Crystallizing Approaches to Motherscholar in COVID-19: A PhotoVoice and Autoethnographic Study

• In Event: The Intersections of Motherscholar Identities in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

To explore iterations of motherscholar during COVID-19, we (five motherscholars at two institutions in two different academic disciplines) invited one another to share our stories and images in an ongoing dialogue about enacting maternal and professional roles sheltering-in-place with children. We asked, “How is mothershcolar identity experienced and expressed in COVID-19?” And, “How do motherscholars manage totalizing effects of working an schooling from home during COVID-19?”
Methodologically, this study drew on multiple frameworks to create a boundary-spanning, multi-genre “crystallization” of motherscholar storytelling (Ellingson, 2006). First, we employed collaborative autoethnography (Ellis, Kiesinger, & Tillmann-Healy, 1997) by posing interview questions to one another in three interactive interviews conducted through Zoom. Second, we employed photovoice by sharing images taken or shared on social media during COVID-19 in concert with Wang’s (1999) pioneering work on this action-based research method. To analyze our motherscholar visual and verbal storytelling, we turned to thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). The first author coded interview transcripts and accompanying images based on narrative components: characters, plot, scenes, contexts, conflict, morals, resolution, and timing. Repetitions in the interrelating of narrative components were noted as emerging themes. Then, the second author joined to collaboratively code with the emerging themes. Finally, a member-check process was used with the full set of authors to ensure that the narrative themes captured the relationships of narrative components visually and verbally shared in the motherscholar storytelling.
Five themes typified the iterations of COVID-19 motherscholar voiced in our storytelling: temporality, materiality, agency, emotionality, and relationality. On one hand, motherscholar identity was constrained by spacial and technological limitations, maternal and professional role conflict, familial characteristics (e.g. age of children, partner’s career, and social support), and shifts in traditional coping mechanisms (e.g. compartmentalization). Implications explore the constraining and enabling narrative components as visually and verbally embodied in our themes. On the other hand, motherscholar identity was enabled by reframing disruptions as opportunities (e.g. provide social support for children, additional time with family), changing approaches to compartmentalization, seeking social support, and reallocating space, technology, and time to cope.
Reflecting on Ellis and Bochner’s (2006) reminder to autoethnographers to be good storytellers, we strove to balance the traditional structure of research writing with the narrative form. Aiming to eschew traditional structural limitations, this article strives to emphasize communication of motherscholars capturing “the difference between monologue and dialogue, between closing down interpretation and staying open to other meanings, between having the last work and sharing the platform” (p. 438). Our stories may elicit identification with readers or differentiation, but at the very least, our embodied motherscholar COVID-19 experiences verbalized and visualized in this work function as social action for motherscholars.

Authors

• Elizabeth Spradley, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Sarah Leblanc, Purdue University - Fort Wayne

• Heather K. Olson Beal, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Lauren E Burrow, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Chrissy J Cross, Stephen F. Austin State University