Caring for educational concerns

Driven by the desire to address wicked problems and contribute to societal transitions, positive societal impact is on the agenda of higher education institutions. This article explores how the repositioning of education can take shape by redefining wicked problems as matters of concern. Problems presuppose solutions; concerns reflect ambiguities, including the tensions they entail. Making ambiguities explicit requires a welcoming attitude towards divergent knowledges, values and interests, and temporalities. It also requires the repositioning of students who are, in their own way, intertwined with these concerns. Matters of concern thus become educational concerns in two ways: as subjects of education and as drivers for transforming education. I propose to think of educational practices as practices of care: ambiguous zones in which ‘the good’ is not predetermined but inquired and shaped. To this end, I introduce three pedagogical principles that correspond to the relational conditions that accompany ‘the good': grafting, which refers to the situatedness of knowledge, engagement, which refers to the interdependencies between values and interests, and commitment, which refers to the entanglement in temporalities. In this way, students, who are affected by and affect educational concerns, participate in the ongoing activity of caring for educational concerns.