716488

research-article2017
JMEXXX10.1177/1052562917716488Journal of Management EducationHawk

Essay
Journal of Management Education
2017, Vol. 41(5) 669­–686
Getting to Know © The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1052562917716488
https://doi.org/10.1177/1052562917716488
Educational Ethic of Care journals.sagepub.com/home/jme

Thomas F. Hawk1

Abstract
In the 10 years since Hawk and Lyons published, “Please Don’t Give Up on
Me: When Faculty Fail to Care” in Journal of Management Education, much
has changed about the nature of pedagogical caring, relational learning, and
the instructor–student relationship per se. The landscape of expectations
for the type and depth of relationships faculty will have with students has
shifted toward a blurring of relational boundaries and roles. Chory and
Offstein’s article in the first Journal of Management Education issue of 2017,
“‘Your Professor Will Know You as a Person’: Evaluating and Rethinking the
Relational Boundaries Between Faculty and Students” draws on Hawk and
Lyons and critically examines the advisability of extending an ethic of care to
situations outside the classroom setting. In this essay, I engage with Chory
and Offstein’s work and the three rejoinders that accompanied it in Journal of
Management Education, Volume 41, Issue 1, and share specific ways in which
faculty can “get to know their students” that directly benefits student learning.

Keywords
ethic of care, relational learning, student learning

It has been 10 years since this journal published “Please Don’t Give Up on
Me: When Faculty Fail to Care” (Hawk & Lyons, 2008). In the intervening
years, we have received many positive comments about the affirming value

1Frostburg State University, Cumberland, MD, USA

Corresponding Author:
Thomas F. Hawk, Frostburg State University, 778 MacDonald Terrace, Cumberland, MD, USA.
Email: thawk@frostburg.edu
670 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

of the article from a number of faculty and higher education administrators.

The 2010 Academy of Management Annual Meeting theme of “Dare to Care”
gave me the opportunity to have a full slate of workshops and paper sessions
in which I offered an ethic of care as an alternative ethical framework for the
academic and management contexts. And, mirabile dictu, there have even
been about 40 citations of our article by others.
I have continued to explore an ethic of care even after my retirement
from university teaching in the spring of 2009. That exploration has
focused first on the ethic of care as a relational ethic and the key feature of
relational well-being (Atkinson, 2013; Sointu, 2005; White, 2015). In
addition to my continuing interest in an ethic of care in the pedagogical
context, I have added a focus on the highly appropriate applicability of an
ethic of care in the contexts of management and organizations (Hamington
& Sander-Staudt, 2011; Hawk, 2011), national economies and polices
(e.g., Eisler, 2007; Engster, 2007; Hankivsky, 2004), and international,
cross-nation issues (e.g., Robinson, 1999; Sevenhuijsen, 1998). Second, I
have focused on an ethic of care as a processual phenomenon, still onto-
logically rooted in a general feminist philosophy (Howell, 2000) but also
as a process ethics (e.g., Edwards, 2014; Henning, 2005) grounded in the
process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead (Whitehead, 1929/1978;
see Hosinski, 1993, for a very readable explanation of Whitehead’s phi-
losophy). On the other hand, my ongoing review of business ethics texts
reveals that, by and large, they continue to ignore an ethic of care alto-
gether or give it only token coverage.
Recently in this journal, Chory and Offstein (2017) expanded the consid-
eration of an ethic of care into the nonacademic context of faculty relation-
ships with students outside of class and raised potentially problematic issues
with regard to those faculty–student relationships with their article “‘Your
Professor Will Know You as a Person’: Evaluating and Rethinking the
Relational Boundaries Between Faculty and Students.” Stark (2017), Butler
(2017), and Starbuck (2017), in that same issue, offered rejoinders to expand
the conversation.
In the first part of this article, I want to talk about how the faculty–student
relational landscape has fundamentally shifted in the last decade. Such a shift
has given rise to the reasonable critical evaluation that Chory and Offstein
considered, and has offered me a reflective opportunity to revisit our 2008
article whose title derives from a poignant student letter. In the second half of
this article, I will offer a number of ways in which an ethic of care approach
to “knowing your students” can have a direct and beneficial impact on the
students’ learning of the course content, in their learning how to learn, and in
faculty learning how to learn.
Hawk 671

