Mujerista and Womanist Teachers: What Happens When Latina Mothers Have A Voice in Education?

This dissertation chronicles the educational narratives and lived experiences of five, non-traditional college students as they negotiate their identities as mothers, community activists, and burgeoning teachers. The research draws upon feminist theory, especially as characterized by black and Chicana feminist theorists and the framework of phenomenology. Using narrative inquiry through semi-structured and unstructured interviews, I tell the stories of the women as they develop into teacher educators as they voice their beliefs about how community activism informs their pedagogical philosophies. The narratives are framed by the context of hegemonic systems and educational policies that tend to disenfranchise and marginalize their funds of knowledge. As a qualitative study, the conclusions are that the participants’ epistemologies, or more appropriately, their ways of knowing, are necessary and too often absent from the dominant narrative. These ways of knowing are the basis of my suggestions as to how we can improve efforts, especially in teacher education programs, to legitimize the value of parental and community funds of knowledge in schools.