la pédagogie féministe / feminist pedagogy || introduction: feminist pedagogy: challenging the...

Introduction: Feminist Pedagogy: Challenging the NormativeAuthor(s): Linda Briskin and Rebecca Priegert CoulterSource: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 17, No. 3, LaPédagogie féministe / Feminist Pedagogy (Summer, 1992), pp. 247-263Published by: Canadian Society for the Study of EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1495295 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Society for the Study of Education is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.40 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:19:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=csse

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1495295?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Introduction

Feminist Pedagogy: Challenging the Normative

Linda Briskin york university Rebecca Priegert Coulter university of western ontario

As the twenty-first century approaches, education is re-emerging as a key arena of struggle for the Canadian women's movement. Feminist research and action focus on four main areas: access to institutions and programs, curriculum transformation, climate issues, and pedagogy. Although the last category provides the organizing theme for this special issue, feminist pedagogy cannot be understood in isolation from the other major concerns that have preoccupied feminist educators and activists.

I. THE CONTEXT OF FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

In Canada, as elsewhere, a major emphasis in women's education has been on access, first to educational institutions, and then to specific programs in institutions. Historically, most access campaigns have been waged around entry for women into secondary schools, universities, faculties of medicine and law, or technology and trades programs. By the end of the nineteenth century, girls were able to attend secondary schools in most provinces. In Ontario, for example, despite attempts to exclude girls from grammar schools in the 1860s, the next decade saw the female share of enrolment climb to about 50% after girls' right to a secondary education was secured by law in 1871 (Gidney & Millar, 1990). By 1890 many Canadian universities had opened their doors to women, albeit reluctantly, although as early as 1875 Mount Allison University became the first in the British Empire to graduate a woman (Prentice et al., 1988). Although women won the right to attend educational institutions, it must be remembered that their treatment and experiences inside schools and universities differed from men's. Sex segregation in some courses and programs, the hostility of male students, teachers, and professors, and discriminatory sex-based standards of accept- able behaviour and dress were pervasive. Elizabeth Smith, one of the first

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 17:3 (1992) 247



INTRODUCTION

female medical students at Queen's, likened her experience to being in a "furnace fiery & severe" (Prentice et al., 1988, p. 161).

In the simple sense of access as entry, many of the struggles have been won. However, questions of access remain very much alive for immigrant women seeking entry to English or French second-language programs, or for women wishing to train for non-traditional trades occupations. Access to education is elusive for women who live in poverty and cannot afford tuition fees, textbooks, or child care, and for women whose abusive partners forbid them to attend learning institutions. Where provincial social service regula- tions make it impossible for women on assistance to upgrade their qualifica- tions except in short-term and narrowly defined ways, access also is an issue.

Women teachers and professors have faced access issues within their profession. Today, although women make up the bulk of the teaching force in Canada, relatively few hold positions of educational leadership in schools and school systems (Rees, 1990). Even in Ontario, where school boards have been required to establish employment equity programs for women administrators and where the province has established a goal that would see 50% of vice-principalships, principalships, and superintendencies held by women by the year 2,000, women make up only a small percentage of the total pool of administrators currently employed by boards (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1990). Women make up less than 20% of the Canadian professoriate and are virtually absent in some faculties, such as engineering, and some depart- ments, such as physics (Statistics Canada, 1988).

Struggles to gain full access for women to educational institutions, programs, and professions were and are important. By the early 1970s, however, feminists realized that educational equity involved more than access. For example, although females were not barred from educational institutions, they did not enrol in the sciences, maths, or technical studies programs, they continued to seek employment in a narrow range of sex- typed jobs, and more men than women entered post-secondary institutions. The feminist critique of education began to extend to curriculum content and the experiences of girls and women in educational institutions. Initially, reform agendas emphasized elimination of sex-role stereotyping in textbooks, school programs, and career counselling. Some efforts were made to include information on women's achievements in the curriculum, often in the form of stories about great women. Role modelling and mentoring schemes proliferated as a way to encourage girls to enrol in science, mathe- matics, and technology courses.

