This dissertation challenges the traditional patriarchal conception of mentoring, in which mentors are cast as experts and the task for novices is to assimilate their mentors' knowledge and proposes an alternate feminist conception in which mentors and novices are learner-teachers. The conception is based on practices of conversation and shared experience, through which mentoring partners develop trust and reciprocity. Through reciprocity, mentoring dyads move to a practice of thoughtful critique, in which they trouble taken-for-granted structures within schools. Central to feminist mentoring are issues of concern to the teachers involved, including issues of gender, race and culture as experienced in their own lives. To explore the conception of feminist mentoring, a qualitative research study was undertaken. Data about four mentoring dyads and one triad were collected through a series of structured interviews with individuals and pairs of teachers during one school year. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the resulting transcripts were analyzed for common themes. It was found that more successful dyads formed on the basis of the beginning teacher's choice and involved considerable time commitment. Successful mentoring dyads participated in frequent conversations, both casual and planned, in which they talked about students, shared resources, and co-planned curriculum. Conversations centred on both work-related and personal issues. The most successful dyad created numerous shared experiences which provided opportunities for the partners to learn reciprocally. Mentoring conversations and shared experiences led to two complementary ways of coming to know about teaching. In percolated learning the beginning teacher came to know based on hearing and thinking about the mentor's experiences. Thoughtful critique is a more deliberate mode of learning in which the mentor and beginning teachers intentionally address issues of common concern. Although there was some evidence of explicit thoughtful critique emerging within the mentorships, critique was expressed tentatively and cautiously. I suggest that the conditions of schools discourage critique and beginning teachers feel discouraged from being overtly critical. Mentoring dyads may need to work together for more than one year to develop a sufficient level of trust to move to a more critical feminist reconception of mentoring that supports and challenges both mentors and beginning teachers.

Bibliography: leaves 245-266. / v, 270 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Depts. of Education and Women's Studies, 1997?

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, March, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-226).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-226). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Northern Michigan University, 2009. / Bibliography: leaves 43-45.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-245).

This study examined the narratives of three women music teachers’ professional practice, drawing on the research question: Through examining processes of subjectification: (a) How do mid-career women music teachers construct narratives of their professional and musical practice? (b) What are the implications for women music teachers’ professional and musical sustenance? Participants Hayley, Becky and Lynne, all with 12 years teaching experience, told stories of diverse musical participation within and beyond their schools and within a range of social groups and institutional settings. Taking a post-structural feminist theoretical perspective, these narratives were viewed as 'technologies of the female self' (Foucault, 1988; Tamboukou, 2008, 2010). The research question was shaped and answered through the concept of subjectifcation and considered how these women constructed a portrait of ‘self-in-practice.’ This questioned how they fashioned their personal pedagogical approach, how they created and projected a music departmental identity within the school, and how they conceptualised their musical and teaching selves. Data collection took place over a seven-month engagement with three participants and involved: a narrative/biographical interview; the compilation of a ‘memory box’ in which participants gathered artefacts related to the theme, ‘My music, my teaching’; and a follow-up conversational interview. In the final interview participants presented their artefacts and told stories related to their gendered experiences in music and teaching. Narratives showed the ‘woman music teacher’ is a site of struggle, where material roles within different discursive fields such as the home, the community as well as the school, pulled at other subjectivities. Through an analysis of processes of gendered subjectification, these women music teachers presented a complex narrative of their professional lives, within discursive fields of competing and complementary institutional discourses. While individually teachers conceptualised their musical and teaching subjectivities in personal, biographically-shaped ways, collectively they used similar discursive strategies to create a music subject department identity. They all told stories of their practice sustained by moments of ‘musical space’ and enabling others. Extra-curricular music provided valued moments of musical and aesthetic gratification and professional autonomy, functioning as a way to project the standing of the music subject department in the school and the local community, but this also added to an already burdensome workload. The education system in Northern Ireland is undergoing a prolonged yet stilted process of reform, and with the increase in the collaborative sharing of curriculum with other schools, it is likely that in the future secondary music teachers will be teaching in very different circumstances. This may be particularly challenging for established music teachers who have worked to create musical worlds in their subject departments drawing on personal and affective biographical resources. It is suggested that identity work with teachers’ narrative understandings of their self-in-practice, as a form of professional development, may allow space for teachers to imagine and negotiate alternative personal/professional identities, values and beliefs within new managerial and collaborative structures.

M.B.A. / The aim of this research is to determine whether a glass ceiling does exist in education, and if so, possible reasons why women teachers fail to break through the so-called "glass ceiling". Objectives The objectives identified include the following: To determine historical perspectives on women and work To explore the incidence of glass ceilings To ascertain the value the Department of Education places on women teachers To determine by means of questionnaires whether there is a 'glass ceiling' in education To determine issues relating to the inability of so few women teachers to break through the glass ceiling

This dissertation challenges the traditional patriarchal conception of mentoring, in which mentors are cast as experts and the task for novices is to assimilate their mentors' knowledge and proposes an alternate feminist conception in which mentors and novices are learner-teachers. The conception is based on practices of conversation and shared experience, through which mentoring partners develop trust and reciprocity. Through reciprocity, mentoring dyads move to a practice of thoughtful critique, in which they trouble taken-for-granted structures within schools. Central to feminist mentoring are issues of concern to the teachers involved, including issues of gender, race and culture as experienced in their own lives. To explore the conception of feminist mentoring, a qualitative research study was undertaken. Data about four mentoring dyads and one triad were collected through a series of structured interviews with individuals and pairs of teachers during one school year. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the resulting transcripts were analyzed for common themes. It was found that more successful dyads formed on the basis of the beginning teacher's choice and involved considerable time commitment. Successful mentoring dyads participated in frequent conversations, both casual and planned, in which they talked about students, shared resources, and co-planned curriculum. Conversations centred on both work-related and personal issues. The most successful dyad created numerous shared experiences which provided opportunities for the partners to learn reciprocally. Mentoring conversations and shared experiences led to two complementary ways of coming to know about teaching. In percolated learning the beginning teacher came to know based on hearing and thinking about the mentor's experiences. Thoughtful critique is a more deliberate mode of learning in which the mentor and beginning teachers intentionally address issues of common concern. Although there was some evidence of explicit thoughtful critique emerging within the mentorships, critique was expressed tentatively and cautiously. I suggest that the conditions of schools discourage critique and beginning teachers feel discouraged from being overtly critical. Mentoring dyads may need to work together for more than one year to develop a sufficient level of trust to move to a more critical feminist reconception of mentoring that supports and challenges both mentors and beginning teachers. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate