User:Katie3byea/sandbox

Feminist Pedagogy

History
The term feminist pedagogy was coined by Judy Chicago, in the film No Compromise: Lessons in Feminist Art with Judy Chicago. It is defined as a set of epistemological assumptions, teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships grounded in feminist theory. To apply this philosophy in the classroom, feminist scholars must critically engage in dialogue and reflection about both what and how they teach, as well as how who they are affects how they teach. This pedagogical framework is particularly challenging as it encompasses varied complexities, while bringing a critical perspective to the classroom. Feminist pedagogy involves more than teaching; it creates a scholarship of teaching because it brings “connected learning” into the very heart of women’s studies as a research field. It identifies the practical applications of feminist theory, while promoting the importance of social change, specifically within the institutional hierarchy found in academia.

“Like Freire’s libratory pedagogy, feminist pedagogy is based on assumptions about power and consciousness-raising, acknowledges the existence of oppression as well as the possibility of ending it, and foregrounds the desire for and primary goal of social transformation. However feminist theorizing offers important complexities such as questioning the notion of a coherent social subject or essential identity, articulating the multifaceted and shifting nature of identities and oppressions, viewing the history and value of feminist consciousness-raising as distinct from Freirean methods, and focusing as much on the interrogation of the teacher’s consciousness and social location as the student’s.“ [Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward]

Boxer observes, “perhaps more important for its potential to achieve long-range and deep-seated institutional change is the challenge to women's studies doctoral training posed by ‘connected learning,’ learning that transcends customary dichotomies between academic knowledge and people’s lives and that is said by students to be a—if not the—primary attraction of the field” (Boxer, “Remapping,” 391). Like the intersection between cross-cultural and interdisciplinary that identifies the best women’s studies research, “connecting learning to life outside the classroom explicitly introduces political and ethical issues and transgresses borders that conventionally divide concepts, modalities, disciplines, departments, and communities” (Boxer, “Remapping,” 392).

Principles of feminist pedagogy
In Feminist Pedagogy: Identifying Basic Principles, Myria W. Allen, Kandi L. Walker, and Lynne M. Webb devise a comprehensive overview of feminist pedagogy and identify its six principles. They state that, “The purpose of the present essay is to review the extant literature on feminist pedagogy to distill its basic principles.” These principles consist of:


 * a reformation of the relationship between professor and student;
 * empowerment;
 * building community;
 * privileging voice;
 * respecting the diversity of personal experience; and
 * challenging traditional pedagogical notions.

Reformation
This way of teaching offers reformation of the typical relationship between an instructor and student, where the teacher is perceived to be an omniscient and authoritative figure and the student as the passive recipient of knowledge. Feminist Pedagogy is displayed when power and control becomes shared between the students and teacher. It is an active, collaborative classroom where risk-taking is encouraged; where intellectual excitement abounds; and where power is viewed as energy, capacity, and potential, rather than domination.

Empowerment
Empowerment is said to be the primary goal of Feminist Pedagogy. Empowerment involves the principles of democracy and shared power. Feminist Pedagogy challenges the view that education is a neutral cognitive process. Education either functions as an instrument facilitating students' integration and conformity into the logic of the present system, or it becomes "the practice of freedom" teaching men and women to deal critically and creatively with reality and to learn to participate in transforming their world. The practice of freedom emerges through empowerment, yet the patriarchal model generally neglected issues such as empowerment, feelings, and experiences.

Building Community
Feminist Pedagogy is concerned with building community and cooperation within the classroom as well as between the classroom and its broader environment. Developing a community of growth and caring is a key to critical/feminist education. Since feminism values community and equality, building a trusting environment in which all members are respected and have an equal opportunity to participate is at its core.

Privileging Voice
Privileging the individual voice as a way of knowing. Feminist Pedagogy encourages authority in others and views knowledge as constructed and culture-bound. It fostering multiple authorities, which allows different classroom dynamics and voices to emerge. As authority shifts from student to instrucotor, students can interact and ask questions as their feedback is actively sought and incorporated in the classroom dynamic. As such the relationship of student and instructor is less intimidating and more approachable.

Respecting the Diversity of Personal Experience
A community of students and teachers who work closely with one another and respect one another's sociohistorical development challenges hierarchical relations of schooling and involves social bonding within more democratic relations fundamental to schooling as a forum for critical democracy. Feminist theory privileges personal lived experiences as the basis for analysis, theory generation, activism, and research. Thus, a feminist pedagogy involves an emphasis on personal experience and validation, such a perspective results in several positive outcomes, that including increased respect, enhanced empathy, better critical thinking skills, and broader understanding of truths.

Challenging Traditional Pedagogical Notions
Embedded within the previously discussed five principles is a sixth principle: challenging traditional views and practices. Feminist Pedagogy challenges the notion that knowledge and teaching methods can be value free. Schools reproduce and reinforce the social construction of gender through the dichotomization of nurturance and autonomy, public and private, and masculine and feminine. Further, feminist teachers challenge the origins of ideas and theories, the positions of their promoters, and the factors influencing how knowledge comes to exist in its present form.

= tba=

Paulo Freire calls "education as the practice of freedom" Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Feminist pedagogy can only be liberatory if its its truly revolutionary because the mechanisms of appropriation within white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy are able to co-opt with tremendous ease that which merely appears radical or subversive." bell hooks