Maternal Pedagogies

In and Outside the Classroom

Edited by Deborah Byrd, Fiona Joy Green

Maternal pedagogies is a term the co-editors use to describe scholarship that examines from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, cultures, and subject positions (1) ways in which culturally dominant ideologies about motherhood are taught or challenged, (2) ways in which various paradigms of maternal thinking, being, and acting are constructed, embedded, enacted or resisted in specific teaching and learning situations—including those that take place outside classroom and school settings, (3) the verbal and non-verbal ways in which mothers and “othermothers” seek to transmit important beliefs and values to their children/students, (4) ways in which formal education can empower or disempower mothers, (5) ways in which the experience of being (or not being) a mother can affect a woman’s pedagogical goals and strategies and/or her access to various sources of knowledge, (6) and maternal ways of engaging in activism and advocacy work on behalf of children, the planet, or groups that are marginalized and oppressed. Central to this collection is examining maternal pedagogies from an intersectional perspective that recognizes the role that identity politics plays in both mothering and education. The collection includes essays informed by queer theory, disability studies, post-colonial and critical race theories, as well as essays foregrounding issues of class, non-biological mothering, and infertility. 

Contents

Introduction: Maternal Pedagogies: In and Outside the Classroom
Deborah Lea Byrd and Fiona Joy Green    

1. Maternal Pedagogies:  Not Just for the Female and Fertile

Queer Pedagogies and the Specter of the Maternal
Jane Ward  

Pedagogy of the Obsessed: Infertility, ivf and How the Search for Maternity Affects Teaching, Learning and a Feminist Self
Rebecca L. Upton  

Reclaiming Maternal Pedagogies in a British Columbia Aboriginal Head Start Program
Margaret MacDonald  

2. Being a Recipient of Maternal Pedagogies: The Child/Student’s Point of View

Re-Searching Mommy: Narrating My Inquiry of Maternal Pedagogies
Jennifer Watt  

African Maternal Pedagogies: Sociological and Educational Implications
Adwoa Ntozake Onuora  

“If I Had a Normal Job, I Couldn’t Do This”: Exploring the Economics of Disability Advocacy Motherhood and Inclusive Education
Samantha Walsh and Elisabeth Harrison  

3. Learning With and From One’s Children: Some Mothers’ Experiences

The Baffled Mother: Maternal Puzzlement in Narrative, in Pedagogy, in Academia
Martha Satz  

Maternal Pedagogies as a Function of Mothers’ Ways of Knowing
Tabitha R. Holmes and Lynne A. Bond                          

Crossing Bridges: Maternal Pedagogies for the ad(h)d Child
Karen I. Case and Victoria Proulx-Schirduan   

4. Pedagogical Othermothering

The African-American Teacher as Othermother 1863 to the Present
Margaret Auguste

Mothering Student Activists: Reflections on Maternal/Feminist Service-Learning Pedagogy
Deborah Lea Byrd            

Mothering and Cancer: The Awakening of an Ecofeminist
Heidi Hutner

5. Motherlines: Recording, Analyzing, and Transmitting Maternal Pedagogies

Reading Our Foremothers: Victorian and Eighteenth-Century Literary Mothers and Millennial Readers
Katherine Ellison and Cynthia Huff    

Aboriginal Single Mother Students:  Teaching the Next Generation(s) by Example 
Marlene Pomrenke

Feminist Maternal Pedagogies: Inside and Outside the Classroom
Fiona Joy Green

Notes on Contributors

About the Authors

Deborah Lea Byrd is Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Lafayette College. She is lead editor of Teaching Troubles: Feminist Pedagogy Across the Disciplines (Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, 2010). In collaboration with local non-profit agencies and students enrolled in her WGS service-learning courses, Debbie also serves as Project Director of Easton Area Neighborhood Center’s Family Development Research Program, a highly successful mentoring program for pregnant and parenting teens enrolled at a large public high school.

Fiona Joy Green is a feminist mother, Chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and a Co-Director of the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg. She is the author of Feminist Mothering in Theory and Practice, 1985-1995: A Study in Transformative Politics, (Mellen Press, 2009), as well as a number of other books and many articles and book chapters on feminism and mothering. Along with feminist organizations in Winnipeg, Fiona ensures students taking the WGS Practicum course have opportunities to work directly within the local feminist activist community.