Interest in progressive education and feminist pedagogy has gained a significant following in current educational reform circles. Founding Mothers and Others examines the female founders of progressive schools and other female educational leaders in the early twentieth century and their schools or educational movements. All of the women led remarkable lives and their legacies are embedded in education today. The book examines the lessons to be learned from their work and their lives. The book also analyzes whether their leadership styles support contemporary feminist theories of leadership that argue women administrators tend to be more inclusive, democratic, and caring than male administrators. Through an examination of these women, this book looks critically at the ways in which the leaders' administrative styles and behaviors lend support to feminist claims.

Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South follows a Civil War orphan’s transformation from a Southside Virginia public school teacher to a nationally known progressive educator and feminist. In this vital intellectual biography, Rebecca S. Montgomery places feminism and gender at the center of her analysis and offers a new look at the postbellum movement for southern educational reform through the life of Celeste Parrish. Because Parrish’s life coincided with critical years in the destruction and reconstruction of the southern social order, her biography provides unique opportunities to explore the links between southern nationalism, reactionary racism, and gender discrimination. Parrish’s pursuit of higher education and a professional career pitted her against male opponents of coeducation who regarded female and black dependency as central to southern regional distinctiveness. When coupled with women’s lack of formal political power, this resistance to gender equality discouraged progress and lowered the quality of public education throughout the South. The marginalization of women within the reform movement, headed by the Conference for Education in the South, further limited women’s contributions to regional change. Although men welcomed female participation in grassroots organization, much of women’s work was segregated in female networks and received less public acknowledgement than the reform work conducted by men. Despite receiving little credit for their accomplishments, by working on the margins, women were able to use the southern movement and its philanthropic sponsors as alternate sources of influence and power. By exploring the consequences of gender discrimination for both educational reform and the influence of southern progressivism, Rebecca S. Montgomery contributes a nuanced understanding of how interlocking hierarchies of power structured opportunity and influenced the shape of reform in the U.S. South.

In 1896, John Dewey established the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago - an experimental school designed to test his ideas in the reality of classroom practice. Through a collective portrait of four of the school’s teachers Women Educators in the Progressive Era examines the struggles and satisfactions of teaching at this innovative school, and situates the school community in the context of Progressive Era experimental impulses in Chicago and the nation. This book reassesses the implications of Dewey’s ideas for current efforts to improve schools, as it explores how the Laboratory School teachers participated in inquiry designed to advance educational thought and practice.

In this collection of informative essays, Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye bring together work by such notable scholars as Ellen Carol DuBois, Alice Kessler-Harris, Barbara Sicherman, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn to illuminate the lives and labor of American women from the late nineteenth century to the early 1920s. Revealing the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class, the authors explore women's accomplishments in changing welfare and labor legislation; early twentieth century feminism and women's suffrage; women in industry and the work force; the relationship between family and community in early twentieth-century America; and the ways in which African American, immigrant, and working-class women contributed to progressive reform. This challenging collection not only displays the dramatic transformations women of all classes experienced, but also helps construct a new scaffolding for progressivism in general.

In the twenty-first century we speak of a geospatial revolution, but over one hundred years ago another mapping revolution was in motion. Women’s lives were in motion: they were playing a greater role in public on a variety of fronts. As women became more mobile (physically, socially, politically), they used and created geographic knowledge and maps. The maps created by American women were in motion too: created, shared, distributed as they worked to transform their landscapes. Long overlooked, this women’s work represents maps and mapping that today we would term community or participatory mapping, critical cartography and public geography. These historic examples of women-generated mapping represent the adoption of cartography and geography as part of women’s work. While cartography and map use are not new, the adoption and application of this technology and form of communication in women’s work and in multiple examples in the context of their social work, is unprecedented. This study explores the implications of women’s use of this technology in creating and presenting information and knowledge and wielding it to their own ends. This pioneering and original book will be essential reading for those working in Geography, Gender Studies, Women’s Studies, Politics and History.

In 1896, John Dewey established the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago - an experimental school designed to test his ideas in the reality of classroom practice. Through a collective portrait of four of the school’s teachers Women Educators in the Progressive Era examines the struggles and satisfactions of teaching at this innovative school, and situates the school community in the context of Progressive Era experimental impulses in Chicago and the nation. This book reassesses the implications of Dewey’s ideas for current efforts to improve schools, as it explores how the Laboratory School teachers participated in inquiry designed to advance educational thought and practice.