For the most part, school systems and government policy initiatives continue to rely on these approaches, despite evidence that they are incom- plete or inadequate (Byrne, 1990; Light, Staton, & Bourne, 1989; Overall, 1987). In fact, Gaskell, McLaren, and Novogrodsky (1989) argue that most remedial programs designed to break stereotypes serve to "embed the notion of women's inferiority within educational policy" (p. 16). For example, girls

248



INTRODUCTION

are told to reject sex-role stereotypes and emulate women who have "made it" as engineers, scientists, or world-class athletes. Although girls may be motivated by a role model, they will feel it is their own fault if they fail precisely because the role model approach "gives the impression that sexual inequality is at an end, or on its way out" (Overall, 1987, p. 184). Remedial approaches such as role modelling "leave unchallenged the gender bias in the schools ... [and are based] on the assumption that girls must be changed. Men are the model of achievement, and compared to men, women don't measure up" (Gaskell et al., 1989, p. 16). At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the work done by classroom teachers, school boards, ministries of education, and teacher federations to eliminate sex-role stereotyping and improve girls' self-esteem has drawn attention to sexism in education and in society.

In the last dozen years or so, feminists have expanded the scope of educational inquiry and deepened our understanding and analysis of sexism and racism in the content and practices of education. As Claudie Solar explains in her paper, "Dentelle de pEdagogies feministes," feminists came to realize that "l'accessibilit6 n'est pas suffisante car il y a toujours repro- duction de la division sociale des sexes.... [C]e que les femmes ont gagn6, c'est l'acc6s A l'6ducation des gar$ons ... et la pens6e 6ducative ... omet les femmes" (p. 268). The analysis of sexism rooted in the sex-roles para- digm and emphasizing stereotyping as the "problem," was criticized for indi- vidualizing and over-simplifying complex issues, and camouflaging the ways in which the content and practices of gendered education are linked to other material and ideological aspects of life. As Kenway and Willis (1990) observe,

The complex, contradictory and dynamic nature of society and education is lost in any analysis which focuses on the individual and . . . inevitably such analysis cannot generate a program for educational change with any likelihood of contrib- uting to wider-ranging social change. (pp. 236-237)

Feminism is about social change; it is a politic of transformation. Femin- ism recognizes education both as a site for struggle and as a tool for change- making. Hoping both to change education and to use education as one strategy for changing society, feminists were by 1980 developing a sophisti- cated critique of the curriculum, the learning environment, and pedagogy. In curriculum, the absence of material on women's experiences had already been noted but now the critique expanded to challenge the very foundations of knowledge, the methods for creating knowledge and for deciding what counted as knowledge. Feminists unmasked curriculum content to reveal that it was androcentric and reflected the specific political interests of white, privileged males. A transformed curriculum would take account of the diversity of experience based on gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, and promote an inclusivity of voices and participation. This vision, both optimistic and empowering, is made possible by a flourishing feminist

249



INTRODUCTION

scholarship and a feminist politic that seeks links between educational institutions and community groups.

Feminists have proposed several models of curriculum transformation. One of the earliest was Peggy McIntosh's (1983) model of five interactive phases. She argued that curriculum must move from the first phase, where women are ignored altogether; to the second phase, which recognizes great women of achievement; to the third phase, which "adds women and stirs" them into the traditional disciplines; to the fourth phase, which challenges the construction, assumptions, claims, and methodologies of the disciplines; and finally, to the fifth phase, where curriculum inclusive of all people is created. Karen Warren (1989) has outlined what she sees as some weak- nesses in McIntosh's model and proposes a more comprehensive seven- phase model that consciously and explicitly takes account of race/ethnicity and class as well as gender and sexual orientation. In addition, Warren draws our attention to the ways in which a focus on the learning environment and climate issues links curriculum and pedagogical concerns.

The term "chilly climate" was popularized by Roberta M. Hall and Bernice R. Sandler (1982) as a descriptor of the learning environment women experienced in classrooms and other areas of schools, colleges, and universities. In Canada, after continual political action on the part of the women's movement inside and outside educational institutions, considerable attention is now being paid at the policy, legal, and administrative levels to the issue of sexual harassment and violence against women. Most universities, many school systems and teacher federations, and some faculty associations and student organizations have developed educational programs on sexual harassment, date rape, and other forms of violence women students and teachers experience.

