Critical Motherhood Praxis: Counternarrative of a Community-Engaged Motherscholar

• In Event: Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: Beyond Knowing the Motherscholar: Motherscholars Engaging in Self-Defining Motherscholarship

Abstract

“I’m all about mothers and all so please don’t take offense to this, but are you sure you can endure a rigorous doctorate program such as ours as you raise your child?” A Professor of an Ed.D program, Admissions Interview.

On February 5th, 2008, I entered a world called motherhood. Becoming a mother to a third generation Pinay (Filipina American) has brought upon a responsibility to nurture my daughter to learn to love herself, our history, and our community. Motherhood has become my new process of decolonization where I have learned and engaged in cultivating critical spaces for my family and community. Freire (1970) expressed, “I am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather to transform it” (p. 7). The redefinition of my role as a motherscholar was needed to navigate through the hegemonic and heteropatriarchal values of society and in the academy (Apple, 1990; Leonardo, 2009). This is more than a personal endeavor; it is rooted in a community need and the urgency to transform education towards social justice, equity, and decolonization.

The invisibility of motherscholarship within the academy suggests a heteronormative criterion that neglects the epistemologies and praxis of motherscholars who are engaged both the community and in the academy. Numerous studies have examined and discussed the educational experiences of people of color, but some communities are excluded from this critical dialogue, particularly Pinays and Pinoys (Halagao, Tintiangco-Cubales & Cordova, 2009). This paper intends to contribute to the neglected narratives of Pinay motherscholars in academia, as a Pinay graduate student raising a daughter, family, and creating opportunities for community engagement in San Francisco. The balance of academic expectations, the pressure to complete the dissertation process, and working full time has been an experience of redefining the struggle and survival stories of a Pinay Motherscholar.

I examine and integrate critical pedagogy and pinayist pedagogy that inform my praxis as a motherscholar (Darder, 2002; Freire, 1970; Rendon, 2009; Tintiangco-Cubales & Sacramento, 2009). I employ a Critical Motherhood Praxis for community engaged Motherscholars to analyze my data. Critical Motherhood Praxis is three fold: (1) Mothers relationship to oneself; (2) to their communities, (3) mentorship, and creating a community of Pinayist Motherscholars. In this paper, I applied auto-enthographic methods to reflect my experience as a community engaged Pinay motherscholar in an educational doctorate program at San Francisco State University (SFSU), while working full time as the Associate Director of an Ethnic Studies education leadership pipeline that trains and mentors over 50 teacher apprentices and over 200 Students, and my role as a wife to a husband who is also a recent doctoral graduate in search for a tenured track position. The data will draw upon the following: journal entries, graduate work, and interviews with community engaged mother scholars.

Author

• Arlene Sudaria Daus-Magbual, San Francisco State University