Page 289 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

C ar it as cu rr icu lu m a n d t ea c h i n g-l ea r n i n g
regardless of how many others there are. At this moment, to that
person, I am responsible. That student, whose face I see, is irre-
placeable, calling me to respond. This obligation is mine, person-
ally. (Joldersma 2001:186–187)

A challenge indeed, but also an aspiration/inspiration that both
calls into question and seeks a way through the political, economic,
and techno-rational infrastructures that increasingly weigh us down in
the name of quality that searches for universal standards, whether in
learning and teaching, research, administration, or curriculum plan-
ning and implementation. These same infrastructures also weigh on
students in terms of assessments, progress reports, and research or
project proposals. There is a very real sense in which such infrastruc-
tures are a necessary feature of the education that takes place in univer-
sities and other educational institutions so they can operate as “going
concerns,” driven as much by competition and survival as by coopera-
tion. However, such systems and those who operate passively within
them, just as in objectivist science or universal systems of justice, can
become blind to “the face” in the search for the universal good.
Caritas educators of nurses and health care professionals thus
face a double challenge in establishing, promoting, and maintaining
human-to-human dialogue and caring relationships as the epicenter of
the curriculum and of teaching. As noted, this applies not only to an
ethos of the practice of health care but also to an ethos that permeates
the education of health care practitioners, hence the double challenge
of a philosophy and science of caring for education.
The Relationship-Centered Caring (RCC) Model for Health Pro-
fessions (Tressolini and Pew Fetzer Task Force 1994) serves as a guide
for a Caritas curriculum that considers teaching-learning within a new
paradigm. It addresses RCC educational ideals for all health profes-
sions. This curriculum model outlines some of the context and con-
tent consistent with a Caritas curriculum and an epistemology-as-ethic
approach to teaching-learning.

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