Other elements of the chilly climate have received less concerted attention. Sexist joking in staffrooms, classrooms, and hallways, and the deroga- tion of women and of women's achievements are part of a wider pattern of gender harassment. The inordinate amount of attention focussed on white male students, the differences in the nature of questions and in the quality of teacher responses directed towards female and male students, and male strategies of interruption and vocality that silence women are other examples of the ways in which girls and women experience the chilly climate in education (Backhouse, Harris, Michell, & Wylie, 1989; Burgess, 1989; Grant, 1992; Hall & Sandler, 1982; Harris, 1991; LaFrance, 1991; Lexicon, 1991; Mirza, 1992; Ramazanoglu, 1987; Squirrel, 1989). This evidence points to the fact that educational institutions are profoundly gendered and reflect patriarchal forms of dominance and control in their practices (Weis, 1990). The naming of this reality has focussed new attention on classroom dynamics and classroom practices. Feminist pedagogy, the fourth element in the feminist education agenda, emerges as a crucial change-making strategy.

Although the feminist curriculum transformation project provides a vision of reconstructed and inclusive content for education, feminist pedagogy

250



INTRODUCTION

offers a new view of teaching and learning. Feminist pedagogy acknowl- edges that the classroom is a site of gender, race, and class inequalities, and simultaneously a site of political struggle and change. It recognizes that teaching and learning have the potential to be about liberation.

This emphasis on social change recognizes feminist pedagogy as a form of feminist practice having its roots in the women's movement .... The intrinsic link between feminist pedagogy and organizing for social change reflects the connection between the classroom and the world outside it. (Briskin, 1990, p. 23)

In its concern for social change and liberation, feminist pedagogy is situated firmly within the discourse on progressive education and critical pedagogy. In her paper, Solar traces some of the ways in which feminist pedagogy has been influenced and shaped by the traditions of other human- ist and radical pedagogies. In general, radical/critical pedagogies view education as having the potential to serve as a form of conscientization and empowerment and a tool for social change. Feminist pedagogy alone, however, grants primacy of attention to women and to the intersections between gender, race, and class in educational endeavours. Brookes (1990), for example, notes in a critique of some of Freire's work, that "an explicit gender analysis" is missing (p. 27). Ellsworth (1989) observes that "[t]he lessons learned from feminist struggles to make a difference through defiant speech offer both useful critiques of the assumptions of critical pedagogy and starting points for moving beyond its repressive myths" (p. 311). Thus, although feminist pedagogy is part of the tradition of progressive and critical pedagogies, it challenges them, as well.

What feminist pedagogy is and what it might become are subjects taken up by all the articles in this special issue. Readers will be struck by the fact that these articles deal primarily with post-secondary education and more particularly, with women's studies. It is worth asking why this is the case. Several explanations occur to us. Certainly, the growing legitimacy, longev- ity, and institutionalization of women's studies in the university setting has provided a location where attention to and experimentation with new pedagogical practices is encouraged. Further, in the university setting, teachers are by definition also researchers; if they are self-reflexive and interested in researching feminist pedagogy, they might be inclined to turn their attention to their own teaching practices or those around them. In the schools, teaching and research are split off from one another, with the expectation that the initiative for research on schooling will come from the Faculties of Educa- tion. Perhaps this special issue will provide some encouragement for those in the Faculties of Education to undertake research on anti-sexist and feminist pedagogies with teachers in the schools, drawing on the traditions of feminist methods and participatory and action research.

That debates about feminist pedagogy are occurring most frequently in the university, however, focusses attention on teaching in institutions that have traditionally undervalued it. This may turn out to be significant, as univer-

251



INTRODUCTION

sities increasingly face scrutiny in the area of teaching. The recent report of the Smith Commission (1991), for example, urged universities to take their teaching mission more seriously. We only wish that Smith had not ignored the innovative teaching and the reflection on teaching occurring in women's studies. Unfortunately, his is just another in a long line of reports that ignore the importance of women's studies, feminism, and gender-specific experience.

