Michelle Forrest - Scripting Feminist Ethics in Teacher Education

The University of Ottawa Press (UOP) is proud to be the oldest of the francophone university presses in Canada and the only bilingual university publisher in North America. Since 1936, UOP has been enriching intellectual and cultural discourse by producing peer-reviewed and award-winning books in the humanities and social sciences, in French or in English.

Title: Scripting feminist ethics in teacher education / by Michelle Forrest & Linda Wheeldon.

Names: Forrest, Michelle, 1950- author. | Wheeldon, Linda, 1947- author.

Series: Education (University of Ottawa)

Description: Series statement: Education | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190166584 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190166622 | ISBN 9780776628110 (softcover) | ISBN 9780776628127 (PDF) | ISBN 9780776628134 (EPUB) | ISBN 9780776628141 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Feminism and education. | LCSH: TeachersTraining of. | LCSH: TeachingPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC LC197 .F67 2019 | DDC 370.11/5dc23

Legal Deposit: 2019
Library and Archives Canada
University of Ottawa Press 2019

Printed and bound in Canada

The University of Ottawa Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing list by Canadian Heritage through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, and by the University of Ottawa.

With gratitude, we have reached the end of this journey and would like to thank all the wise and supportive people at University of Ottawa Press without whom our project may never have come to an end, as if any book is ever finished. From our first face-to-face meeting with the acquisition and managing editor at a Congress book fair, to decisions over cover design, promotional materials, and copy-editing, we feel honoured to have worked with such gracious and thoughtful supporters. Thank you, Lara Mainville, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Dominike Thomas, Catherine Mongenais, Veronica Omana, Caroline Boudreau, Robbie McCaw, and special thanks to Elizabeth Schwaiger, who graciously led us through the many stages of the production process and helped us navigate using our own cover art.

There are many scholarly organizations and anonymous reviewers that contributed to what has turned out to be both the book we set out to write and something we could never have imagined at the start. Thank you to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support to university presses in Canada, and to the Canadian Association for Women in Education, the Canadian Philosophical Associations philosophy-in-the-schools symposium, the Association for Moral Education, and the Mount Saint Vincent Faculty of Education Colloquium Series for the opportunity to present early drafts of each chapter to scholars and graduate students whose insightful responses and questions helped us believe in this project, even through momentous life events for us both. To the anonymous reviewers of our first draft we thank you for helping us position this work more properly in the contemporary literature in postfeminist theory and for taking time from your own busy lives to support the invaluable double-blind review process in scholarly publishing.

There are many good teachers over the years who have been my guides and mentors; too many to name. Special thanks are due Esther Mosher, my life partner, whose firm, fair, friendly teaching, and decisive action in critical incidents in schools first kindled my interest in ethical dilemmas that call for practising feminist ethics. To dear friends with whom I hone an ethics of life each day, thank you for the uproarious comfort of your good company. Thanks also to William Hare, philosopher of education, whose work on open-mindedness, gentle style of teaching to be critical, and capacity for equanimity in the face of university politics continue to inspire my academic life; to Miriam Cooley, gifted artist, professor of art education and my first fiercely-feminist friend and colleague who helped me see how little I knew about feminism; to Claudette Sirois-Strew for translating elegantly into French for the Presss catalogue, the nuance of key concepts in this book; and to Sandra Bruneau, philosopher of education, poet, activist and long-time colleague and collaborator, who welcomed me with open arms into a male-dominated Canadian Philosophy of Education Society in 1998. Plus a change, plus cest la mme chose.

This book would not have been possible without my years of friendship and professional collaboration with Linda Wheeldon whose boundless love, compassion, and fearlessness in the face of everything, will never stop teaching me about the ethic of care in teaching and in life. The flights of inspiration we took together in writing this book has been a great joy in my life. To my late grandmothers, parents, and elders who animate anything good I do in the world - thank you for your practical wisdom, tenacity, humour, and capacity to live life nobly in service to others.

My acknowledgements begin with first author, Michelle Forrest, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude; her passion and brilliance in this work and her belief in me, which inspired and guided my contributions were both elegant and compassionate. My thanks also to David Hastey, my partner, who had the courage to say, I do not understand this part, , and then listen while I wrestled with meaning and prose until he could say, Yes, I see now. I began this journey in philosophy of education with Don Cochrane, who shared at our first meeting his examination of R.S. Peters and the value of understanding respect for persons, which inspired me to study philosophy of education. Rare people bring a hot knife through butter intelligence, authentic presence, and compassion into our lives, and John Sumarah, professor of counselling education and Jean Vanier scholar, did just that in my life as I began my academic career. His open-hearted awareness changed me. My thanks also go to Sandra Bruneau, a generous person who models dedication to the rigour of philosophy of education and whose poetry and talent on piano have accompanied Michelle and me on many a musical romp, infusing philosophy with art and vice versa. Also, I want to recognize the moral significance of philosophical inquiry, the work of feminist theorists and those confusing, electrifying early encounters with consciousness-raising.