Celebrating Women Educators & Philosophers Via Crowdsourcing

Guest post from David Loitz | Cross posted on The Cooperative Catalyst

The majority of teachers in this country are women, their impact on the history of education is vast, but only a few are covered in textbooks on education or talked about among the major thinkers in the history of education. Their wisdom, experience and action research in and out of the classroom has helped shape the history of education.

Until the 1970′s most books about education were written by men. When Vivian Gussin Paley, an early educator at the Lab School, wrote her first book, White Teacher, her work as an author/scholar was dismissed and chastised. Her fellow teachers and academics didn’t believe that it was the teacher’s place to study the lives of children she taught.

Action research is now taught in teachers colleges, but we still often forget to celebrate the work of women educators, for example, quotes by John Dewey show up daily on social media, but Helen Parkhurst, his contemporary and a pioneer in Progressive Education who created “the Dalton Plan”, is often forgotten.

We have some of the best voices in education at the Cooperative Catalyst and I thought it would be great to celebrate some of the women educators that inspire us, and celebrate some of the texts we look to and shape our own teaching, thinking and writing. I would like your help in creating a primer of women education philosophers and educators and/or wiki for students and new teachers.

We should be able to crowdsource more than 100 women educators and/or philosophers.  I am putting together a paragraph or two on each of them, along with annotations of some of their best work. Please help me by finding a woman you were inspired by and would like to write about. You can contribute at this link.

Here is the list so far ordered alphabetically by first name.

Adora Svitak Alice Miller Annetee Lareau Barbara Brodhagen bell hooks Betty Jones Beverly Daniel Tatum Carol Dweck Carol Gilligan Caroline Pratt Catherine Marshall Chris Athey  Deborah  Meier Diane Levin  Diane Ravitch Edith Abbott Eleanor Ruth Duckworth Elise Boulding Ellen Key Gayle Moller  Grace Llewellyn Helen Parkhurst. Jane Roland-Martin Jane Vella Jean Anyon Jill Ostrow Joan Almon Kirsten Olson Linda Darling-Hammond Linda Levstik Lisa Delpit Lisa Michelle Nielsen Lucy Calkins Lucy Sprague Mitchell Margaret Donaldson  Margaret McMillan  Margaret Wheatley Maria Montessori Maricela Oliva Marilyn Katzenmeyer Mary Leue Mary Pipher Mary Wollstonecraft  Maxine Greene Maya Angelou Michelle Fine Monika Hardy Nancy Atwell Nancy Sizer Nel Noddings Olivia Gude Paula White Gloria Ladson-Billings Rachael Kessler Rachel McMillan Rebeca Wild Riane Eisler Ruby Payne Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot Sophia Blanche Lyon Fahs Sue Palmer Susan Fleming  Susan Issacs Susan Ohanian Sydney Gurewitz Clemens Sylvia Ashton-Warner Vea Vecchi Virginia Lynn Fry Vivian Gussin Paley Zoe Weil

If you want to write about any of these women, you can contribute to this work at this link.