II. THEMES

"Les p6dagogies ftministes sont en devenir." Claudie Solar, "Dentelle de pedagogies feministes" (p. 279)

Feminist pedagogies challenge the normative. Like the earlier debates (alluded to above) that protested what was normalized and naturalized in traditional views of women and of education, feminist pedagogies contest and reconstruct our understanding of these issues. At the same time, theorization of feminist pedagogy has reached a level of complexity that demands we engage self-reflexively with what has become normative inside this discourse. We hope that such a critical perspective will be one of this special issue's important contributions. These articles are a graphic reminder that both the theorization and practice of feminist pedagogy are very much in process, a process that struggles with a diversity of voices and often contradictory feminist perspectives. Feminist pedagogy is not a single discourse; as with feminisms, we are elaborating multiple feminist pedagogies.

The articles in this issue raise critical issues, but were not chosen to be "representative." Many important issues are not addressed directly. Rather, these articles represent one snapshot of work being done in Canada; as editors, a richer sense of the work-in-progress unfolded as we reviewed 40 papers and responded to close to 100 letters of inquiry about the scope and focus of the special issue.

Despite the initial appearance of eclecticism, recurring themes weave the articles together: experience and narrative in the classroom; the relationship between theory and experience; nurturing and its connection to authority; facilitating and encouraging diverse voices; negotiating power dynamics; and elaborating pedagogical techniques. Each paper touches on these issues, reconstituting and challenging our understanding of them.

These articles also provide us with a perspective from which to consider key issues of feminism and to develop a political practice that takes account of race, class, sexual orientation, and gender. In the struggle to elaborate a feminist pedagogy, we confront the mega-questions facing us as teachers, as intellectuals, as political activists: about postmodernism, diversity, agency, resistance, multiple voices, centre and margin, power and authority, and the limits of political programs as the basis for a successful political practice (parallel to the limits of techniques as the basis for a feminist pedagogy).

252



INTRODUCTION

Ann Manicom's extensive review essay, "Feminist Pedagogy: Transforma- tions, Standpoints, and Politics," examines conceptions of transformation, experience, collaboration, and authority. She resists what she identifies as "pedagogical romanticizing," challenges normative claims of feminist pedagogy, and by identifying the dilemmas in the feminist pedagogical approach, encourages feminists to look at the contradictions in our own pedagogical practice and theory. In so doing, she enhances our understanding and moves the debate forward. She also provides us with a way to re-read the individual articles, indeed to re-think many issues raised in the articles.

In discussing the articles, we have chosen to highlight the following themes-nurturing, experience, safety, power, and resistance-not because these are the only themes raised in the articles but because they contest some of the terrain currently mapped out in the discourse on feminist pedagogy.

NURTURING

Kathleen Martindale, in "Theorizing Autobiography and Materialist Feminist Pedagogy," discusses the unproblematized materalist discourse in so much literature on feminist pedagogy, a discourse that collapses nurturant mothering and teaching. This collapse perpetuates a class-specific understanding of the practices of mothering that pathologizes working-class mothering as "repressive." With respect to mothering and teaching, Martindale decon- structs the usual nurturing/repressive binary and interrupts the tendency to assume a connection between female, feminine, mothering, nurturing, and teaching. Indeed, this paper provides an intriguing point of reference to explore the relationship between teachers and mothers.

In a parallel discussion, Dawn Currie, in "Subject-ivity in the Classroom: Feminism Meets Academe," challenges what she calls the idealization of the university classroom and the image of herself as a maternal benefactor.

Although perhaps appealing, idealization of my relationship with students as a maternal benefactor conceals precisely what I am attempting to bring to consciousness as a goal of feminist pedagogy: full awareness of the nature of social relations that construct the knowing Subject....

