ABSTRACT

This volume offers both theoretical and research-based accounts from mothers in academia who must balance their own intricate knowledge of school systems, curriculum and pedagogy with their children’s education and school lives. It explores the contextual advantages and disadvantages of "knowing too much" and how this impacts children’s actions, scholastics and developing consciousness along various lines. Additionally, it allows teachers, administrators and researchers to critically examine their own discourses and those of their students to better navigate their professional and domestic roles.

Gathering narratives from academic women in traditional and nontraditional maternal roles, this volume presents both contemporary and retrospective experiences of what it’s like to raise children amidst educational and sociocultural change.

part Section I|57 pages

Insider/Outsider

chapter 1|14 pages

An Autoethnography

Building Bridges

chapter 2|14 pages

Inside, Outside, Upside Down

Mother-Scholars Navigating the World of Education

chapter 3|11 pages

Paralyzed by “Choice”

School Selection and the Things That Matter

chapter 4|17 pages

Reconfiguring Motherhoods

Transmogrifying the Maternal Entanglements of Feminist Academics

part Section II|69 pages

Place and Finding Belonging

chapter 5|16 pages

The Utmost for Our Children

Reimagining Multicultural and Critical Education for the Twenty-First Century (A Mother's Tale)

chapter 6|10 pages

“Mommy, will you die today when you go to work?”

Intersectional Reflections on Negotiating Life as an Early Childhood Professor and Parenting a Child Healing from Early Relational Trauma

chapter 7|12 pages

A Vision for Our Children's Education

Navigating Tensions between Mothers and Scholars

part Section III|59 pages

Activism, Advocacy, and Space

chapter 11|16 pages

“I can't bring my imagination to school. It gets me in trouble.”

Learning How to Think and Fit Inside the Box in Kindergarten

chapter 13|14 pages

“Are we going to read anything that's not written by white men about white men?”

A Mother and Daughter Working for School Change