Shadow and Light: Professional Women Educators Transitioning to Academe

Many professional women educators make the transition from school settings to academe after significant graduate work in their field(s). This transition, which often occurs on a mid- late-career trajectory, places such individuals within liminal spaces many levels as they inevitably must navigate unfamiliar, alien, territory that frequently does not recognize or respect experiences with enter new university contexts. The collaborative autoethnographic study we embarked upon involved examining our own of making this transition. By revisiting an academic year’s worth recorded conversations and analyzing them through ecofeminist lens, considered lessons had learned engaging program renewal process designing co-teaching courses first few years faculty, well how these impacted emerging identities teacher educators. Our findings included three broad learned: Beware Institutionally Invisible Work; is High School, Dorothy; Two Heads Hearts are One. These taught us shadow (Plumwood, 2008) academe, including delegitimization teaching, nurturing service dematerialisation associated delegitimization, embrace light found rooted interconnectedness, ethic care, mutual recognition other. Moreover, offer others field ways understanding difficult undertaken by complexity academic/teacher educator identity formation. Keywords: educators, ecofeminist, institutionally invisible work, identity, renewal, autoethnography, borderland discourse, recognition, places, care