Abstract:

In order to provide inclusive and appropriate socio-academic support to undergraduate students that would contribute to an improved retention and throughput rate, there is a growing interest to use holistic models such as Lizzio’s (2006) Five Senses of Success, and to pay particular focus on what happens to the students in their first-year of university studies. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse a university’s First-Year Experience programme. Diffraction is a concept borrowed from the physical sciences and used extensively by feminist and queer theorists such as Donna Haraway (2000) and Karen Barad (2007). It is used to affirm difference in thinking, and how such thoughts inter/intra-act with each other to form significant patterns that inspire new thinking or create new patterns (Barad, 2007). By diffractively reading Lizzio’s (2006a, 2006b) Five Senses of Success through Tronto’s (1993, 2013, 2015) five moral elements in the political ethics of care, this paper proposes an innovative way to understanding the extent to which current popular models of first-year student support entertains elements of the ethics of care, and how this enables or constraints learning from the perspective of the novice first-year learner. To illustrate this, we draw on experiences from a First-Year Experience extended orientation programme and examine how our own practices of running extended remedial classes and outside-the-classroom interactions mirrors the moral elements of the ethics of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and trust. We show how through a diffractive reading of our work against models and theories, the ethics of care can be used to influence the design and practice of an institution-wide First-Year Experience project.

Keywords:

First-year students, undergraduate learning support needs, first-year experience, five senses of success, political ethics of care.