* How do the life histories of women teachers illuminate the gendered nature of the teaching profession?

* How do women teachers negotiate their own sense of self against/within cultural stereotypes of teachers?

Situated within current feminist/poststructuralist theories regarding the 'subject', this book takes seriously the lives of women teachers. Drawing on the life histories of three teachers, it explores their narrative strategies to author themselves as active agents within and against the essentializing discourses of teaching. The complex and contradictory ways in which these women construct themselves as subjects, while simultaneously disrupting the notion of a unitary subject, provide new ways to think about subjectivity, resistance, power and agency. The implications of this reconceptualization for feminist theorizing, curriculum theory and life history research are woven throughout the book.