what do we actually mean when we say we care? And do all teachers believe it means the same thing?

All staff in schools have a legal obligation and commitment to a “duty of care”, involving established practices of safety, custody and protection of children (Laletas and Reupert, 2015), but care often goes way beyond this. The ways in which it does are integral to teaching as a profession and how schools are run.

For some authors, caring has traditionally been too closely tied to sociobiological views on femininity. They criticise the oft-quoted maxim “gentle hugs and warm smiles” (Goldstein and Lake, 2000; Vogt, 2002). Such a reductive position not only oversimplifies any individual differences in the female population, it also undermines the intellectual act of caring that teachers perform every day (Rockel, 2009).

In addition, such socially constructed values tangibly impact the number of men entering the profession in the early years; notions of warm, caring women can be intrinsically extrapolated to show men to appear “detached and non-caring” (McKenzie and Blenkinsop, 2006).

In response, Nel Noddings (1984, 1992) reframed an “ethic of care”, in which caring became “not something you are but something you engage in”, highlighting the importance of relationships rather than a specific set of behaviours or traits.

Throughout all relational practice, Noddings (2010) highlights the importance of active listening: the teacher should not simply “assume” what the pupil needs, becoming what she describes as a “virtue carer” - someone who has acted as they see fit and ignored the expressed needs of the pupil, having instead focused on their own goals.

However, Noddings (1984) does recognise that “conflicts may arise” between what pupils and staff may want as goals.

The utmost care

Do you agree with these research-based conclusions? Take a few minutes to try to construct a sentence that accurately describes how you conceptualise care in your role. In my experience, it’s more difficult than you initially think and, for me, it required clever manipulation of punctuation and I still couldn’t fit in all that I wanted.

I summed it up as “equipping the pupil with the skills, knowledge and positive attitudes, specific to their individual needs and desires, necessary in order to empower them to produce the best possible outcomes, across the fullest range of domains, over the life course”.

It’s likely every teacher reading this will have a different concept to my own and that of the research above, and one that is also different to everyone else’s. There will be significant variations in not just how they describe care but how they theorise and manifest this care, reinforcing descriptions of care in education as “elusive” (Goldstein and Lake, 2000).

I would also imagine that there are those reading this article who possessed well defined ideas of how they would care for pupils when they entered the profession, but whose views have matured or even changed completely as their careers have progressed.

Does this matter? Do differing views of care and how it should manifest make a difference in teaching, positively or negatively? As outlined, the research suggests some fundamental problems. But let’s look closer.

Upon arrival at our school in the summer of 2017, our headteacher asked the staff what they considered to be the three most important qualities that we provided for the pupils. Above all others, the collective importance placed on notions of “caring” became obvious.

We unpicked this further at a CPD session, where we discussed exactly what we meant by “care”. Even in such a small, relatively homogeneous group, there were huge differences in what staff members offered. If consistency is key in schools, as most research literature claims, then this inconsistency needed to be addressed.

Fortunately, overall, “care” was predominantly located within the promotion of pupils’ wellbeing and the importance of building relationships. There was common ground. But would such meeting points in the definition of care be possible in all schools?

Fundamental differences will be visible in the way in which care is manifested in a pupil referral unit (PRU) such as ours in comparison to a mainstream school. The kind of bespoke intensive pastoral care that we can offer at the PRU for our pupils is often not feasible, nor is it possibly necessary, in a mainstream setting. In alternative provision, our primary focus is the emotional and social stability of the pupil before academic rigour is promoted, and staff need to share that definition of care if they are to thrive in this environment. Common ground in our school, however small, was inevitable.

However, in mainstream, staff will need to focus on their primary duty, which, in most cases, is the academic progress of their class. What does “care” look like here? There has been a great deal of research completed, in many different contexts, highlighting the various ways in which care can be articulated. These include providing wide-ranging emotional and academic support (Ancess, 2008), valuing parents as resources (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and understanding sociocultural factors that can influence pupil development (Anyon, 2005), among many others. The most clearly delineated method through which care is promoted is by having high expectations of the pupils (Adler, 2002).

According to Katz (1999), the two are inexorably linked: “High expectations without caring can result in setting goals that are impossible for the student to reach. Caring without high expectations can turn dangerously into paternalism, in which teachers feel sorry for underprivileged youths but never challenge them academically.”

It is really important to note that the literature emphasises the importance of assisting those pupils who are struggling. Bondy and Ross (2008) discuss the benefits of “warm demanders”, those staff members who are able to push pupils to excel, through warmth and “unconditional support”, rather than punitive methods. Do all staff share this view of care in mainstream schooling and, if so, are they able to manifest that in the confines of the school environment?

The frequency with which they are able to do so depends significantly on the senior leadership and the pedagogical framework they use to view education.

Essentially, teachers may have the “right” idea about care in mainstream schools (according to the research), but the environment or their view of their role as a teacher may prevent that care being offered. I would suggest that those restrictive environments are becoming more common.

Schools in England are experiencing ongoing ramifications as a result of many dramatic changes in policy. These include the rise of academies and associated concerns regarding accountability, damaging shortfalls to per pupil funding, issues with the availability of special educational needs and disability provision, and the underlying influence of “performativity” (Ball, 2003) related to pragmatic and questionable methods to improve Progress 8 scores.

