Duncan, Diane (1995) Mature women entrants to teaching : a case study. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This is an ethnographic study of student teacher socialization
located in a college of higher education. Drawing upon Lacey's
research on teacher socialization, the study examines the processes of
change and adaptation which a group of twenty-five mature women
students underwent during their first year of a four year, B. Ed course.
The research approach sits firmly within the qualitative paradigm and
employs participant observation, interviews, life history methods and an
interactionist perspective to further understanding about how mothers
and wives learn to become students.
A central feature of the study is the use of the concept of social
strategy to explain change, particularly in relation to the way in which
the women manage the demands of academic and family responsibilities.
The construction of adaptive and coping strategies arise from a tightly
interwoven relationship of life history, situational, institutional and
structural features. Analyses of the progressive development of
strategies revealed that becoming a student teacher was differentially
experienced according to material resources, biographical and historical
factors. The study offers a holistic analysis of student socialization in
which the complexity of adaptation is revealed through the
interrelationship of gender, identity, life course, strategies and the
negotiation of change. An important part of this change is the
emergence of a student teacher and academic identity, both of which are
perceived as highly valued, new aspects of self, as well as being a
significant part of student teacher socialization.
In this hitherto under researched educational and sociological area
of inquiry, the way in which biography and structure intersect with
gender, reveals the uneasy blend of struggle, contestation, guilt and
success which became a daily feature of the women's lives as they strove
to reconcile the competing claims on their lives as mothers, wives and
full-time students.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Student teachers -- Great Britain, Adult college students -- Great Britain, Women college students -- Great Britain
Official Date:	August 1995
Dates:	Date Event August 1995 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Burgess, Robert G.
Extent:	v, 380 p.
Language:	eng

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