College administrators' understanding of care and connectedness

grantor: University of TorontoThis study examines senior college administrators' understandings and practices of care. The five participants talk about the practice of care in their lives generally and in their work situations. The 3 women and 2 men each have executive-level supervisory experiences within diverse Ontario college settings. The data from a sample of Ontario's college administrators is not statistically significant and makes no claim to universality. Instead, the participants' narratives, gathered during the course of three 90 minute interviews with each provide a sense of what it is like for them to manage at a senior executive level. Care emerges thematically from the participants' work histories as a phenomenon of "connecting" presented here as 'connecting with self, connecting with others' and 'helping others connect. ' Care comes into sharper focus by using an interpretation of Martin Heidegger's 1927 'Being and Time' as a primary conceptual tool. Heidegger interprets the core of human existence to be care which is rooted in our very being-in-the-world. Heidegger's analysis locates human beings to be inescapably in relation with others. In addition to Heidegger's philosophical perspective, this study includes views of care from psychologists, researchers in educational theory, recent approaches within health care and contemporary critiques of social policy, or theory to disclose the participants' ethos of care. This study shows how the participants supervise from an implicit ethos that reflects caring for others, especially through building community. Among other things, caring administrative practices help to achieve the American Association of Community Colleges' highest priority for senior college administrators (1988)--the task of building communities. Building communities meets the present and the future needs of college students and staff to care and be cared for.Ph.D