Caring, Boundaries, and Knowing Your Students

“as People”
In their essay, Rebecca Chory and Evan Offstein have opened a conversation
that is overdue for critical discussion across a wide set of contexts and stake-
holders. Students, faculty, administrators in higher education, political lead-
ers, particularly at the state level, and—yes—parents need to come together
to engage in an ongoing conversation about the issues and questions Chory
and Offstein raise. These two show great courage in provocatively posing
questions about what it means to “care about” and “care for” the students we
encounter. Chory and Offstein assemble and discuss the available evidence,
and challenge what appear to be currently accepted, and largely unspoken,
notions about the increasingly personalized nature of faculty–student rela-
tions, primarily outside of the formal classroom and advising processes.
I particularly appreciate their insightful discussions of the impact on fac-
ulty–student relations of wider contextual issues such as the increasing litiga-
tion from court rulings, the “market” orientation of universities and students
as “customers,” “employees,” and “clients,” the significant rise of helicopter
parents, and the rise in the use of adjunct faculty and nonfaculty professionals
in higher education institutions as cost saving moves. All these trends have
had ubiquitous and often undesirable impact on the student experience both
inside and outside the formal classroom. Additionally, the erosion of the qual-
ity of the K-12 learning that students bring to higher education has had a
detrimental impact on the rigor and high standards faculty can reasonably
expect from students, with the increasing use of remedial processes to make
up for the K-12 deficiencies.
Chory and Offstein have surfaced significant issues and placed them on
the table for us to consider. This provocative conversation needs to occur
across the academy. I believe that the extra-classroom concerns they raise are
an excellent balance to examining an ethic of care as an intra-classroom
experience within the context of formal learning in courses (Merriam,
Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007), within related advising responsibilities
(e.g., Holmes, 2004), and within academic mentoring (e.g., Hinsdale, 2015).
In many ways, Chory and Offstein have extended our concern for pedagogi-
cal caring and pedagogical respect from the Hawk and Lyons (2008) article
to follow trends now salient in the increasingly boundaryless faculty–student
relationship experience. So I want to offer a bit more on how we might view
an ethic of care and address what seems to be the impression that an ethic of
care always results in positive outcomes for those involved in the relationship
as well as the relationship itself. The formal setting in the classroom is notice-
ably more norm and rule scripted than the informal setting outside of the
672 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

classroom, making the conversation that Chory and Offstein have begun even
more crucial.
I also believe it is important to be clear about the significant difference
between questions that faculty may ask themselves, as offered by Chory and
Offstein in the pursuit of an ethic of care, and the assumptions, surfaced and
not surfaced, that underlie the questions themselves. Thus, I offer a conversa-
tion about how I understand this aspect of their essay, and share brief com-
ments on the issue of student evaluations of faculty as they relate to
faculty–student relations.

An Ethic of Care
Chory and Offstein introduce an ethic of care through the citation of Hawk
and Lyons (2008) in which we focused exclusively on the formal or “aca-
demic” aspects of embracing an ethic of care. I invite the reader to engage
with our 2008 article and the extensive ethic of care literature (see, e.g.,
Engster, 2007; Hawk, 2011; Held, 2006; Noddings, 1984; Slote, 2007;
Tronto, 1993; see also Noddings, 1988, 1992, 2002, 2006, for more from the
education perspective). In the service of summarizing for conversation’s
sake, an ethic of care (Noddings, 1984) is a relational ethic that focuses on the
following:

•• Engrossment by the one caring with the one(s) cared for

•• Displacement of motivation from the one caring to the one(s) cared for
•• Commitment to the well-being of the one(s) cared for, the one caring,
and the relationship
•• Confirmation of the best possible motives of the one(s) cared for

The distinction between “caring for” and “caring about” is important to

make here, where “caring for” necessarily involves some specific, concrete
action by the one caring intended for the developmental well-being of the
relationship and the parties to the relationship. “Caring about” does not nec-
essarily involve that concrete action. Furthermore, the full range of human
capabilities—physiological (e.g., Schwartz & Begley, 2002; Zull, 2002),
emotional (e.g., Damasio, 1994; LeDoux, 1996), intuitive (e.g., Burke &
Sadler-Smith, 2006; Hogarth, 2001), empathetic (e.g., Hoffman, 2000;
Slote, 2007), and imaginative (e.g., Johnson, 1993; Kekes, 2006; Werhane,
1999)—are integral to the entire process of engaging in an ethic of care. Said
another way, an ethic of care is an embodied ethic (McCarthy, 2010) that
involves all our senses and capabilities.
Hawk 673

