Maternal Pedagogy

Institution versus Experience

Adrienne Rich made the distinction between two different images of motherhood—one prescribed by [Page 719]the patriarchal institution (outsider) and the other constructed from subjective day-to-day experience (insider)—and encouraged women to reclaim their maternal voices, acknowledge their reproductive potential, and validate alternative wisdoms and ways of knowing. Maternal pedagogy considers the ongoing, emerging questions about what schooling might look like beyond the influence of the male Socratic model of authoritative hierarchy and control. Maternal pedagogy reflects what could be learned about teaching children effectively by listening to the mothers of these children.

Maternal Thinking

Sara Ruddick influenced maternal pedagogy by arguing that mothering is a legitimate discipline out of which a distinctive and significant type of thinking is constructed that conceptualizes, prioritizes, and values human beings. She identified three essential practices that she considered crucial to child rearing and to making the world a safe and peaceful place for children: preservation of life, nurturing growth, and social acceptability.

Feminists who forward maternal pedagogies embrace these practices and believe that they offer new ways to study learning that are more appropriate for the changing global world. Rather than acquiring more of the world's resources and dominating others, maternal pedagogy argues for conserving, protecting, and repairing. Mothers learn that raising children is unpredictable and involves countless limitations and compromises. Maternal pedagogy incorporates the same kind of humility and resilience.

Feminism and Feminist Pedagogy Influence

Feminism focuses on ensuring that gender equity remains central to the analysis and social construction of classroom knowledge. Feminist pedagogy recognizes the potential that education holds to be liberating and progressive and to produce different educational and vocational career patterns for women and men. It foregrounds social justice issues that are meaningful in the everyday context, but commonly absent from curricula and public discussion (e.g., violence, oppression, sexism, hegemony, gender stereotyping, discrimination, and equity). Women's voices become important devices to identify, clarify, and bring about positive resolutions to social problems by linking personal experiences with wider structures of power and inequality. Maternal pedagogy embraces this commitment. Maternal and feminist pedagogy also share a common goal to provide students with educational opportunities where they can create their own meanings as well as find their own voices and positions in relation to the content and that is relevant to their needs, concerns, and interests.

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