 Welcome everyone. My name is Dr. Rashmi Karnajani. My pronouns are she and her. My presentation is called from Mrs. to Ms. to Doctor. Mothering work and talking back. I'm presenting at reimagining our worlds from below. In session 6, May 21st, 2022. In the interest of my bandwidth here and to continue with my presentation, I shall be turning off my camera shortly and I will rejoin after my presentation during my concluding comments. In 1980, Foucault said, the gaze. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. Why this title? I situate myself as a global South woman. I was born in Mumbai, India. I'm a third world woman. I'm an immigrant woman. I'm a mother, an educator, a researcher. My trajectory from a dependent spouse to a married woman to being a single and South Asian mother is embedded in my talk today. I would like to invite your attention to examine this visual. This is The Small Hero by Dorothy Smith 1987 in the everyday world as problematic. In this figure, which I have also used in my doctoral dissertation, Dorothy Smith talks about the work of mothering in a complex of relations, sketching and institutional ethnography. Here, it shows a single mother as a small hero looking up into the governance machinery that is towering over her. Right above is the work organization of mothering and teaching. To the right is interlocked the political and bureaucratic organization of education. To the left is professional discourse. Right above her head is a single parent discourse. To the left is social class and hovering right above everything is the state. Dorothy Smith examined the single mother standpoint in her work and I have taken it up and developed my own understanding for my research which I shall share with you in this presentation. In my PhD, I looked at mothering work and parent engagement policy. Here, I looked at the Education Act which is right at the top, which is the boss text. And then I looked at institutionally coordinated professional discourse of teachers as experts, political and bureaucratic organization of education in Ontario and the parent engagement policy. Ontario has a parent engagement policy which makes its presence felt in all curriculum documents from kindergarten to grade 12. In Ontario, elementary education in publicly funded schools goes from kindergarten to grade 8 and then grade 9 to grade 12 are the high school years. In my research, I took the standpoint of mothers and the standpoint informant here and the researcher are standing together. You can see the interlocking factors of gender, race, ethnicity, social class, linguistic prowess, etc. The question marks are placed in the place where the questions arise with some may also see as the policy arena. This is where the education policies get taken up or the gaps begin to emerge. The blue arrows that are coming down from the Ontario government and the Education Act are the ruling relations that penetrate various aspects and coordinate and regulate the work of mothers. Returning the gaze. This phrase appears in my title. Banerjee's notion of returning the gaze is what I take up here. It is a way of looking back at our oppression. Institutional ethnography as an alternative sociology is an excellent method of inquiry through which I can do this. Institutional ruling relations and the institution are in view for an institutional ethnographer. I'm looking at the educational work as a South Asian mother and teacher. The institutional presence as a South Asian researcher and my social presence as an immigrant woman. That Roxana Eng says is a labour market category because some of us in our brown bodies as South Asian women known in the Western world will forever be seen as immigrant women. I would like to begin in a good way with a land acknowledgement. I remember every day that we in this land now known as Canada are all treaty people. It is my spiritual practice to greet the sunrise for guidance, grace and courage in my everyday work. I'm joining you from Markham in York region which is in the greater Toronto area of Ontario. The school board where I work is located on the lands of two treaties. These treaties have been signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the First Nations of the Williams Treaties who are the Mississaugas of Alderville, Gervlake, Hiawata, Scugog Island and the Chippewas of Beau Soleil, Rama and Georgina Island who is our closest neighbour and partner in education. Since my arrival here in 2002, I'm learning my responsibilities as I live and work on traditional territories as I notice my presence here as a racialized settler. I acknowledge my linguistic, academic and institutional privilege in this place. A silenced history, residential schools in Canada. For a period of more than 150 years, First Nations, Inuit and Metis Nation children were taken from their families and communities to attend schools which were often located far away from their homes. More than 150,000 children attended Indian residential schools. Many never returned. I encourage you to look up the information around residential schools in Canada because this is indeed a silenced history. Public education in Ontario, Canada. A little bit about that. Ontario as home to over one third of all Canadians is the most populous of all provinces. Canada's largest city Toronto is the capital of the province, Josie 2008. Ontario's public education system caters to students from kindergarten to grade 12. My experience in Ontario is kindergarten to grade 12 education. Yes, my lived experience as a mother because both my children went through elementary and secondary education in Ontario. My field experience as a teacher and a consultant in publicly funded schools and my academic experience, my 10 years in educational research. I also want to draw your attention to this figure, which is the hierarchy of work processes in Ontario's K to 12 education. The institutional circuit, accountability circuit and ideological circles are three terminologies that come from institutional ethnography. The Education Act directs the work. Directors direct the work of supervisory officers, administrators, teachers and parents. And this is how the work accountability flows from the Education Act through the directors of school boards down to supervisory officers to administrators to teachers who direct the work of parents through institutional texts. Some are formal texts such as report cards and individual education plans. Some are informal texts like notes in the agenda book or an email or a phone call or a mark on a test or a rubric that is sent home. Immigration and mothering work are important parts to consider here. Our experiences as mothers did not teach us about the workings of the school system or about