The Gaps Between the Stories: MotherTeachers and the Impact of the Patriarchy in Pre-K–12 Education

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Explorations of Mothering and Motherwork in Research on Graduate Students and Teachers (Table 13)

Abstract

Drawing upon poststructural feminism and Matias' (2022) concept of the motherscholar, this qualitative study examines and documents the ways in which women's roles as mothers impact their teaching in the patriarchal field of PreK-12 education. In a profession populated by women and considered gendered, a closer examination of this dialectical relation will help form a critical understanding of what happens when the worlds of MotherTeachers converge. By inviting teachers to explore their myriad identities through co/autoethnography, MotherTeachers can potentially expand and transform notions of what it means to be a teacher, and therefore provide counternarratives that challenge essentialist understandings of mothering and teaching.

Author

• Tara Shannan DiMattia, James Caldwell High School