“Probably a little lady like you would not want to be called Doctor”: Female Normal School Instructors in Canada, c. 1925 – 1950

Abstract

Despite the rising number of published studies exploring the experiences of women as teachers, grade school administrators, and faculty and students of higher education institutions, few studies investigate the history of female normal school instructors. We have begun to address this gap as part of a large-scale, SSHRC-funded study examining the history of teacher education across Canada. In this paper, we present the lives and contributions of four female normal school instructors whose experiences illuminate themes we uncovered by employing Rebecca Coulter’s ideas arising from her examination of Donalda Dickie’s “power of practice” — themes including: developing practice with intentionality; doing through practice: reaching down, up, and out; and gender constraints circulating in early- to mid-twentieth century Canada.