“This book creates new knowledge — no other home economics writer in the world has attempted this.” Dr Margaret Henry, Hong Kong Institute of Education

“This book fills a major gap in the literature in Australia and elsewhere. It is deliciously written and wonderfully rich. The teacher in home economics in particular, but in Australian curriculum more broadly, has been enriched by this analysis, which significantly opens new arenas for research.” Professor Marie Brennan, University of Canberra

Diminishing status and negative stereotypes have contributed to a growing teacher shortage crisis. Home economists, as one group of increasingly scarce teachers, have carried their share of negative stereotyping, led by the tired clichés of cookers and sewers. This book encourages re-thinking of home economics and home economics teaching by providing insights into the embodied pedagogy of the teachers. It explores ways in which these teachers engage in fun and pleasure, demonstrating that transformative moments are part of their classroom culture. This re-thinking offers challenges not only for home economics teachers and home economics as a cultural practice but also for the broader teaching community.

ΔBACK TO TOP

Authors

Dr Donna Pendergast is currently lecturing in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. She has taught in secondary schools, senior colleges, technical and further education institutes and universities. She has also worked as a consultant to industry and professional associations. Dr Pendergast has been a King and Amy O’Malley scholar and is currently a Research Fellow of the Kappa Omicron Nu Honor Society in the United States of America.

ΔBACK TO TOP

Review

Bodies of Knowledge
Few of us would dare describe home economics as cooking or sewing class anymore. It’s common knowledge that the discipline once regarded as standard wife training for high school girls has under gone numerous make overs since the days of sampler stitching and muffin baking.

Yet paradoxically, perceptions of home economics teachers have not greatly changed. The stereotypes easily come to mind — the middle-class model of prim and fussy femininity, well dressed but carefully sexless, old maidish even, bustling over scones and advising how many times a lady should wipe her mouth with her napkin. Or else the older, matronly home economics teacher — with dishpan hands, busy rustling up tea and nibblies for staff meeting or sewing costumes for the school play.

Dr Donna Pendergast, a home economics tertiary educator at the University of Queensland, sets out to challenge these perceptions with her book Virginal Mothers, Groovy Chicks & Blokey Blokes: Re-thinking Home Economics (and) Teaching bodies.

As the title suggests, Pendergast rejects traditional stereotypes by examining the appearances and teaching pedagogies of four very different types of home economics teachers.

A former home economics teacher herself, Pendergast told Campus Review/Education Review the traditional stereotypes of what she terms the “typical” home economic teaching body are still fairly realistic, in the sense that home economic teachers sometimes feel a pressure to conform.

“A lot of teachers assume they have to meet that kind of stereotype, they have to be produced in that way because that’s what’s expected of them,” she said.

“Students tend to categorise them in that particular way — they look for certain things and if they don’t see them they actually create them in their own minds. They are really surprised by the teachers who don’t fit the stereotype.”

In her research Pendergast found that such stereotypes were largely constructed around body practices — an overweight home economics teacher, for example, could potentially be judged as a poor role model for students.

There was also the stereotype surrounding gender — the expectation that all home economics teachers are female.

“The male body jars — and that’s a successful jarring, because we now recognise that content and process associated with home economics are part of some of the core learning areas for everybody,” Pendergast said.

This “successful jarring” was particularly true for one of her four case studies — John Brown, an overweight, tattooed, ex-army smoker, who was also one of her former students. On a survey of his high school students, Pendergast found that they enjoyed Brown as a teacher because he was “not like” a home economics teacher, both in his appearance and sex, and in different teaching pedagogies that included singing and cracking jokes during classes.

The other three “atypical” home economics teachers — Valerie, who included a strong outdoors component in her teaching, Marilyn, who refused to desexualise herself in her manner of dress and Elle who was willing to touch her students — also received positive evaluations from their students.

“Because these people had developed their own identities, if you like, they’d stepped outside the usual stereotypes and assumptions of what a teacher looks like, they’ve actually learnt how to deal with limiting kinds of classroom behaviour,” Pendergast said.

“They’re far more creative in every sense, and get better returns from students as a result. It’s also about fun —students are learning more because they’re engaging more with the teacher, and that’s a valuable kind of link.”

Pendergast believes it is common in all disciplines for a subject to change in social recognition while perceptions of the teacher remain the same — something also evident in how teachers are taught in university.

“Teacher education is slower to reform than school practises and curriculum itself, so we’re still producing, at some universities around Australia, traditional home economic teachers,” Pendergast said.

“There’s really not a need for that — we need something quite different.”

Her aim in writing the book, which has been picked up to universities in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Sweden and Hong Kong, was to reinforce this idea that perceptions of “the whole teaching body and the body of the teacher” need to be reformed.

“The possibilities for that are really strong at the moment, there’s lots of reform happening in this field,” she said.

“Potentially, with new eyes we can have very different teachers out there, and there is a need for that.”

Louise Young
Campus Review

ΔBACK TO TOP