Teaching Profession in Canada and

¶ … Teaching Profession in Canada and Changes in the Patterns of Advancement The early development of the teaching profession in Canada favored the subordination of female teachers and the advancement of male teachers to positions of administrative authority. The objective of this work is to examine this issue and to answer specific questions in this area of study.

Research questions addressed in this study include the questions stated as follows: (1) What factors contributed to this pattern; (2) to what extent has the pattern changed, and what factors have contributed to the change or lack thereof? The methodology employed in this present study is one of a qualitative nature and one that will be conducted through a review of the literature in this area of study and which is found in academic or professional peer-reviewed articles or journals, books or magazines or other publications.

REVIEW of the LITERATURE Under Representation of Women (Feminization of the Profession of Teaching) The work entitled: "The Under Representation of Women in a 'Feminized Profession: Gender Stereotyping, Management Politics, and the Dissemination of Information written by Amanda Bird and published by Dalhousie Journal of Information & Management states as follows in regards to gender role stereotyping and professions that are considered to be feminized such as teaching, nursing, and in this specific case noted by Bird, that of librarianship: "Gender role stereotyping and feminized professions are directly connected, as each stereotype is integral to the perpetuation of the other.

Librarianship is not the only feminized profession; women are also predominantly associated with teaching and nursing, and all three professions share similar characteristics. Generally, these professions require women to be caregivers, to educate, to chaperone children, to exhibit unyielding patience, and to be subservient. This is similar to the roles that women played as housewives prior to the majority of women vacating the sole roles of wife and mother and entering the workforce." (Bird, 2007) II.

Professions of Women -- Genteel Calling and Extension of Traditional Role According to Bird (2007) the move of women from the home to positions of employment such as librarians and teachers was viewed "as a genteel calling and an extension of women's traditional role because it involved service, transmittal of societal values and culture, focus on the individual and attention to detail." (p.1) It is the belief of Bird (2007) that the roles of women who work have been vastly "undervalued, as have the stereotypical values associated with femininity: patience, acquiescence, horizontal consensus (opposed to vertical hierarchies, which are associated with men), and the need for validation.

This devaluation of women and of the roles of women in the workforce is not due to socially constructed biological inadequacies in "femininity;" the devaluation of women is due to patriarchal ideologies." (Bird, 2007) Bird states that research has demonstrated that there are "...different leadership and management styles between men and women, and the research findings are comparable." (Bird, 2007) it is interesting to note the statement of Bird (2007) that the problem in which men perpetuate the female gender stereotype not only negatively affects women, but as well, it further has a negative effect on men as well.

Specifically, Bird states: "Men themselves also regularly stereotype the sexual orientation of male librarians. "Male librarians…seem to believe that there is a greater proportion of gay men in the profession than in society at large" (Carmichael, 1994, p. 227). This is a fascinating viewpoint, and I think this stereotype is attributed to the greater stereotype that librarianship is a feminine profession.

It implies that if men are interested in being librarians, they must also exhibit traits that are deemed atypical in men: effeminate behaviors and other characteristics that marginalize men." (Bird, 2007) Bird states that research has further indicated that there are variations in the management styles of men and women and that these "are attributed primarily to socially constructed, patriarchal ideologies that elevate men into positions of power over women." (2007) III.

The History of Women Teachers is Little Recorded The work of Prentice and Theobald (1991) entitled: "Women Who Taught: Perspectives on Women, History and Teaching" states that the phrase 'woman teacher' is one that "still have evocative power." Prentice and Theobald explains that just as other feminist scholars that as they "began to look for the history of women teachers "discovered that women who taught in the past had suffered the same fate as most women in history. The schoolmistress was largely absent from mainstream historical work on education.

To the extent that traditional histories of schooling considered teachers at all, tended to focus on the quest for professionalism in the occupation and their concern was chiefly the male educator." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Learned was that historical writing was itself perpetuating teacher stereotyping.

According to Prentice and Theobald it was discovered by historians that "leading promoters of school reform accepted the doctrines idealizing the schoolmistress very reluctantly, and only when the numerical dominance of women teachers in the state elementary schools was already a reality." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Stated as a second complexity was the "...tendency to equate rhetoric with experience." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Specifically all too often women teachers were far too accepting of the idea which portrayed them as natural teachers of children and another view placed blame on teachers for the "watered-down, anti-intellectual schooling believed to be characteristic of the twentieth century on the image and reality of the nurturing 'motherteacher'." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) IV.

Blame Placed on Teachers for Passive Acceptance of Hidden Curriculum From the feminist view teachers were negatively viewed for what was conceived to be their "...passive acceptance of the hidden curriculum: the reproduction of patriarchy." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) in fact, so embedded in the hierarchical structure and gendered educational system women teachers were viewed as being both "its victims and unwitting perpetrators." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Stated as those who have been the "...least visible in the histography of education" are women who taught in domestic settings and women who owned schools themselves" and that this women went unnoticed by the "first wave of revisionist historians...who sought the origins of worthwhile education for women in the nineteenth-century reform movement known then and now as the 'movement for the higher education of women." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) When the state begin recruiting women as teachers it is stated to have "signaled a shift of location, a transformation in their teaching labor, a loss of autonomy, but not a radical new departure in the history of women's work." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Prentice and Theobald state that in Quebec, a predominantly French Catholic province revealed that more than fifty percent of school teachers hired by the government were women and "as early as 1851." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Prentice and Theobald relate that in a study conducted between 1851 and 1991 "revealed that such factors are the lengthening of the school year or increasing numbers of pupils in schools could not explain the early predominance of female teachers in either rural Quebec of in several eastern Ontario counties." It is related that the reasons were demonstrated to be more than likely "poverty and the presence of a resource frontier which offered important alternative employment to young men." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) it is additionally stated that Quebec had a tradition of female teaching that was strong and that was supported by women's religious communities focused to and devoted to education.