Not only do maternal metaphors obscure very real differences between teacher and student, they promote a benevolent view of power relations in the classroom that can be misleading. Although we indeed may consciously treat our students with compassion and sensitivity, objectively we are part of a power structure. (pp. 352-353)

In thinking about nurturing in the classroom, we are also reminded that the classroom is a workplace, a workplace made invisible by transforming "female teachers, who are after all working professionals . . . into mothers or playmates" (Martindale, p. 334). Feminists also have had to struggle to

253



INTRODUCTION

make visible the fact that the household is a workplace and that domestic work is not just a "labour of love." We should take care not to lose sight of the parallels with the classroom and teaching.

All the articles give concrete evidence of how much "work" it is to teach from a feminist perspective. Feminist teachers enter the classroom with a heightened sense of the politics of power in the work of teaching and learning, and so seek ways to interrupt, interrogate, struggle with, and manage that power. Teaching may be a vocation but it is also work. Indeed, the discussion of nurturing and teaching has wider implications for understanding women's work in general, given the ovenrepresentation of women in other service jobs such as nursing, retailing, and clerical work. The tendency to see women's service work as not "real work" and more as an expression of women's nature has meant inadequate status attribution, discriminatory financial remuneration, and the undervaluation of skills necessary to such work.

Not only is the classroom a workplace, but teachers are always gendered, raced, and classed workers. As Homa Hoodfar graphically outlines in "Fem- inist Anthropology and Critical Pedagogy: The Anthropology of Classrooms' Excluded Voices," the classroom is like other workplaces where gender, race, and class privilege and disadvantage. As a result, minority women and men, and white women have to work harder to make the classroom function effectively. And like most women, women teachers face a double day of labour because of their responsibility for domestic work and child care.

The debate about nurturing and teaching prompts us to situate this discussion with reference to the discourse of familialism. The oft-used maternal metaphors in feminist pedagogy, and the image of teacher as midwife developed by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) do more than contribute to the invisibility of the classroom as workplace (Martindale) or idealize student-teacher relationships (Currie). We suggest that it is not possible to utilize maternal metaphors without implicitly engaging with the dominant discourse on the family. Drawing on the family metaphor in an unproblematized way hides the contradictions, repressiveness, and violence of family life that have been so fully exposed by feminist scholarship, and concomitantly hides the contradictions, repressiveness, and violence of classroom life. The pro-mother language in feminist pedagogy can ultimately bolster a romanticized and reactionary pro-family ideology.

EXPERIENCE

One of the major contributions of feminist scholarship has been the reclaim- ing of women's experience. Recovering, naming, and theorizing women's experience has been central to developing new knowledge, making the curriculum more relevant to women, and re-visioning research. The emphasis on experience also has been central to the political practice of the women's movement, heralded by the slogan "the personal is political," and to the teaching practices of feminist pedagogy.

254



INTRODUCTION

Many of the articles engage with the concept of experience; it is interesting to read Currie and Martindale with and against one another insofar as Currie employs a more structuralist analysis and Martindale a postmodernist approach. Both reject maternal and nurturing images and reach similar conclusions about power in the classroom. Yet they have quite different perspectives on the role of experience and subjectivity in classroom learning. Currie is concerned about subjectivity becoming subjectivism (p. 344) and experience becoming "epistemological relativism, whereby all/any criteria to adjudicate competing truth claims were deemed invalid" (p. 353). She draws on Harding's concept of "strong objectivity" and Code's discussion of "cognitive interdependence" to go beyond the binary of subjective and objective knowledge in order to develop a concept of "relational knowing" that connects the two (Currie, p. 245). Relational knowing reveals the under- lying structures of the subject, in opposition to the "connected knowing" of Belenky et al. (1986), which overly privileges the subject position. Currie's thinking has been motivated by the problematic of how to shift "from an experientially-based description of women's personal lives to theoretical abstraction about women's shared oppression and liberation" (p. 347).

By contrast, Martindale works with autobiography as a means both to theorize a materialist feminist pedagogy and to organize classroom learning. Further, she insists that students "not short-circuit personal disclosures in [texts] and in the classroom in order to silence alterity, but go full circle with personal accounts to reveal their contradictions" (p. 336).

