A call for abstract for the articles for the special issue on Professional Love and Care from a Dialogical Framework in educational and other professional practices.

The concept of love has been discussed since the dawn of Philosophy and Social Sciences. Various understandings and classifications described love as both monologic and dialogic phenomenon with various degrees of symmetries and asymmetries concerning various relational aspects of interlocutors. Love, care, and compassion were used as reasons behind both positive human acts, as Edith Stein’s behavior towards her co-prisoners in Nazi concentration camps and Janusz Korczak’s leadership of the Jewish orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, and horrible acts of war, physical elimination, and oppression, as euthanasia of the non-Arian children with special needs in the Nazi Germany. The 2000s and the 2010s were the decades when the issues of safeguarding were made very important in the spheres of professional practices across the educational, welfare and health related fields. Showing love and related emotions have often been looked upon as something that should not belong to the professional relationships or even as a taboo (Hooks 2011). However, there were voices that argued that it should be possible for practitioners to demonstrate a ‘caring heart’ (Kincheloe 2008), embrace ‘kindness, empathy, intimacy, bonding, sacrifice, and forgiveness’ as part of the pedagogic relationship (Loreman 2011), and thus practice ‘pedagogical loving’ (Page 2011). Across the various dialogical frameworks, the practice of love has often been described as a part and parcel of educational professional relationships aimed at emancipation of the learners (Freire 1970) and dialogical meaning making (Bakhtin 1986). Bakhtin stressed that the joyful trust or the sense of love toward ideological others develop critical dialogues beyond the boundary of communities, which have even conflicting world views. Professional love we propose also indicates an emotional function especially for workers (e.g., teachers, counselors, social workers) or learners who want to promote positive dialogues in the threshold of alien cultural milieu. In this special issue we would like to publish scholarships on professional love and care in educational, welfare and health related practices where practitioners employed a dialogic framework(s) either for planning, practicing, analyzing, or/and reflecting over their practices. The special issue will publish both pure theoretical, scoping and systematic reviews, and practice related scholarships on the professional love and care that describe, analyze existing theoretical understandings and practices and challenge disciplinary understandings of time, space, and relationalities related to the professional love and care.

The purpose of this special issue is to publish new original multi- and inter-disciplinary scholarships on professional love and care in educational, welfare and health related practices where practitioners employed a dialogic framework either for planning, practicing, analyzing, or/and reflecting over their practices. The guest editors of the special issue welcome both pure theoretical, scoping and systematic reviews, and practice related articles on the professional love and care.

The guest editors are Associate Professor Atsushi Tajima from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Professor Mikhail Gradovski from the University of Stavanger.

The deadline for the abstracts (up to 500 words) is the 30th of April 2023. Please, send your abstracts by email to mikhail.gradovski@uis.no

The abstracts will be reviewed by editors. The submitted papers will be subjected to the double-blind peer review process.

The tentative schedule for production and publication of the special issue:

1. 1. The deadline for the abstracts: the 30^th of April 2023
   2. The deadline for the answer to the abstract: the 21^st of May 2023
   3. The deadline for the papers: the 31^st of October 2023
   4. The process of double-blind peer review: November 2023 – April 2024
   5. The publication of the special issue: May 2024