This study of women teachers at two welfare schools for ethnic minority students in Northern Thailand employs ethnographic methods to find answers to the following research questions. (1) How do official educational policies define the work of the women teachers at the welfare schools? (2) How do the women teachers' practices define their work at the welfare schools? (3) How do the women teachers perceive and articulate their understanding of their work at the welfare schools?

A historical account of educational policies in Thailand, along with official documents describing the mission and methods of the welfare schools, provide the background for ethnographic data consisting of interviews with school personnel; teacher focus groups; and participant observation of classes and school activities. Discourse analysis of the data reveals a range of teacher responses on three selected themes: the enforcement of codes governing physical appearance and other aspects of students' lives, the enculturation mission of the welfare schools, the women teachers' own strategies for constructing a public, professional identity in the context of a patriarchal society where teaching is one of the primary public functions available to women.

The study reveals that individual teachers perceive various degrees of harmony and dissonance between their own sense of professional purpose and the duties prescribed for them by the state's mission. Similarly, individual teachers devise their own ways to exert professional agency and to negotiate conflicts between the state's mandates and their own personal convictions about their work. Finally, the study examines how teachers employ the discourse of maternal identity in justifying their work, both as it accords with state mandates and as it resists them.