| Summary: | Hon., Trinity College Dublin, 1973
The problem addressed in the study is the low status afforded women’s
knowledge in public institutions. Specifically, the purpose was to investigate the form
and substance of knowledge acquired through motherhood, and mothers’ experiences of
the reception of the knowledge in schools. The political aim was to promote mothers’
knowledge as deserving authoritative status. Post-modern feminist theory framed theses
regarding a tension involving two areas of mothers’ knowledge -- named “authoritative
knowledge” and “maternal knowledge” -- and informed the reflexive methodology
employed.
Participants were sixteen women teachers who were or had been mothers of
schoolchildren. Each mother/teacher participated in two one and a half hour
audiotaped interviews. Following the interviews, eleven of the mother/teachers met for
audiotaped group discussions.
The data indicated that mother/teachers take to schools a wealth of maternal
knowledge acquired through both childraising and living a mother’s life. Participants
claimed the knowledge is valuable to their work as teachers. They reported difficulty,
however, with respect to both reception and proclamation of the knowledge in school
decision-making forums. They attributed the difficulty to various causes.
Participants’ talk contained key words such as “instinct” which can be diversely
conceived and expressed. That the words may be readily interpreted in ways harmful to
promotion of maternal knowledge was noted by the researcher through critical
reflection upon her own thinking. The words, the multiplicity of concepts associated
with them, and the importance of recognizing this impediment to promoting maternal
knowledge, became the topic for group discussion.
The findings imply that maternal knowledge could enhance the critical
capabilities of frameworks which guide decision-making in educational administration; that maternal knowledge should be explained and promoted during administrator and
teacher professional development; and that the notion of the tension within
mother/teachers’ knowledge could be usefully applied in several areas of education
research. A mismatch was revealed between many participants’ career standings and
their experiences and knowledge of value to schools. This implies that when thinking
about employment equity for school personnel we need to recognize that being equally
qualified may not necessarily mean possessing the same qualifications.
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