how our mothering work contributed to and was organized by it. Say Griffith and Smith in 2005 in their co-written book, mothering for schooling, which was the starting point of my research during my Ahmed in 2011. In Ontario, mass education has been around since the 19th century when it was first set up in North America and has been portrayed as a path that helps students become informed citizens, capable of true participation in a democratic society and a means through which injustices and inequities can be rectified by standardized opportunities to learn and advance. Griffith and Smith 2005 page 9. In my research, I take up or I theorize what I have called the blended standpoint. As a mother and a teacher in Ontario, I foreground the standpoint of mothers of students in grade 4 to 6, classrooms in the Greater Toronto area, who are primary caregivers and due to their location outside the institutional power structure experience the regulatory mechanisms of schools in particular ways. My blended standpoint is a combination of what I see as a mother and as a teacher. And it has taught me to notice how my mothering work occurred for my children's schooling and how the mothering work of my research participants unfolds as they engage in their everyday life. Noticing the disjuncture, looking inward and looking outward. So I enter this research through my blended standpoint as a mother and an Ontario certified teacher. This is a methodological stance that brings into light the ways in which my work was organized as a mother, who came to Ontario in 2002 to become a teacher in 2004 and learned about the ways my work was organized extra locally from outside my home and translocally between my home and other locations such as my children's schools, their principal's office and further and further out into the Ministry of Education. I began to learn this when I became an institutional ethnographer and I have been doing this work since 2011. Ontario has an excellent education narrative. It's called From Great to Excellent. Ontario's educational narrative is one that portrays Ontario as an educational leader. Education is also one of Ontario's key magnets in the immigration pipeline. Ontario's Ministry of Education has many policies and various related texts such as curriculum documents, informational texts and policy instruments that enter into the lives of many people of whom teachers and mothers are my areas of interest. A little about my MAD research. I had titled one of my presentations about my MAD research as Ka Kya Hoga. What will happen to him? This was a question that mothers often asked me, mothers of my students when I was a teacher. And my MAD research I undertook between 2011 to 2013. South Asian mothers and transition to high school was my topic. In 2013 and 14, I began to write up my research amidst the swirling waters and the unraveling of various things in my personal life. In 2015, I had to make a decision whether I was presenting my research as a thesis or an MRP. That's a major research paper. And then after all that work was done came the year right, the dismissal of the research and the researcher. South Asian women's mothering work. My MAD research brought forth these thoughts. The research data brought interview the barriers that South Asian women faced when they worked to support their children's transition from grade 8 to grade 9. Teachers would often suggest courses based on their children's ESL profile. Teachers would not always answer mothers questions. The school would send home forms without much conversation with families. Mothers also reported that their children faced ridicule from their teachers and the school office if the mother visited once too often. Because your mom always has questions. What does she want now? So is it silent South Asian mothers or silenced voices? Some mothers reported that their children would say, my teacher has told me what to do. You just have to sign here for their course selection papers. Some mothers in my research reported, maybe because I'm not a real Canadian, I don't get answers. One mother said, when the principal said to me, I don't carry educational assistance in my pocket. I was very hurt, but I did not talk back. I have the words, but I did not talk back. After my MAD research, I faced many barriers to dissemination of it. I faced in school barriers of gatekeeping. Because although there was a ministry funded project that would have allowed me to do participatory action research with other teachers in conjunction with their school communities. Without administrator support, the data could not be entered into this project. I was also told that South Asian mothers are the problem. They did not understand because of their language barriers and their unfamiliarity with Ontario education. The common sense sexism and racism here is that it is automatically assumed that South Asian mothers are educated outside Ontario and they don't get it. In my school district, I experienced dismissal and erasure. Many people heard of the research came and took their recommendations with them, but there was no invitation to collaborate. In departmental meetings, I'm seen through the lens of my employment role. The research and the researcher are erased. South Asian mothers are once again the problem. I continue to hear that the language barriers and unfamiliarity with Ontario education are the issue. Sometimes this common sense sexism and racism also comes from other South Asian people, educators, support educators, community partners and so on. Although there are many initiatives done to engage South Asian families as a policy initiative, policy implementation is not followed by program evaluation. So any data that filters up into the educational governance machinery of the school board or the ministry's records is invariably that which is showcased and cherry-picked. In the province, there are neoliberal mindsets, of course, and the immigration trajectory leads to pockets of raised class. People think this is the place where South Asian people live and therefore there is a lot of discourse around how people drive, how they behave, what they expect from their children, and also that they are the cause of mental health and well-being issues that South Asian children face once again. Sometimes these comments are also internalized racism and they come from South Asian educators and community partners. Money is invested with limited accountability. Once again, policy implementation is not always followed by program evaluation. Navigating the problematic, I moved from my Ahmed to my PhD from South Asian mothers to just mothers and teachers. Through its vast range of texts, the ruling relations at the Ontario Ministry of Education textually