Stephen Downes

This article is a response to a paper from Koponen and Kasa in which "the authors propose a framework for care-full democratic education (DE), which integrates the moral and political dimensions of democracy with an appreciation of relationality and caring" as a response to what they perceive to be a lack of feminist theorizing and care ethics in current DE. As Michalinos Zembylas summarizes, "A key aim of care-full DE, then, is to counter tokenism, ensuring that children's voices are genuinely heard and acted upon, rather than superficially acknowledged." Which sounds reasonable to me. However, says Zembylas, "their account of DE arguably remains anthropocentric. This raises an important question: Is democracy - and, by extension, DE - exclusively for humans?" Along these lines, "DE must consider not only how humans engage with technology but also how technology, as an active force, participates in shaping ethical and political possibilities. Expanding care ethics to include technology requires an attentiveness to these entanglements." This is the role played by Ettinger's (2015) notion of 'care-carrying,' or 'carriance', depicting care as "an ongoing, embodied process of holding and sustaining relationality" which "challenges educators to rethink their roles - not as sole providers of care but as co-participants in a shared process" and " underscores the interdependence of human and more-than- human actors in the educational process."