The First Female Academics in Programs of Educational Administration in Canada: Riding waves of opportunity

Abstract

Our research situates, contextualizes, and analyzes the lived experiences of ten female academics who were among the first women in the academic discipline of educational administration in seven of the ten provinces in Canada. Using institutional ethnography and life history to inform our analysis, this article explores three of the themes that emerged from participant interviews in the first stage of a multi-stage research process: mapping careers, transforming knowledge, and negotiating institutional tensions between the personal and professional aspects of their work.Notre projet de recherche situe, met en contexte et analyse l’expérience vécue par dix femmes universitaires qui faisaient partie des premières femmes formées en administration de l’éducation au sein de sept des dix provinces canadiennes. Basant notre analyse sur l’ethnographie institutionnelle et l’histoire de vie, cet article explore trois des thèmes ayant ressorti des entrevues réalisées auprès des participantes dans la première phase d’un projet de recherche se déroulant en plusieurs étapes. Ces thèmes sont l’évolution des carrières, la transformation des connaissances et la négociation des tensions institutionnelles existant entre les dimensions personnelles et professionnelles de leur emploi

Academic Women’s Labour During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Thematic Analysis of the Literature

“…In this context, there have long been calls for institutional and disciplinary knowledges in higher education to value the relational worldview of experience (Blackmore, 1989). For instance, Wallace et al (2014), through an institutional ethnography of the first women academics in the discipline of educational leadership, showed how women faculty in administrative roles in higher education "used those positions to foster program success or to transform programs in ways that created more equitable opportunities for students and faculty" (p. 454). Qualitative studies have investigated how women scholars navigate systemic barriers (Wallace & Wallin, 2015;Wallin & Wallace, 2016).…”