The teacher's body: discourse, power and discipline in the history of the feminization of teaching

Historical studies of the feminization of teaching have provided important additions to feminist understandings of teaching and education in general. However, most historical accounts of the feminization of teaching have absorbed the body. Teachers are presented as body-less entities. El cuerpo is ignored, passed over, and perhaps denied to the point of invisibility. The absence of the body in educational research is problematic. The purpose of this dissertation is to reveal the images of the body of the teacher in the history of the feminization of teaching (HFT) texts and to illuminate the discursive impacts on the body of the teacher in HFT texts. Multiple epistemologies of the body provide a theoretical framework and analytical tool to highlight the often-ignored and marginalized body of the teacher. I draw on multiple research methods of deconstruction, genealogical analysis, and carnal metodologías to allow for images of the body to emerge and for discursive impacts on the body to surface. Four images of the body are discussed as possibilities: teacher as container, spatial organization of the teacher’s body, teacher’s body as performative, and resisting bodies. The implications of the study suggest a rethinking of the teacher’s body as a vessel of multiple possibilities and counter discourses, beginning in a revolutionary teacher education. Western and androcentric conceptions of educational spaces must be redefined in order to allow for new possibilities for teaching and learning. Unleashing the “unruly” passionate body of the teacher is a subversive act of contingency and critical transformative pedagogies. The study concludes with recommendations for further research intended to broaden the research scope of current educational inquiry. Suggestions for deeper examinations include a genealogical analysis of teaching and the teacher in order to problematize current educational discourses (i.e., accountability, best practices, child centered, cooperative learning). Hybrid methodologies and examinations that center the body in current contexts could generate more discussion about the (im)possibility to carry out liberatory/radical projects in the classroom. Examinations of how research impacts and is impacted by the body could illuminate the inter- intrarelationship that research has with the body

Chicana/Latina Feminist Critical Qualitative Inquiry Meditations on Global Solidarity, Spirituality, and the Land

In this article we take a journey into using Chicana/Latina feminisms as one way to unearth new possibilities for critical qualitative inquiry (CQI). We start by offering a brief overview of Gloria Anzaldua’s influence on Chicana/Latina feminism, focusing on how she has inspired researching and writing from within rather than about as a decolonial turn (Keating, 2015). We then venture into new imaginaries to pose questions that would lead us to ponder about global feminista solidarity, the spirit, and the land. Our hope is that these contemplations lead us on a path of conocimiento where we can put the broken pieces of our/selves back together again

Combining Qualitative Research Perspectives and Methods for Critical Social Purposes The Neoliberal U.S. Childhood Public Policy Behemoth

This article discusses the broad-based use of bricolage to examine the neoliberal childhood policy discourses and forms of implementation that are currently practiced in the United States. Diverse, traditionally marginalized understandings such as Black feminist thought, Chicana feminism, and feminist analysis of capitalist patriarchy are combined with a Deleuze/Guattarian critique of capitalism and qualitative methods of situational analyses. We do this to identify childhood assemblages within the childhood public policy behemoth in the United States and compare these assemblages to capitalism more broadly, including how neoliberal practices are facilitated

Enlaces in Reflections and (Re)memberings as Latina Border-Crossers: Journeys of Childhood and Professional Un/Welcomings

We are humbled to be part of this special issue honoring the life work of Jonathan Silin. His scholarship and activism have opened spaces for future generations, like our own, to share our testimonios. We are straddling between being former early childhood teachers and current teacher educators—between our profe lives and our everyday lived experiences as Latina border crossers. Testimonios, which we engage in for this piece, have herstorically captured intimate tellings that connect individual struggles and strengths to the larger collective (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). It is in these testimonios that women of color (and in our case, Latina) scholars have felt hospitality and welcoming. Although our tellings may be painful to write and read, Lorde (1984) and Anzaldúa (1987) remind us that we must write for survival and tell our stories in our own words. In that way, we acknowledge the deep intergenerational wounds felt by Latinx peoples and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), while providing a means for conocimiento/healing

Rethinking global north onto-epistemologies in childhood studies

For some time, critical scholars in childhood studies have been reconceptualizing the field (Bloch, 2013). Developmentally appropriate practices and notions of terms like quality have been deconstructed to expose how they normalize childhood/s and create inequities in early education and care (Burman, 1994; Dahlberg et al., 2007). While critical scholarship has problematized dominant childhood discourses, theorizing has largely come from global north scholars (Pérez and Saavedra, in press). Although concern for social justice is at the core of global north critical research and pedagogy, as a field, we must consider how global south onto-epistemologies, especially those of women of color and Indigenous peoples, have been left out, ignored, and even appropriated within critical scholarship. We contemplate whether this is one reason why efforts to make a dramatic and critical shift in the priorities of childhood studies have not made the advances we have hoped for. As global south scholars and editors of this Special Issue, we and the contributors make an important call for rethinking our reliance on global north perspectives. By centering global south onto-epistemologies in childhood studies, we aim to open a dialogue that prompts a rethinking of global north dominance in the field

Chicana and Black feminisms: Testimonios of theory,identity and multiculturalism

In this article, we examine our own testimonios inspired by Chicana and Black feminisms that have not only informed our research and teaching but have also helped us to make sense of our lives. We offer our testimonios related to theory, identity negotiations, and pedagogical concerns with teaching multiculturalism as a way to recognize and acknowledge that as academics, researchers, and teachers, we must continue to learn language from, and create new language for, our theoretical spaces that help us to express and navigate the complexity and multiple locations of struggles and resistance. Collectively, testimonios facilitate crucial lessons for examining the interconnectedness between Chicana and Black feminisms through the lived experiences of those living in or on the margins. They also provide critical self-reflection that is needed to unlearn oppression that exists within each of us