3: Participants’ Stories (I): The 2018–2019 Cohort (PRE-COVID-19)

This is the first of two chapters in which we present mini-biographies of the 20 women interviewed for the study. The sample included 11 women from the 2018–2019 cohort of initial teacher education (ITE) students (see Table 2), and a further 9 from the 2019–2020 cohort. Vignettes of the 2018–2019 (pre-COVID-19) cohort are presented in this chapter. In Chapter 4, we present the stories of the 2019–2020 cohort, whose ITE programme was disrupted mid-year by the pandemic restrictions.

Our main research question when we started the two-year study was ‘How do STMs describe their experiences of combining the ITE year and motherhood?’. Each story presented in Chapters 3 and 4 outlines a summary of the unique motivations, circumstances and experiences of individual student teachers. The first of our subsidiary research questions asked ‘What do they perceive to be the challenges they face as student teachers and mothers?’ The mini-biographies provide a flavour of the challenges each woman experienced, as they tried to manage their dual role as student teachers and parents. In response to our second subsidiary research question, ‘What factors sustain them through the challenges?’, the stories also include brief details of the factors the women saw as key in supporting them to get through the course. The mini-biographies featured in Chapters 3 and 4 provide a summary overview of each participant’s experiences and perceptions and include some very brief, direct quotes. Extracts and longer quotations from the women’s accounts are included in subsequent chapters, providing more detailed and in-depth insights into their struggles, their sources of support and their agency.