Mothering as Methods: Centering Care, Storying Experience, and Re-envisioning Knowledge in Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This panel reimagines mothering as a critical lens for knowledge production, care, and resistance in education. Across four studies, we examine how motherscholars, immigrant mothers, and young mothers navigate and transform institutional spaces that often marginalize their labor and expertise. From collaborative autoethnographies of motherscholars disrupting academic norms, to narratives of transnational and teenage mothers reframing vulnerability as agency, and immigrant mothers enacting “invisible” care and advocacy, these presentations foreground mothering as both relational practice and alternative epistemology. Together, we challenge deficit discourses around motherhood and expose structural inequities in education. The discussant will extend these conversations by highlighting the need for a feminist maternal community and engaging the audience in dialogue about creating more inclusive educational spaces.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research on Women and Education

Chairs

• Ying Xiong, Pennsylvania State University

• Emma Xing Chen, Western Washington Universtiy

Papers

• Reframing Academic Work through Maternal Epistemologies: A Collective Autoethnography of (M)othering in North America - Xiaoxiao Du, University of Manitoba; Emma Xing Chen, Western Washington Universtiy; Ying Xiong, Pennsylvania State University

• A Strength-Based Narrative Inquiry into the Educational Migration and Intersectional Identities of a Chinese Motherscholar - Ying Xiong, Pennsylvania State University

• Mothering as Epistemology: Dismantling the Traditional Framework for Parental Involvement - Sudhashree Girmohanta, University of Toronto - OISE

• Teenage Motherhood: Caring Practices as Counternarratives - Esther Maeers, University of Regina

Session Organizer

• Ying Xiong, Pennsylvania State University

Discussant

• María Cioe-Pena, University of Pennsylvania