La pédagogie féministe : sens et mise en action pédagogique (original) (raw)

The Challenges of Using a Feminist Pedagogical Approach

Gender and Learning in Rwanda

The introduction of a pathbreaking new master’s degree in Gender, Culture, and Development required a pedagogy to match its program contents. Since the aim of the program was to cultivate the next generation of leaders with the knowledge, vision, and skills to not only implement the UN Millennium Development Goals but to set the future goals and agenda, students needed to experience an educational setting that was empowering. As such, we introduced feminist pedagogy into the first seminar, defining feminist pedagogy as the ‘extent to which a community of learners is empowered to act responsibly toward one another and the subject matter and to apply that learning to social action’ (Shrewsbury, 1997, pp. 166–173). But how do we introduce feminist pedagogy in a large class where many students had previously been subjected to the passive, rote memorization teaching utilized in most educational systems in which adult students would have participated, especially given the popularity of wh...

Feminist pedagogies in a time of backlash

Gender and Education, 2019

Gender equity in Australian schooling is no longer the policy focus that it once was. Within the contemporary secondary schooling system, teachers can find it challenging to enact feminist pedagogies. Using a narrative approach, we explore the experiences of two secondary teachers in Queensland. These teachers articulate the realities of using feminist pedagogies in a time dominated by reactionary politics and market-based schooling. Their stories suggest that their use of feminist pedagogies: is shaped by their feminist identities; have made them attuned to the gender politics of their school context; and can generate safe classroom spaces. The struggles and successes that they describe, as well as the confrontations and uncertainties that they face, reveal that while not easy, it is possible to utilise feminist pedagogies in a time of backlash.

Uncovering Our Feminist Pedagogy

What does it mean to be a feminist educator? How would we know if we were? We call ourselves feminist teachers and yet we have not focused on this identification and its influence on our teaching in some time. In this self-study, we set out to look at our practice-using co/autoethnography. As our study progressed, we began to realize that our research methodology seemed to align more with feminist principles than did our teaching. We became increasingly aware of how our methodology illuminated areas of our practice that may well have remained hidden. With our attention now on co/autoethnography itself, with its embrace of the autobiographical notion in sociopolitical context and an evolving epistemology, we were attentive to how co/autoethnography is itself a feminist research methodology. As we retrace our journey to this realization, we share this co/autoethnographic self-study. Are you talking, Monica? No, I'm listening. (Skype conversation, 1 February 2012) We express, display, make claims for who we are-and who we would like to be-in the stories we tell and how we tell them. In sum, we perform our identities. (Mishler, 1999, p. 19) As the particular people and the teachers we are, our identities are important. We engage in our practice as teacher educators from perspectives developed and undeveloped through experience, dialogue, and reflection that inform to various degrees who we are as teacher educators. For us, a central identity is as feminists and as feminist pedagogues. Our research began when we looked at ourselves and wondered: are we who we think we are? In other words, how do we define what it means to be a feminist teacher? In this article, we discuss how we came to see ourselves and our pedagogy differently, examining our practice using co/autoethnography. Here, we tell the story of our collaborative exploration of our teaching as feminist educators through the intermingling of narratives from our co/autoethnography to recreate rather than simply describe our unique research process. Unlike a traditional research paper, which is often reported in a particular order such as research question, context, literature review, method, findings, and conclusions, here our findings are discussed as the different phases of the self-study unfold. This unique style of writing research is an attempt to put into practice our emergent poststructural feminist beliefs (Lather,

Pitfalls of feminist pedagogy

2021

The #RhodesMustFall movement highlighted the demand for critical pedagogy in the South African academy and feminist lecture halls have since been among the spaces that have offered this alternative. This article documents the findings of a study that sought to investigate the journey and experiences of second-year students taking Feminist Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand. Based on the findings, I argue that while feminist pedagogy has made great strides at creating and fostering learning environments that are safe, de-hierarchised, and dialogical, it has also overlooked the extent to which, in some respects, it falls short on delivering on its liberatory promise. I highlight how questions around the demands for de-hierarchized classrooms, 'safe spaces, and politics of 'bodies that belong' compromise its liberatory potential. Failing to recognise and remedy these shortcomings, I argue that feminist pedagogy suffers from what I have termed Reverse Theoretical Dysmorphia.

Putting Feminist Pedagogy to the Test

Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2000

Critics of women's studies (WS) have charged that WS teaching overemphasizes students' personal experience and is overly politicized. They claim further that WS classes discourage critical, independent thinking and stifle open, participatory learning, causing student dlssatisfaction. This study provides empirical ebidence of the process of WS teaching from the perspective of 111 teachers and 789 of their students from 32 campuses in the United States. Contrary to WS critics, WS faculty and students reported strong emphases on critical thinkindopen-mindedness and participatory learning and relatively weaker emphases on personal experience and political understanding/ activism. In addition, student ratings of positive class impact were higher for WS than non-WS classes. The results support the pedagogic distinctiveness of women's studies.

New frontiers of feminist education: challenging the presumptions of epistemological and rationalist patriarchy in the context of emancipatory pedagogy

2010

This study builds on and contributes to work in the area of educational epistemology and feminist theory. The aim of this thesis is to provide a deeper perception of the potential role which feminist thought can continue to play within the educational context. To advance this critical exploration, I endeavour to provide a tolerably coherent account of the dominant epistemological framework within which many feminist presumptions have emerged. Given that it is popularly believed that the goals of feminism have been met and thus that feminism, especially in the educational context, is no longer such a pressing issue, I seek to demonstrate why such considerations are still applicable in the so-called ‘post-feminist’ era. One of my central objectives in this thesis will be to urge strongly that this is a temptation to be resisted, and I try to show why we should do so. Although the feminist movement has done a great deal to advance the cause of the emancipation of women, a close examina...