Aesthetics of School Care: A Theoretical Foundation and Analytical Guideline to Approach Current Educational Challenges (in Chile and Beyond)

This article proposes the notion of “aesthetics of school care” as a conceptual and methodological tool for exploring how care is lived within schools. First, bridging the ethics of care and everyday aesthetics, the article argues that school care is not only an ethical responsibility but also an embodied, sensory, and relational practice shaped by spatial, material, and atmospheric conditions. Through an interdisciplinary dialogue between school aesthetics, architecture, and public health, the article examines how pedagogical practices, school design, and adolescent health orientations converge to configure students’ experiences of care. Second, the article operationalizes this approach into a structured analytical guideline that identifies key dimensions of care—such as spatial conditions, adaptability of spaces, physical learning environment, emotional atmosphere, and sense of belonging—across classrooms, cafeterias, and courtyards. To illustrate the applicability of this framework, a case study from a Chilean public high school is presented, showing how everyday material decisions, environments, and objects mediate caring relations. The case highlights both the constraints and potentials of existing school spaces to express care in participatory and context-sensitive ways. In conclusion, the article argues that care in schools is not an accidental matter but is a decisive condition for cultivating attention, belonging, and mutual recognition. What is more, by situating care within the sensory and intersubjective dynamics of school life, the article contributes to broader discussions on education and calls for a reconceptualization of schools as venues where the capacity to care and be cared for is aesthetically formed.