Headteachers currently have really difficult decisions to make regarding how to share the limited pot. Through the widespread use of national league tables, the government has seemingly advocated a notion of care as largely defined by academic success.

Thus, headteachers have responded by prioritising academic over social welfare because that, ultimately, plays a huge part in how they are judged.

In PRUs, we can see this clearly. We are the ones who deal with the fallout: we are oversubscribed, we are having conversations with headteachers of mainstream schools where this struggle is made clear, we are talking to and caring for the children who have become victims of the changes.

But it is not just about accountability and budgets - it is ideology, too. Despite online furore from some ardent progressives, “trad” pedagogies - direct instruction, no-excuses behaviour policies, a focus on knowledge transfer, and an opposition to differentiation and “engagement” - have become increasingly utilised in schools, endorsed by several prominent figures within education, including minister for schools Nick Gibb.

The promotion of cultural capital in the form of knowledge, as espoused by Bourdieu, ED Hirsch and several schools celebrated by Gibb and other advocates of “traditional” teaching, has a great deal of merit and correlates well with concepts of care in relation to social mobility, disadvantage and academic achievement. It cannot be said that this approach is “uncaring” and it is a legitimate debate to have as to whether this form of care should outweigh all others.

Who cares?

But it is difficult to justify this view if sufficient support is not in place to help those who are struggling. High academic expectations are an essential requirement for caring and a valid aspiration for all. Without sound social and emotional support, pupils are more likely to be at risk of becoming polarised, with those struggling being metaphorically cut adrift, always straining to maintain a steady footing in the fast-moving current of the curriculum. Does anyone really see this as caring?

In her book Headstrong, Dame Sally Coates advocates publicly posting a list of test results for an entire cohort; the logic is that they will see their results themselves and want to improve for next time. While some may be buoyed in such a way, without the right support on hand, such strategies are likely to cause extreme feelings of shame for some, leading to enduring feelings of academic inadequacy. Again, can such a process be classed as caring?

Meanwhile, no-excuses and zero-tolerance behaviour policies espouse the removal of pupils with social or emotional difficulties - most frequently in the form of disruption - from class so as to maintain the progress of their peers.

While not wishing to re-ignite any ongoing argument regarding the efficacy of such a system, it is acknowledged that this process has a logical basis and allows staff to maintain high academic expectations, thus again showing care to the outcomes of “the many”. The quite significant caveat to this approach, however, is the level of care shown to those who are removed.

Despite a lengthy and ongoing social media debate regarding the maxim “all behaviour is communication” and how much choice pupils actually possess in the behaviour they present, what is clear is that those pupils who persistently exhibit certain traits or actions that impede their ability to develop need support to ultimately achieve the best possible outcomes, at school and beyond. Without such assistance, they are doomed to repeatedly make the same mistakes, finding themselves involved in incidents of ever-escalating severity.

Do the teachers in those schools agree that removing such children from the classroom constitutes “care”? Would more money for schools make a different model of care possible?

Increased budgets would enable an extension of the time care is offered to individuals who are disruptive. And while, yes, there will always be some pupils who, irrespective of funding, require access to specialist provision or warrant exclusion, for most, increased funding could make a huge difference.

Coordinated efforts to improve school inclusion capacity, increased specialist training for greater numbers of staff, as well as involving a more holistic community-based approach to development, would drive an improvement to pupil outcomes.

However, with the modern education system constructed upon neoliberal foundations, it makes for an interesting philosophical discussion to theorise if all schools would invest in order to provide care for all, as some would argue is the legislative and ethical responsibility to their local community. Or would they use the extra resources to maintain their status in the educational marketplace, thus ensuring care for only the select few?

Such schools could be classed as institutional “virtue carers”, making decisions based on the assumed needs of their entire cohort of pupils that will have a considerable impact on a sub-section of pupils, including off-rolling, increasing rates of exclusion or cutting pastoral and learning support services.

The ABCs of TLC

So, if we are to agree with the research that care matters, and if, as teachers, we will continue to say we do what we do because we care, our concept of care does matter. It is something that we need to think about on an individual level first, and then come together as a group of staff in a school to discuss further, using the plentiful research detailed in this article.

How far are the concepts of care among staff in a school aligned? How far does what the school is doing align with the consensus of what care should look like? What should care look like in the school? How far do people leave the profession owing to a mismatch between the care they want to offer and the care they are able to offer? Does our belief that, in excluding a pupil, we are “caring” for them stand up to scrutiny within our own definitions of what care should look like?

When writing this article, accounts from the pupils at the PRU I work in played on a loop in my mind. They often talk frankly about their experiences in mainstream: many will acknowledge poor choices that they made, but they will also mention that they felt staff did not care about them.

No teacher would want such an accusation directed at them and yet the system, and our lack of discussion around care, makes it more common than you might think.

We need to take care seriously. It is critical to what we do as teachers and yet questions such as the above are rarely explicitly discussed. That needs to change. Thought-out, well-implemented care is an incredibly powerful tool in a school. It changes lives.

Ollie Ward is outreach lead at The Key Education Centre, Hampshire