Martindale uses the personal and the autobiographical as a means to nego- tiate discomfort and contradiction; Bluma Litner, Amy Rossiter, and Marilyn Taylor, in "The Equitable Inclusion of Women in Higher Education: Some Consequences for Teaching," teach through and with experience in a different way. They draw on what they call the narrative form as "the starting point in an inductive process of sense-making in the classroom" which, they believe, "facilitates the construction and integration of women's formulations of their experiences as part of academic dialogue" (p. 288). Central to their understanding of the narrative form is the importance of affirmation. In particular, affirmation involves "a practice of respect for women's knowledge" (p. 287).

In our view, uncritical acceptance of women's stories is an intervention that helps elicit experience for further critical analysis. By uncritical acceptance, we do not mean accepting a story as universal or without context. We mean accepting each student's right to her version. (p. 293)

They also note the importance of affirming the commonality of experience between students and teachers:

Significant affirmations can be communicated in small ways, sometimes even through a smile or a short, pleasant conversation about parking, the weather, and the like. These seemingly trivial exchanges are actually profoundly important

255



INTRODUCTION

acknowledgments that we share social space in which we are simply human beings on equal footing. (p. 295)

SAFETY

The interrogation of the model of nurturing feminist teacher opens up a provocative set of questions about classroom practices, in particular, about classroom safety. Many of the articles suggest that making the classroom safe for women and minority students is an important goal; certainly, this goal has been a common theme in the feminist pedagogical literature. Mani- com says, "Safety must be consciously constructed to allow women to speak of certain of their experiences" (pp. 378-379) and Litner, Rossiter, and Taylor say, "Safety in the classroom derives from students' treatment of each other as well as the teacher's treatment of students" (p. 297). But the re-evaluation of classroom nurturing suggests a re-examination of both the potential for and the definition of safety in the classroom.

The nurturing image suggests a teaching practice that mediates, supports, and smooths over conflicts. The rejection of nurturing does not, as Martin- dale reminds us, imply an acceptance of its binary opposite of "repressiveness" but rather implies an engagement with polarization and conflict in the classroom. Martindale concludes that "more overtly confrontational teaching ... has meant a more intense opening up of the contradictions within assigned readings and my students' and my own interventions in class" (p. 335). Martindale talks of her classes becoming less "comfortable" and draws on the experiences of bell hooks (1988), who says,

My classroom style is very confrontational. It is a model of pedagogy that is based on the assumption that many students will take courses from me who are afraid to assert themselves as critical thinkers, who are afraid to speak (especially students from oppressed and exploited groups). The revolutionary hope that I bring to the classroom is that it will become a space where they can come to voice. Unlike the stereotypical feminist model that suggests women best come to voice in an atmosphere of safety (one in which we are all going to be kind and nurturing), I encourage students to work at coming to voice in an atmosphere where they may be afraid or see themselves at risk. The goal is to enable all students, not just an assertive few, to feel empowered in a rigorous, critical discussion. Many students find this pedagogy difficult, frightening, and very demanding. They do not usually come away from my class talking about how much they enjoyed the experience. (p. 53)

Rejecting the link between safety and nurturing suggests alternative ways of bringing students to voice-ways that engage with conflict, contradiction, and competing voices. However, as Litner, Rossiter, and Taylor repeatedly remind us, bringing students to voice is fundamentally connected to respect for women's knowledge. Further, they insist on "respect[ing] students' choices about how they wish to participate in our classes" (p. 301).

256



INTRODUCTION

Reconceptualizing classroom safety gives us a particular entry point into how to clarify and elaborate "what works well"-a phrase that comes up numerous times in the articles in this issue. Martindale points out that the nurturing approach worked well with students; yet she concludes that "my apparent success, rather than my failure, began to trouble me" (p. 333). As teachers we want our classrooms "to work well," and yet increasingly this depends upon politicizing our way of thinking about teaching and learning. This means turning our attention to classroom power relations based on race, class, and gender.

POWER

All these articles speak to the issue of negotiating power in the classroom. Traditionally, discussions of classroom power focus on teachers who dis- criminate against students based on their race, class, sexual orientation, ability, age, ethnicity, or gender. We often incorrectly assume these teachers are white males and that only teachers have power in the classroom. Here we have need of a more multi-layered analysis.

