 | Mothers and Schooling: Poverty, Gender and Educational Decision-Making in Rural Kenya Subjects: Area Studies; Education; Development Studies Environment Social Work Urban Studies; Social Sciences; International & Comparative Education; Sociology of Education; Education; Gender Studies - Soc Sci; African Studies; Gender in Africa; African Development; African Education; Education & Development; Gender & Sexuality; This ground-breaking book opens new horizons in understanding educational decision-making and how schooling patterns are shaped by, and reshape, rural communities. It provides a humane portrait of the struggles faced by mothers in rural Kenya to educate their children, despite the 'free education policy'. Based on a prize-winning study examining mothers' attitudes to education in a rural Kenyan community, this vividly nuanced ethnographic work draws upon African feminist perspectives to describe the livelihoods and aspirations of 32 mothers responsible for over 180 children. It explores the effects of mothers' school histories and the constraining effects of land practices and patriarchal culture on their actions. Their school choice and engagement strategies reflect different facilitating environments, their educational values, the use of social mothering practices and reliance on kinship reciprocity. The findings illustrate the importance of recognising the diversity of mothers' situations within this small community and the pressures they face to be 'good mothers' who school their children. Mothers and Schooling highlights the importance of mothers' educational agency and is essential reading for anthropologists of education, those working in gender studies, poverty alleviation strategists, educational researchers, teachers and policy-makers who wish to improve the success of Education for All for the children of women living in Southern rural poverty. Fibian Lukalo is Director for Research at the National Land Commission, Kenya. She taught at Moi University, and has held a number of fellowships including the Vera Campbell Scholars Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Sante-Fe, New Mexico; The African Guest Researchers Fellowship at the Nordic African Institute in Uppsala, Sweden; and the Gender Institute programme at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Senegal. She received her PhD in sociology of education and international development from the University of Cambridge, UK. |
