ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches ethics of care approach to pluralism in education. In contrast to large political configurations, such as nation-states, educational institutions are small community-sized units with relatively stable groups of people, many of whom meet face-to-face on a regular basis. A pluralism of coexistence requires basic noninterference, combined with mutual tolerance. At least two additional forms of pluralism seem to the author to be in keeping with an ethics of care and are also at work in recent feminist dialogues: a pluralism of co-exploring, and a pluralism of co-enjoyment. The concept of co-exploring exemplifies and also extends the basic engrossment methodology of an ethics of care. An insistence on the practice of receptive attention not only recurs among advocates of an ethics of care, it appears in recent feminist writings as well. In advocating a pluralism of co-enjoyment, the author believes that experiences of co-enjoyment can work as moving forces to encourage and sustain efforts at mutual attentiveness.
