Teaching and Teacher Education 141 (2024) 104498 Available online 9 February 2024 0742-051X/© 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Research paper Care practices and care ethics at school and in teaching during Covid 19 pandemic Natalia Vallejos Silva a, * , Cecilia Cort´es Rojas b a Escuela de Educaci´on Inicial, Centro de Investigaci´on en Educaci´on (CIE), Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins. Avenida Viel 1497, Santiago, Regi´on Metropolitana, Chile b Becaria Doctorado Nacional 2021. Folio 21211778. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (FACSO), Universidad de Chile. Avenida Capit´ an Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1045, ˜ Nu˜ noa, Regi´on Metropolitana, Chile A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Care practices COVID-19 Ethics of care Teaching work ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a study that aims to construct knowledge about the caring practices developed by a group of Chilean teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show the pandemic effects on the diverse and new caring tasks the teachers performed. The study emphasises the conditions that negatively affect the teachers’ caring practices, a disruption to the school’s social fabric, the bureaucratisation of caring and the educational policy on accountability reports. Finally, the results demonstrate that the teachers regard caring tasks as a “burden” on their teaching duties. 1. Introduction Human beings intrinsically delimit social processes defined as caring through the relational logic they apply to others (Noddings, 2003, 2005; Gilligan, 2008, 2013; Held, 2006). These processes are vital for human development, enabling access to what people consider a minimally decent life (Gilligan, 2013; Lynch et al., 2014) and contributing to the protection and reproduction of societies founded in solidarity, cooper- ation, compassion, and altruistic relationships, with the objective of shared welfare: “Affective care relations (…) primary intention is to be with and co-create others relationally in a non-alienating, non-- exploitable way” (Lynch et al., 2020, p. 6). The custody, practice and attention to affective and caring dimensions that sustain people’s everyday coexistence outside their own private life are, moreover, essential to preserve and reproduce more just and more democratic so- cieties (Angulo, 2021a): "(…) the care deficit will only be solved when caring becomes more democratic, and the democracy deficit will only be solved when democracy becomes more caring” (Tronto, 2013, p. 18). Valuing and recognising care “as a public value and a set of public practices” (Camps, 2021, p. 48) in democratic societies is essential. This perspective becomes valuable when considering care through di- mensions that highlight the bonds of reciprocity, love, altruism, soli- darity, respect, honesty, trust, and empathy as the core of the caring relationship that a subject maintains towards another and the environ- ment (Angulo, 2021a; Gilligan, 2013; Lynch, 2012, 2022; Lynch et al., 2007, 2014, 2020; Tronto, 2013). At the same time, analysing care in a broad sense is relevant for understanding its importance in the con- struction of just and democratic societies: On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as best as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web (Tronto, 2013, p. 19, p. 19). However, what has prevailed from the paradigm imposed by modernity has been a model of education and society that separates thoughts from emotions (Gilligan, 2013; Lynch et al., 2007, 2014; Tru- jillo, 2008), exalts the formation of autonomous, rational and non-relational subjects (Lynch et al., 2007), and relegates caring atti- tudes and practices to the private sphere, as it does not consider mutual dependence, bonds of love, reciprocity and solidarity as fundamental and universal human needs (Camps, 2021; Kittay, 2020; Lynch et al., 2014; Noddings, 2005). In this way, the private sphere has set aside substantial issues for shared conviviality, ceasing to be ‘susceptible to legal regulation [to] reach all subjects equally’ (Miyares, 2018, p. 13). Just as Lynch et al. (2007) contend: The neglect of education for emotional work, particularly education for the love, care and solidarity (LCS) work, arises, therefore, from the fact that the model citizen at the heart of liberal education is defined essentially as a rational citizen and a public person; it is a * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: natalia.vallejos@ubo.cl (N. Vallejos Silva), cecilia.cortes@ug.uchile.cl (C. Cort´es Rojas). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Teaching and Teacher Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2024.104498 Received 18 January 2023; Received in revised form 29 December 2023; Accepted 22 January 2024