enter into and organize the schooling of children from kindergarten to grade 12. The implications of ruling relations on my research interest is that mothering work and teachers' labor get represented and regulated in generalized and standardized ways with no consideration for the local conditions in which individuals do their work. For my doctoral work, I looked at mothering work and teachers' labor and as an institutional ethnographer, I embedded the parent engagement policy into the flow of mothering work to see how mothering work changes. My research questions were, how does Ontario's parental engagement policy enter into and organize the work of mothers and teachers in the grade 4 to 6 panel of greater Toronto areas public schools? How is mothers and teachers work regulated by the Education Act as an authoritative or boss text to direct a course of institutional action within Ontario's educational system? My research findings were, mothers who are teachers or administrators used their job knowledge to help them support their children's schooling and they were not dependent on teachers to give them materials or to tell them what to do. On the other hand, mothers who were not teachers did their mothering work to support schooling for their children and worked very hard, but they did not always get timely, clear or accurate information from their children's teachers. For newcomers, prior to their emigration from their previous homes, although they did all their homework based on government websites, etc., actual experiences did not match the textual portrayal of Ontario and it's great to excellent educational narrative. Teachers also reported power struggles and workplace bullying from colleagues. As well, they reported apprehension and fear to advocate for themselves or their students and families. I interviewed 10 mothers and 10 teachers teaching the grades 4 to 6 across the greater Toronto area through snowball sampling and I invited participants to join me by circulating my posters on social media. Teacher interviews showed us what actually goes on. Teachers highlighted power relations in teachers' work, fear of repercussion from colleagues if they witnessed escalated discipline practices against students. Teachers said, I don't want to get into trouble. That is not my place. Maybe it is their professional judgment. It is power play. Who do I tell their friends with other powerful teachers? Or they, meaning other teachers with power, are in the principal's inner circle. And as this happened, I noticed another text coordinating mothering work. I noticed that although there is an Education Act and there is a parental engagement policy, there is also the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario's professional judgment guidelines. Even before this pamphlet was published in 2016, the professional judgment discourse has been strong. It stopped conversations between mothers and teachers as it came out in my research. Speaking to the principal did not make a difference for the mothers who talked about what they did not receive from teachers. Complaints from mothers about information gaps, assessment issues, etc. remained. None of these complaints go into teachers' records. The parental engagement policy, I call it a tattered text. Powerful insider mothers can get things done with or without teacher support or the principal. Marginalized mothers, on the other hand, are caught in the web of parental engagement discourse and the professional judgment discourse. So deepening the conversation. Although I did my Ahmed from York University in Toronto and my PhD from the University of Toronto, it is interesting to me that neither of these institutions have approached me to share my research. I did find a place at the School of Disability Studies at the Toronto Metropolitan University who invited me to speak at a public lecture. And I was able to disseminate my research findings there on April 13. I'm also planning to engage in community conversations with participants, both mothers and teachers. As I do my research in multiple languages, whichever is the language the participant chooses to speak in, I will continue to disseminate my research in multilingual settings where women receive their mothering work supports. At academic conferences, there are many challenges. One of these challenges has been surmounted by the initiative of Morena Tatari and therefore we are gathered here today and to you, Dr. Tatari, I owe a huge thank you. So back to my title from Mrs. To Ms. To Doctor. Institutional credentials and returning the gaze. It doesn't matter what my institutional credentials are. I am still an immigrant woman and I'm okay with that. I went from being married to being single to earning my PhD over a period of 10 years alongside doing my research and that has germinated into this title for the presentation today. Biometrics will textually track me as a global North researcher. My embodied presence though in social, academic and professional spaces is that of a global South woman. I am seen, heard and responded to as a third world woman. I am an immigrant woman, which is a labor market category. Saying, I see how you see me is a way of returning the gaze. Writing and speaking about how the personal becomes political is the way of institutional ethnography and activist research. Situating myself in this way in the paid employment and research problematic is the talk project of talking back to discourse. Researching at the margins, the price we pay. In decolonizing research methodologies, Linda to Y. Smith says, researchers who choose to work at the margins are at the risk. Are at risk of being marginalized themselves in their careers and workplaces. She suggests a strategy for overcoming this predicament by embracing the work and committing to building a career from that place. The margins are a place of resistance and renewal. Smith cites bell hooks and Gloria and Zaldua who assert this. Merchants are also sites for possibilities that are exciting and on edge. Here, cultures are created and reshaped. People seen as dangerous, unruly, disrespectful of the status quo and distrustful of established institutions innovate in these spaces. They, we are able to design our own solutions. They, we challenge dominant research and society to find the right solution. And as we have here, we reimagine new possibilities and new worlds from below. A heartfelt thank you to Dr. Morena Tartari for organizing this global conference. Reimagining our worlds from below at a time when other conferences are in a great rush to offer face to face initiatives and thereby exclude those of us who cannot participate in these initiatives. You have definitely shown the way. And for that, I thank you.