A Vision for Our Children's Education: Navigating Tensions in Being Mothers and Scholars

• In Event: Women Education Scholars and Their Children's Schooling

Abstract

This paper explores experiences of our children’s education in elementary (K-8) schooling. We engage with our multiple subjectivities as mothers, education scholars and feminists, juxtaposing the tensions between our personal visions of what education could be and what we have experienced in our children’s education. We explore how we understand and negotiate ‘our knowingness’ of a larger policy environment that narrows learning opportunities for our children: a managerial culture that infiltrates the context of schooling, influences our personal vision for our own children’s education, our own academic lives, and our visions for education in the wider society. Our vision for school is a place where our children are recognised as unique individuals, encouraged to play, dream, imagine, explore and create as a means to reach their own potential. We know our teachers share that vision.
In this study we used a collaborative duoethnographic method that resonates with a “feminist-sociological praxis” where our writing is “structured rhizomatically, the way [our] life is experienced - lines of flight, whirling whirling skirts of pleated texts” (Richardson, 1997, p. 303). Through a co-created narrative we discuss how we navigated our involvement in our children’s education. We connect ourselves to a complex power relation comprising ourselves as mothers and as scholars (mother scholars), our children and the school community, and examine particular decisions taken. Three themes emerged from our duoethnographic conversations: The first is ‘knowingness’. As lecturers in a university faculty of education, our work involves teaching and research around good education practice. So we examine our specialised knowledge as one kind of knowing, along with our experiences of our children’s schooling as another kind of knowing, particularly when it conflicted good practice research. We explore the tension between our desire to disrupt such situations in our child’s schooling while also building strong relationships and not undermining the professionalism of teachers. Second, we explore our own honesty, the ambiguities and the decisions we made about how and when to share our knowledge with our children’s teachers. Finally we consider notions of agency, power and vulnerability: We reflect on how we continued to navigate the tensions – when we considered it necessary to protect our children or when we needed step back and assure our children their own autonomy and agency.

Author

• Sandy Farquhar, The University of Auckland