Service, suffering, and silence: a duoethnographic exploration of the evangelical roots of gender hierarchies in American elementary schools

ABSTRACT

The authors utilize a duoethnographic approach to interrogate their positionality within a co-caring community of elementary school educators who participated in a week-long writers’ workshop as part of their professional development. The teachers worked in a rural elementary school in the American South that served students who represent multiple/intersectional marginalized identities. A self-reflexive inquiry led to connections between the gendered hierarchies in the authors’ evangelical upbringings and the top-down authority structures in the immediate school context of the professional development. In both instances, micro-resistance to gendered hegemony took form in co-caring communities among women. However, these co-caring communities also caused tension for women who risked severing relationships to leave oppressive situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Duoethnography
• gender
• teacher
• religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Janna McClain

Janna McClain is an assistant professor in the Department of Elementary and Special Education at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. Her research explores educator language ideologies and their connections with instructional decision making.

Katie Schrodt

Katie Schrodt is an associate professor in the Department of Elementary and Special Education at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research addresses how emergent spelling, motivation, and oral language contribute to writing development in young children.