Of sheep's pluck and science exhibitions: the professional life of Mother Bernard Towers RSM (1883-1963)

摘要

An examination of the professional lives of women science teachers presents an opportunity to consider ways in which women became 'knowledge purveyors' and to reflect on the extent to which they challenged contemporary boundaries about what science women should know. An analysis of the life of a woman science teacher who was also a 'professed' religious illuminates the complexity of a professional life shaped by an overlay of vocation and employment. Mother Bernard Towers's teaching life extended over the greater part of the twentieth century. As a science teacher she was influenced by changing understandings of the gendered science curriculum and the cultural and religious environment in which she lived. At the same time she challenged contemporary constraints on the teaching of science to girls, helped her pupils gain access to high-status 'hard' science options and expanded the kinds of science that they could expect to know.