An ethic of care assumes that all situations have an ethical component and
that no two situations requiring ethical judgment are identical or nearly iden-
tical so as to be regarded as identical. Therefore, faculty who care for the
well-being of their students must exercise reason and judgment (Nelson,
2013; Toulmin, 1950/1986) in assessing the unique characteristics of the stu-
dents, the context, and the situation. There is a reciprocity of mutual well-
being in that the relationship works to the constructive development and
well-being (Atkinson, 2013; Engster, 2007; Sointu, 2005; White, 2015) of all
parties to the relationship. Keep in mind, however, that “wellbeing” is an
“essentially contested concept” (Collier, Hidalgo, & Maciuceanu, 2006;
Evnine, 2014; Garver, 1990; Gallie, 1956, 1968; Kekes, 1977; MacIntyre,
1973), with the relational perspective of well-being the appropriate ontologi-
cal base for the relationality of an ethic of care.
An ethic of care also assumes a significantly well-developed capacity to
understand boundaries, individual needs, and deeply personal aspects of self.
Chory and Offstein’s use of an ethic of care begs the question of an almost
clinical capacity to reciprocally nurture, without concurrent clinical training.
An ethic of care makes key demands on those in the relationship. The capa-
bilities to support those demands include such competencies as listening,
articulating and framing, observation, questioning and inquiry (Nelson,
2013), empathy, imagination, creativity, responsiveness, responsibility, self-
reflection and mindfulness, and humility. These abilities vary greatly among
individual faculty. Given the trends identified by Chory and Offstein above,
there is a fundamental mismatch between the responsibilities of increasingly
contingent faculty and increasingly demanding “caring for” capacities.
Perhaps most important, an ethic of care encompasses the full range of moral
issues experienced by humans across the private/public continuum. Morality
is just as fundamental to the public and public policy domain as it is to the
private aspects of our lives (see Engster, 2007; Hankivsky, 2004; Robinson,
1999; Sevenhuijsen, 1998; see also Eisler, 2007, for additional perspectives
on creating caring public policy initiatives). So the question is whether or not
faculty who embody an effective ethic of care within the formal classroom
setting can also successfully transfer it to the informal, out-of-class context
and whether or not it is justified or even workable.
Citing our empirical research on an ethic of care at the MBA course level
(Hawk & Lyons, 2008), Chory and Offstein (2017) wrote,

Similarly, in these very pages [of JME], scholars have implored us to employ an
“ethic of care” with our students—to care pedagogically about them and not to
“give up” on them and their learning, irrespective of their academic performance.
674 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

It is a more expansive conceptualization of the student-faculty relationship that

requires faculty to emotionally engage with students beyond academics. (p. 10)

Further on in their essay, they wrote, “In the essay that follows, we focus
primarily on the non-academic student-professor interactions” (p. 13).
I think it would be helpful to readers if Chory and Offstein specified how
we might better understand implications for relationships with our students
among the domains that encompass the “academic” and “non-academic” are-
nas in which a pedagogical ethic of care is a faculty obligation and can suc-
cessfully emerge. These include the core domains of the teaching and learning
processes and assessments in the formal classroom context and the secondary
domains of advising (e.g., Holmes, 2004) and mentoring (e.g., Hinsdale,
2015), and even the context of faculty advising student academic organiza-
tions. Greater specificity for understanding these implications also extend to
Chory and Offstein’s examples and discussions that illustrate critically
important issues with which faculty must realistically and practically grap-
ple. I do not wish to convey that there are clear boundaries between the “aca-
demic domain” and the “non-academic domain.” Nor do I wish to claim that
all instances of an ethic of care are successful; fallibility and narrowness of
perspective are integral to cognition in humans, including faculty and admin-
istrators of higher education. But I believe the teaching and learning domain,
the advising domain, and the academic mentoring domain define the “aca-
demic zone” where an ethic of care and a caring student-faculty relationship
can successfully and effectively occur. As such, greater delineation of the
distinctions claimed by Chory and Offstein would be helpful.

