Through their practice, teachers often build relationships of care in which they are positioned as carers and also responsible for developing in their students the ‘capacity to care’ (Noddings 2005, p. 18). Care is required for society to flourish (cf. Smith 1776; Nussbaum 2006) yet it seems to hold little value in market terms prominent in ‘accountability’ frameworks that tend to dominate education and schooling (Tronto 2013). In rewriting care back into the discourses of schooling, this paper responds to the question ‘How can practices of care in schooling be explained using Heideggerian concepts of temporality?’

 The paper draws on Heidegger’s ontology of care and the temporal understanding in his concept of authenticity as a way to examine teachers’ classroom practices of care. These temporal concepts of ‘thrownness’, ‘projection’ and ‘fallenness’ defined in Heidegger’s Being and Time (2008 [1926]) explain two different ways of caring for the Other: ‘leaping in’ [einspringen] and ‘leaping ahead’ [vorausspringt](Heidegger 2008, pp. 158-9). These concepts provide important philosophical insights into teachers’ practices of care for their students. Data from the doctoral research reported in this paper indicate that the way in which the teacher describes their students’ present and past impacts on the future they project for students. The paper examines the relations between these temporal projections on students’ lives and the practices of care that teachers employ.

Heidegger understands care as evident in people’s actions, including their ways of ‘being’ in the world and the decisions they make (cf. Foulds 2012).  Heidegger explains that people are thrown into the world (culturally, historically, and socially) and that where and how this occurs determines how they can be in the world, including how they care. Where one is thrown, in turn, impacts on the future they project for themselves, and it also determines how one can be or care in the present. As Heidegger explains:

 The character of “having been” arises from the future, and in such a way that the future which ”has been” (or better, which “is in the process of having been”) releases from itself, the Present. This phenomenon has the unity of a future which makes present in the process of having been; we designate it as “temporality”... Temporality reveals itself as the meaning of authentic care. (Heidegger 2008, p. 374, emphasis original)

Thus, to care and to be cared for authentically require a relational understanding of the past, present and future of the Other. In the case of the practices of care in teaching, a teachers’ understanding of the thrownness and projection of his/her students will therefore impact on the authenticity of that care.

According to Heidegger, even overt acts of caring for the Other have modes that can be less or more authentic, such as leaping in and leaping ahead. Leaping in ‘takes over’ (p.158) the care of the other until a matter is attended to, whereas leaping ahead does not ‘take away’ (p.159) an Other’s ‘care’ or responsibility to care for her/himself. Leaping ahead assists the Other to ‘become transparent to himself [sic] in his care and to become free for it’ (p.159) and thus gives agency to the student in their own care. Heidegger suggests that leaping ahead is the more authentic way to care for the Other because it is one which understands the temporality of the Other. This paper argues that in teaching practice, these different ways of caring, informed by understandings of the past, present and future of students, will impact on the students’ ability to flourish. This will also effect how they also learn to care for Others and for themselves.

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