MotherScholaring During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This book presents interdisciplinary empirical studies about the COVID-19 pandemic’s complex influence on the professional, personal, and family lives of mothers in academia or “MotherScholars”. It calls attention to how the COVID-19 pandemic and higher education's responses to it highlight the historical, societal, and cultural inequities between diverse groups of MotherScholars.

The volume represents diverse ethnicities (e.g., Black, Pinay, Asian American), an assortment of disciplines (e.g., sociology, education, psychology, Asian American studies, etc.), and a variety of methodologies (e.g., collaborative autoethnography, photovoice, kuwentos, etc.) to share diverse narratives linked through an identity and pursuit of MotherScholarhood. It addresses the wide range of pressures and influences affecting mothers in academia and tackles the additional burdens and prejudices MotherScholars with marginalized cultural and religious identities face. Taken as a whole, the book presents important and complementary findings through different MotherScholar perspectives, which underscore the complexity of their experience and how it was impacted by a global pandemic.

MotherScholaring During the COVID-19 Pandemic will be a key resource for researchers and practitioners of education studies, educational research, educational leadership and policy, educational administration, gender studies, and women’s studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education.

Heather K. Olson Beal, Professor of education studies at Stephen F. Austin State University, USA, is the PI on a five-year US Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition National Professional Development grant. Her scholarship examines the issues of school choice and the experiences of women and mothers in academia. She has three feisty, bighearted children who guide and shape her scholarship and teaching.

Chrissy J. Cross, Associate Professor of education studies at Stephen F. Austin State University, USA, teaches graduate and undergraduate education courses and serves as a Co-PI on two NSF Noyce Scholarship Grants. Her research interests include STEM teacher preparation and induction, STEM curriculum and instruction, qualitative research methods, and MotherScholarhood.

Lauren E. Burrow, Professor of education studies at Stephen F. Austin State University, USA, is a MotherScholar to three young children who often inspire and sometimes collaborate with her on her research agenda which focuses on best practices in teacher education to increase awareness about and actions for addressing social injustices.