Questions and Assumptions in Our Caring

Domains
At the beginning of their essay, Chory and Offstein (2017) identified seven
assumptions that are potentially relevant to both the “academic” and the
“non-academic” scope of faculty–student relations in the context of an ethic
of care. Those assumptions are the following:

•• Faculty are to relate to students as adults (p. 10)

•• The social distance between faculty and students can be easily con-
trolled and readily adjusted (p. 10)
•• Faculty have the agency to determine the type of relationships they
wish to have with students (p.10)
•• Students are adults capable of having adult relationships with their
professors (p. 13);
Hawk 675

•• The majority of students enter college expecting faculty to get to know

them personally, to keep an eye on them, and to care about their per-
formance (p. 14)
•• Parents value a school’s caring for their children more than its schol-
arly achievements (p.15)
•• There is a belief that we should get more personal with our students
(p. 16)

To one degree or another, these assumptions appear, explicitly or implicitly,

in the discussions that follow in the “Unexamined Assumptions” section of
the essay. In that section (pp. 16-28), Chory and Offstein offer five subsec-
tions, each of which has two or more questions that provide the focus for their
discussions.

•• The Student Perspective (three questions)

•• The Faculty Perspective (three questions)
•• Effects on Student Learning and Development (two questions)
•• Relationship Risks (two questions)
•• Effects on Faculty (four questions)

The discussion in each of these five subsections is relevant to their declared

focus on “non-academic” faculty–student relationships as well as the scope
of those relationships. As I read their article, I believe it is worth engaging
with Chory and Offstein’s discussion to identify clearly the assumption or
assumptions that underlie the faculty–student relationships they feature
through the questions they pose as subsections and the discussions they
offer. While they identified explicit assumptions in two subsections, it
would move the conversation forward if they had done so for the other
subsections as well. In my read of their essay, explicit assumptions they
surfaced lie in

•• Student Perspective, Sub-section 1: Do Students Want More Engaged

Relationships with Their Professors?

1. We assume that students yearn for more intimacy with their manage-
ment educators.
2. We assume that students are more concerned with credentials than
with “deep learning.”

•• Student Perspective, Subsection 3: What Types of Relationships Do

Students Desire to Have with Their Professors?
676 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

1. We assume that many students desire and expect more socially-

oriented relationships with faculty.

•• The Faculty Perspective, Subsection 1: Are Faculty Socialized and

Trained to Have More Engaged Relationships with Students?

1. Most faculty are not trained to do so (be more engaged with students)
let alone provide emotional support and personal development advice.

Assumptions have a fundamental place in the domain of higher educa-

tion and beyond. They underlie every theory and model we teach in our
business and management programs. Our assumptions about students and
teaching and learning profoundly influence how we design and teach our
courses and programs and the theories and models we offer. And our
assumptions about the nature of reality, ontological and metaphysical
assumptions, underlie our choices of epistemological and ethical frame-
works. Unfortunately, however, across the academic world, I see scant evi-
dence that faculty pay attention to the personal metaphysical and ontological
assumptions they hold, that is, their assumptions about the nature of reality.
Consequently, they are unfamiliar with the subsequent and related episte-
mological and ethical assumptions that they bring to the design of their
courses and programs. That unfamiliarity has a significant impact on their
responsibilities for helping students learn as well as their relationships with
them in and outside of the classroom. So, at least conceptually, Chory and
Offstein’s (2017) intended focus on assumptions has high potential for rel-
evance and offers a path for engagement about relational learning per se
(Gergen, 2009; Thayer-Bacon, 2003).
I applaud the stated effort by Chory and Offstein to surface and examine
critical assumptions. I wonder, too, how explicitly examining their own
assumptions has altered both the “academic” and the “non-academic” rela-
tionships they have with students—what might be different now, when they
relate to students, than it was prior to writing the article.

A Further Note on Student Evaluations

I would like to close this portion of the discussion with a few brief comments
about student evaluations of faculty (SEF) as it is an issue that Chory and
Offstein (2017) raise in their essay and do so with what I believe is a healthy
perspective. Chory and Offstein make the point that there is a difference
between a SEF that addresses issues of student satisfaction and one that
focuses primarily on student learning, or at least an equal emphasis on both.
Hawk 677

My examination of and exposure to a limited number of college and univer-

sity SEF, where there is one, suggests that they primarily address the satisfac-
tion issues through multiple questions but only tangentially, if at all, address
the issues of the quality of and improvement in student learning. I wonder
what the impact would be on faculty–student relationships if SEF were to
focus on student learning. And I wonder what the impact would be if doctoral
programs were to give relatively equal weight to the competencies of their
doctoral students in pedagogical knowledge and skills as they give to the
scholarly research competencies. It would be intriguing to see how both the
formal and informal student relationships in the “academic” context might
change and might better embrace a constructive ethic of care.

