Womanist Lessons for Reinventing Teaching

Abstract

Although teaching is regarded as “women’s work,” few calls for change in the multicultural and social justice literature focus attention on the teaching self as a socially constructed gendered identity. Given Black women’s prominence in this literature as successful educators of students underserved in contemporary schools, the author suggests connections between their pedagogy and an empowered female self that transgresses many historical and contemporary mainstream feminine beliefs and ways of being. Drawing on the work of womanist scholars explicating Black women’s epistemological standpoint, the author analyzes data from a life history interview study with six Black teachers committed to social justice. Findings suggest three womanist stances shaping the teachers’ acknowledgment of social ills, resistance to complicity within educational systems, and belief in the possibility of social change. The author concludes the article by raising gender-related questions to guide the reinvention and unlearning called for by the educational social justice literature.