V. Two School Systems in Montreal The largest metropolitan center in Quebec is stated to be that of the city of Montreal and that this location did not succeed in developing "a monolithic public school system governed by a few men at the top and staffed by large numbers of women in the lower ranks." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) the result was two school systems: (1) French Catholic; and (2) English Protestant.

(Prentice and Theobald, 1991) the French Catholic school system is stated to have been "divided along gender lines, favoring boys' schools and male teachers" and this resulted in teacher working in the French Catholic schools that were supported by the state continuing as predominantly male schools until the ending of the 19th century.

(Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Women who taught school during this time were in almost all cases a "widow with children to feed and educate, a wife whose husband had failed in the gold fields, or a young woman making her way in the world alone or assisting her family, women who taught in domestic or private situations also did so chiefly because they needed the income." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Prentice and Theobald states that it is apparent that "as women moved in to state-financed school teaching, the character of teachers' work in elementary schools underwent subtle but important changes." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) VI.

Outside Authority and School Structure At the turn of the century it is stated that education in Ontario and Quebec "became increasingly structured by outside authority." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) the turn of the century resulted din new subjects being added to the elementary school system in Quebec. Authority from outside the schools increasingly became that which structured the school systems and there was an increase in the "competitive examination of pupils and teachers alike.

Prentice and Theobald states that an analysis conducted by Martin Law of a British school teacher's diary during that was kept during World War II demonstrates how the workload of a woman teacher increased during such as crisis and how the "..extra responsibilities also brought a measure of additional power to the teacher in question, as she and her community responded to national priorities and demands.

But local authorities were quick to reduce that power when it was no longer backed up by a national agenda at the war's end." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Prentice and Theobald relate that there was general confusion concerning the social position and identity of the occupation of teacher. Elementary school teachers were largely women and this was "at the core of confusion about the social position and identity of the occupation.

Just as they occupied a middle ground between professional and industrial workers, women teachers were torn between the image of true womanhood and their position as paid members of the labor force." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) According to Prentice and Theobald "supportive as the feminist movement was to the teachers who organized in Canada, it does not appear to have provided a genuinely alternative vision of the woman teacher's role in society or in the labor force." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Contained in the work of Prentice and Theobald is the writings of Joyce Senders Pedersen entitled: "Schoolmistresses and Headmistresses: Elite and Education in Nineteenth-Century England" which relates that the accounting of "real-life ladies who kept fashionable private schools in the early nineteenth century are...difficult to come by.

A handful of biographies and autobiographies of such schoolmistresses exist, and they figure now and then in studies of eminent women who happened to attend their schools." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) Pedersen states that the only attempt at a systematic survey of the conditions of early schoolmistresses is that conducted by the Taunton Commission, a report that was issued in 1867-8 in England.

Mid-century it is stated that as the movement to establish colleges and public schools for females was occurring "a new category of female teacher appeared -- the public school headmistress." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) VII.

Academic Attainment of Teachers Becomes an Important Issue It is related that as the century moved forward and as education at colleges became a requirement for gaining a public school post of a desirable nature, "the teacher's own academic achievements increasingly became a matter of public record." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) the differences in the private and public headmistresses is stated by Pedersen and includes the following differences: (1) the private schoolmistress aspired to a leisured amateur role in a secluded quasi-domestic setting, the public school heads aimed rather to secure professional recognition and sought distinction in the public sphere; (2) the objective of private schoolmistresses was that of grooming pupils for a largely leisured role suited to a private setting however, the public school heads...considered themselves professional people and placed more emphasis on academic achievement." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) That which these two types of teachers had in common was that of aspiring to elite status "desiring to dissociate themselves from the mass of middle classes." (Prentice and Theobald, 1991) VIII.

The IODE and the Schools in Canada between 1900 to 1945 Nancy M. Sheehan writes in the work entitled: "Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Practice: The IODE and the Schools in Canada, 1900-1945" that the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) took to heart the vision of Empire expressed by Frederick George Scott, a vision not only imperialist and racists, but also by today's standards, class biased, sexist and patriarchal.

A closer look at the patriotic educational philosophy, pedagogy, and practice of the Order may help us to better understand the Canadian society of the time and the role of women in it, and, in general, the complex interplay of class, race, and gender within the context of schooling." (Sheehan, 1991) The IODE held a great interest in the schools and in promoting the education of school children and involvement of their families in their schooling. The IODE's interest in schools was simultaneous to the new education movement.

The Minister of Education for Ontario is stated to have endorsed "a national patriotic scheme of education" and the IODE is stated to have "immediately began to suggest programs for the day, offer prizes for 'imperial' activity to be presented at the ceremony (Empire Day) and volunteer its members to address schools and provide them with 'Empire Day' materials." (Sheehan, 1991) The new education movement is stated to have "introduced.