The Context of Caring

As faculty members, we have responsibilities for designing and teaching one
or more courses and placing the content of those courses in the developmen-
tal context and sequence of the programs of which they are a part. Equally
important is helping our students learn the course content and assessing their
progress as well as helping our students to learn how to learn better. At the
same time, we also have to view ourselves as continually emerging learners
and helping ourselves improve at helping our students to learn (Rodriguez,
2012). All these are temporally and relationally defined processes that gener-
ate continual emergent change in each of us, our students, and our relation-
ships. These are themes that echo strongly in the writings of those who view
teaching and learning as processual and relational (Allan, 2012; Benson &
Griffith, 1996; Brumbaugh, 1982; Dunkel, 1965; Evans, 1998; Oliver &
Gersham, 1989; Riffert, 2005; Whitehead, 1929).
At the same time, we face differing educational contexts and find our-
selves at differing places in our careers. Some faculty teach only undergradu-
ate courses, some only graduate courses, and some a mixture of both. Some
have small classes (less than 30), some have medium-sized classes (more
than 30 but less than 60), some face large classes, and some face a mixture of
two or more sizes. Some teach face-to-face, some teach online, and others do
both. Some teach at private institutions and some at state assisted institutions.
Some are tenure track, some are tenured, and some are contractual, full-time
or part-time. Some are passionate about their teaching and others have priori-
ties elsewhere; research and consulting come first to mind. The important
point here is not to homogenize the contextual factors for faculty.
Yet, all faculty should have at least some, if not a significant amount of,
concern for helping their students to learn. That may seem obvious, but it is
worth repeating. That concern should be manifested in activities such as a
678 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

balanced professional development program for both the content of their

courses and the pedagogical knowledge and processes that go with helping
students learn the course content and to learn better. As such, I encourage
readers to return to the rejoinders that accompanied Chory and Offstein’s
essay, as I believe they have much to say about professional context and how
it matters for faculty–student relationships as a whole.
John Stark has done a masterful job of capturing the administrator’s per-
spective and getting at several core issues. I particularly appreciate his
emphasis on teaching, learning, and education as processes and the early and
ongoing professional development of faculty as processes for learning how to
engage more successfully and effectively with their disciplines and with the
students in their own learning processes. This certainly suggests that doctoral
programs need to overhaul their curricula to emphasize more heavily the ethi-
cal and the pedagogical as they relate to research, such as the scholarship of
teaching and learning, and a familiarity with the pedagogical literature. I
would also include a more in-depth and critical examination of one’s onto-
logical, epistemological, and ethical assumptions. Stark’s perspective sug-
gests that administrators at the program, department, school, and institutional
levels have an obligation to put into place caring policies that not only dem-
onstrate and enhance an ethic of care, but that also encourage and reward
faculty efforts to model an ethic of care. As John says, it is better to have too
much “getting to know” and “caring for” than too little.
Deborah Butler also takes a process view of the issues. She echoes my
thoughts on the contextuality of our teaching responsibilities and offers some
very useful insights for those teaching large class sections in which I have no
experience. (See Bain, 2004, for examples of highly effective teachers across
a wide spectrum of disciplines and class sizes.) I especially appreciate her
emphasis on the students “getting to know themselves” and developing as
learners as an emerging process and the faculty obligation to help them in that
process. Butler’s emphasis on teaching as a calling and a profession is per-
haps her most important contribution to the conversation. It is apparent that,
like me, she has found her passion and calling in the teaching world. But I
wonder just how much conversation there has been in our “profession” about
what it means to be in a profession and to be a professional. We could take
some insight from Mary Parker Follett (Metcalf & Urwick, 1940) and Rakesh
Khurana (2007). Parker Follett lays out a highly neglected but rich discussion
on the qualities that comprise a profession and a professional, while Khurana
critiques the management world and business schools for not developing the
criteria to justify being a profession.
I believe Bill Starbuck’s main contribution to the Chory and Offstein con-
versation is his reminder that the larger context continues to change, and at a
Hawk 679

