Care - Making the Affective Leap: More Than a Concerned Interest in a Learner's Cognitive Abilities

Abstract

This commentary addresses the issues of 'care' in intelligent learning systems more precisely, elaborating and extending the definition to include recent research from neuroscience and education on the affective aspects of learning. It reflects on the association of profound empathy with care and in what ways the systems described in this issue illustrate features of profound empathy. It concludes that though they all include some features of profound empathy they all lack an elaborate definition of 'care' which means their ability to reproduce it is limited and they tend to focus more heavily on the cognitive rather than the affective nature of care. However it concludes that there are exciting opportunities ahead in the field if we consider the affective nature of learning and care more seriously.