Two other power axes necessarily complicate our understanding of teacher power: (1) student dynamics affecting the credibility and authority of teachers, especially women teachers and women of colour teachers; and (2) dynamics among students. Homa Hoodfar presents a powerful telling of the difficulties of minority teachers in the classroom that challenges the notion of undifferentiated teacher power-"what works for a white female teacher may not work for a black female teacher, regardless of a shared commitment to be critical" (p. 304). For example, she argues that

My acknowledging the inequalities in power relations between students and teachers is seen not as an attempt to point out institutionalized inequalities but as my not being confident as a teacher or as compensation for my lack of knowledge. In making room for dialogue, I am seen not as a liberal teacher experi- menting with or advocating a different pedagogy, but as someone lacking experience in controlling a class, or, worse yet, as someone too lazy to deliver more conventional lectures. (pp. 311-312)

Hoodfar's discussion complexifies the feminist debates, which Manicom explores in detail, about problems that women teachers, especially in the university setting, have encountered in claiming authority and expertise. Her exploration emphasizes that challenges to our authority and expertise are fundamentally about racial and sexual harassment. Through her insistence that techniques are "gendered and racialized" (p. 304), Hoodfar's account also forces us to consider the limits of a techniques-oriented approach to feminist pedagogy. Solar's discussion of the emergence of a lesbian feminist pedagogy, with publications that "ouvrent la voie et reclament la fin du silence sur et de l'omission des lesbiennes dans l'interaction pedagogique et le curriculum" (p. 277), suggests techniques are also "sexed." The classroom

257



INTRODUCTION

never escapes politics and power, as Martindale reminds us with her evoca- tive phrase that "[p]ower can't be wished away" (p. 330).

Discussions of classroom power must also turn attention to relationships among students. Litner, Rossiter, and Taylor talk of monitoring the classroom's daily life and promoting "the fabric of relationships" as a significant source of affirmation. "In contrast to typical university classes, where relationships are accidental outcomes, we propose a deliberate structure actively to promote relationships" (p. 294).

What is apparent, however, is that teachers' ability to promote these relationships depends upon a recognition of-indeed, an engagement with- the power dynamics among students. It is striking how little work on feminist pedagogy has taken full account of students' voices and of the power axes among students; however, researchers are increasingly turning their attention to these questions.

Power dynamics among students manage, constrain, and interrupt learning. Put another way, students are always gendered, raced, and classed subjects, and thus bring differential power and privilege to the classroom. Students reproduce gendered and raced power dynamics in their interactions with each other. These dynamics shape not only students' learning but also their participation, their risk taking, their sense of entitlement in the classroom. Although under the best of circumstances student interactions can involve affirmation, as frequently they involve competition, disavowal of knowledge of the other, and many techniques of silencing. Currie argues that the silencing of women is an "effect of power" rather than the "result of an educational practice founded on a masculine, adversarial style of discourse" (p. 352). This means techniques alone cannot solve the power imbalance in the classroom. What are the implications, then, for teaching practices? Or to put this question another way, what is the role of teachers and of students in shifting classroom power dynamics?

We would suggest the power of teachers as individuals to reconstitute these dynamics has been overestimated. Indeed, the power of students, especially white, middle-class heterosexual male students, to shape classroom dynamics may not be easily amenable to intervention by teachers, especially those teachers-minority women and men, and white women- who may face additional challenges to their authority. Teachers must accept the limits on their individual ability to shape their classrooms at the same time as they take up the challenge to work with the classroom as an environment collectively produced by teacher and students. For the teacher, this will mean developing interventionist strategies that "interrupt" and bring to consciousness classroom power dynamics. In fact, Manicom suggests a movement from an informing image of the feminist teacher as midwife or as translator to a new image of the teacher as "interrupter." In empirical and theoretical work, what needs development is an understanding of practices of "interruption" that engages not only with discriminatory practices but also with empowering strategies.

258



INTRODUCTION

At the same time, teachers must take on the leadership task of training students in anti-sexist intervention. Recognizing student power in the classroom means expanding our understanding of student agency to include student responsibility to produce, shape, and interrupt classroom power dynamics. As a result, teachers must organize classrooms in such a way that students themselves-as a collective deeply concerned about what limits or facilitates their own learning-challenge power dynamics.