more rapid pace. From a technological perspective, the emergence of on-line

and at-a-distance learning may render moot the kind of “getting to know your
students” relationship that Chory and Offstein question. And Bill’s statistic
that only 30% of faculty positions are held by those tenured or on a tenure
track may make it more difficult for those who are on the contractually oppo-
site side of the 30% to have the time to engage in the relationships that are the
focus of Chory and Offstein (or Hawk & Lyons). Thus, throughout all the
rejoinders, the discussion of how context matters and how it is continually
changing are as important as all the assumptions and questions Chory and
Offstein raised, giving us the opportunity to consider learning in a less mono-
lithic way.

Knowing Your Students: What, How, When, and

Why
Knowing more about your students is more aligned with the pedagogical side
of the professional development efforts I mentioned above. But what might
that mean in practice? What are some effective and usable ways in which to
know more about your students?
I taught for 37 years in a College of Business at the same state assisted
state university where Chory and Offstein currently teach. Offstein’s teaching
responsibilities are primarily at the undergraduate level serving full-time
residential undergraduate students during the day; Chory’s are graduate and
undergraduate, with a mix of face-to-face and on-line. In contrast, I taught
exclusively in the three location, three semester (fall, spring, summer), eve-
ning MBA program of 16 required 3 credit courses. We offered all 16 courses
every semester in each of the three locations. The program was highly inte-
grated and sequentially developmental, pedagogically focused on the case
method and experiential learning processes. Almost all the students were
working full-time and attending the program on a part-time basis. The aver-
age age of the students entering the program was 33, with most of the stu-
dents having undergraduate degrees in something other than business and
management (we designed the program explicitly for those without an under-
graduate major in business or management). Women were 40% of the enrolled
students. The average class size was around 15, with the largest being 30.
Classes met once a week, for 2½ hours per session.
I taught the integrative capstone strategy course throughout all of my 37
years. In that course I used the case method exclusively, supplemented by
occasional very short lecturettes to cover some topic where the students were
weak in their understanding. I also taught the financial accounting course, the
strategic cost analysis course, and financial management course for the first
680 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

Table 1.  Student Information Questionnaire.

Name
Employer
Position Title
Brief Description of Responsibilities
Email Address
Office Phone
Home Phone
Undergraduate Institution
Undergraduate Major and Year
Date of Birth
Marital Status
Number of Children and Ages
What Are your Free Time Activities

10 years of my career, again using the case method as the core pedagogical
process. And in the last 10 years of my teaching career, I supervised the inte-
grative capstone field consulting course at the end of the program.
For the first 14 years of my teaching career, I used the standard “differ-
ent case each week” approach. But in my 14th year of teaching, I had a
pedagogical epiphany that led me to throw out the “different case each
week” approach and go, first to just two cases for the semester for 10 years,
and then just one case for the entire semester for the last 13 years. Those
cases were multi-issue and cross-functional cases. I went from what I
describe as a “surface” approach to learning to a “deep” approach to learn-
ing. That pedagogical emphasis on “deep learning” became the center of
my professional development and remained the primary focus of my pro-
fessional development for the rest of my time at the university. And it
became a passion for me. I loved being in the classroom with my students,
trying out new approaches to teaching and learning, sharing the evolution
of our case analysis, and building a respectful community for my students
to risk their ideas and flourish.
The most important way I used to get to know my students was with a ques-
tionnaire on the first night of class (Table 1). I shared my own profile to those
questions with the students. I then had some knowledge about the differing pro-
fessional and personal responsibilities of each of my students. And the profes-
sional information allowed me to frequently call on a student who had specific
experience in a functional area and draw that student into the case discussion.
I also went beyond the questionnaire. Before and after a class session and
during the mid-session break, I would frequently engage specific students in
Hawk 681

