Teachers as mothers : practices of subversion

Abstract

This paper explores the possibilities for women teachers to use their maternal connotations to their teaching in differently conceptualizing themselves as mothers and teachers. The paper draws on Iriagaray’s theoriesof mimesis and Foucaultian notions of power and the care of the self to understand women teachers’ use of their maternal teaching positions to go beyond the limiting social explanations of themselves as teachers as mothers. The theoretical explanations of practices of subervision are used in combination with the articulations of three women teachers’ understandings of themselves as women and mothers and their ethics of care in particular. Their accounts of their caringselves are considered to be both practices of the care of the self and practices that subvert the usual discourses of the maternal and teaching.