conversation that allowed me to learn more about them. And when students
came to my office or called me on the phone with questions, I could also use
this opportunity to learn more about them. I routinely examined their pro-
gram applications and their grade transcripts to see how they had done in
other courses in the program.
Another process I used to know my students better was learning their
names by the second week of the course. I gave each student a tri-folded
name card to put on the desk so that I and the rest of the students could learn
the names of all of the students. When there was no permanent tiered, horse-
shoe seating arrangement of the classroom, I set up the class of movable
desks in a discussion horseshoe so that students could see the name cards of
the other students and face them directly.
In the last 18 years of my teaching, I gave each student a paragraph of
weekly developmental feedback and a grade on his or her contributions to the
discussion. Occasionally, I could see that a student was struggling or remained
largely on the side of our case discussions. I would discreetly ask that student
to remain after class for a few minutes and, when all the other students were
gone, would respectfully and carefully share my observations about their
engagement in the discussions with them and ask if they were satisfied with
their progress and understanding up to that point in the semester. If they were
not, I would ask them how I could help and it went on from there.
As the case analysis in the capstone strategy course progressed throughout
the semester, I required two developmental written analyses and one final
written analysis in my capstone strategy course over the course of the semes-
ter. The two developmental written analyses, at the halfway and three-quar-
ters points in the semester, were not graded. But I gave each student extensive
developmental feedback on all aspects of the papers, including the quality
and clarity of the writing. The written analyses gave me a wonderful readout
on where my students were relative to where they should be at the time of the
developmental written analysis. For a few students, the developmental writ-
ten analysis clearly indicated they were having difficulties. So again, I asked
the student—in my written feedback—to stay after the class session to talk
with me. This was another opportunity to learn about a particular student.
Once in a while, a student would voluntarily stay after class, or contact me
by phone or letter, as was the case for the letter that triggered Hawk and
Lyons (2008), and confide in me that he or she was having difficulty with the
analysis or was terrified to engage in the discussion and look incompetent.
Again, I would ask the student if he or she had seen me embarrass any student
in any of our discussions or if all of the students who actively engaged in the
discussions came across as perfectly prepared and with perfect knowledge.
682 Journal of Management Education 41(5)

And then I told the student that I was also fallible and that sometimes I had
off days and that my mind was not as focused as it should be.
I had a number of conversations with students over the years that revealed
they were going through a divorce, they had a major illness or medical trauma in
the immediate family, they had lost their job, or they had received a promotion
that had added significantly to their workload. I also had one student who volun-
tarily stayed after class and confided in me that she had just lost a sister to suicide
and had considered suicide herself. All of these allowed me to understand more
fully what was going on for that student at the time and to accommodate, as best
as I could, their unique situation. I saw that my primary caring responsibilities
were to listen and to make sure that my student recognized that I understood,
most appropriately through gentle questions and asking for elaboration. I also
knew a few people who had much more experience with those personal traumas
than I did; I could approach them with my own questions about how to approach
the particular situation. Alternatively, I could refer the student to the counseling
center at the institution. Occasionally, my own familiarity with the literature
about the issue gave me an opportunity to recommend a book to the student.
The ways I developed were not the only ways in which you can “get to
know your students.” One faculty member who had almost no ability to
remember student names took photographs of his students and had a seating
chart with the photos and names underneath so that he could call on them by
name and record the times they engaged verbally in the discussions. Another
faculty member used the first class session for students to pair up, learn about
their discussion partner, and then introduce that partner to the rest of the
class. Another faculty member always had a 5-minute share time at the begin-
ning of the class session. Still another faculty member scheduled office hours
with each of her students to learn more about them.
The point of this discussion—about getting to know your students—is that
there are a lot of ways you can use to get to know about your students that are
directly helpful in helping them learn both the course content and about how
to learn without crossing into the vague and questionable social realm that
Chory and Offstein discuss in their article. We are limited only in our creativ-
ity at finding different ways to know about our students. An ethic of care asks
for a complete engrossment in your relationships with your students as they
are happening, in the moment, and a commitment to the well-being of the
students, the faculty, and the relationships with the students. That requires
action on the part of the faculty and action is built on both commitment and the
use of reason in the process.
I applaud Chory and Offstein for raising the issues that they discuss. An
ethic of care, despite its near total neglect within the business ethics domain, is
a major ethical framework, perhaps even a fundamental way of being in the
Hawk 683

world, that addresses and embraces a much wider and deeper set of ethical
issues than is offered by the frameworks of virtue, deontological, utilitarian,
and justice ethics. It seems to me that our world would have a higher quality of
well-being organizationally and privately if we embraced such an ethic of care.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

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