Articles in this collection struggle to reconceptualize "power" and "empowerment" in the classroom. In particular, Litner, Rossiter, and Taylor articulate a gender-specific concept of empowerment for women in the university founded on acknowledgement of women's differences as a contribu- tion to knowledge.

The academy is a foreign world in subtle but pervasive ways. The subtleties make it possible, indeed obligatory, for both men and women to ignore the "non-fit" of women. Equitable inclusion will be accomplished when the academy is diverse in perspectives, priorities, and approaches, thus allowing all students to feel primordially at home in the academy regardless of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, age, and disability. (p. 287)

They argue that "[d]isempowerment is the experience of increased marginality and unacceptability" (p. 290); at the same time they recognize that "[i]t is erroneous to suggest empowerment is uniformly and exclusively positive, that it does not have its moments of pain and adversity" (p. 298).

Building on the discussion by Litner, Rossiter, and Taylor of empowerment, we suggest that a re-visioned theory of empowerment should incorpor- ate two points. First, dynamics of power and empowerment are intricately intertwined. Student empowerment, therefore, will depend upon negotiating, not avoiding, the power dynamics discussed above. Second, empowerment must be conceptualized in collective as well as individual terms. This means that individual empowerment-an important goal-depends upon a transformation in the social relations of power. Such an approach emphasizes social change and provides a contrast to the tendency to seek social change solely through individual empowerment.

RESISTANCE

Another facet of the debate about power is the discussion of resistance and agency. Although the concept of resistance is not fully developed in any article in this volume, the numerous references to it are tantalizing and provocative. They suggest multiple meanings and forms of resistance that need exploration. Three assumptions should influence such an exploration: first, both teachers and students resist; second, patterns of resistance are race-, class-, and gender-specific; and third, the sources of student resistance may come from multiple political and/or personal locations and is not necessarily progressive or reactionary.

259



INTRODUCTION

The resistance of powerful white male teachers to transformation of the education system should be analyzed, but so should the resistance of women and of feminist teachers to challenges from students about patterns of nurturing and authority, bias in pedagogical practices, or limits in curriculum choices. Currie reminds us not to equate student resistance with a loss of our own authority (p. 348). This equation is understandable given challenges to the authority of minority teachers; however, the solipsism that understands student response only in terms of our teaching and our choice of curriculum can make it difficult to make sense of student resistance that may have its roots in complex social patterns outside our control.

Patterns of resistance are gender- and race-specific. It is perhaps self- evident that forms of resistance by male and female students differ and that complex patterns of resistance among male students need gender-specific analysis. But hooks (1988) reminds us that race also produces specific forms of resistance:

[W]hite students would tell me that it was important not to question, challenge or resist. Their tolerance level seemed much higher than my own or that of other black students. Critically reflecting on the differences between us, it was apparent that many of the white students were from privileged class backgrounds. Tolerat- ing the humiliations and degradations we were subjected to in graduate school did not radically call into question their integrity, their sense of self-worth.... White students were not living daily in a world outside campus life where they also had to resist degradation, humiliation. To them, tolerating forms of exploita- tion and domination in graduate school did not evoke images of a lifetime spent tolerating abuse. They would endure certain forms of domination and abuse, accepting it as an initiation process that would conclude when they became the person in power. (pp. 58-59)

The articles in this special issue identify other patterns of student resistance that underline the significance of race and class privilege. Hoodfar explores the resistance of feminist activist students to her critique of the conventional feminist approach to Third World women, a critique that engages students' own understanding of their place and future within feminism. Although Martindale points out that most resistance she encounters is from students who would describe themselves as feminists, Currie also identifies student resistance "to the domination of feminism by privileged women" (p. 358).

Currie talks about being "deeply disturbed by resistance to an approach grounded in criticism and rejection of patriarchal knowledge" (p. 348) and Hoodfar challenges the "implicit assumption in much current critical pedagogy literature that students are necessarily willing agents who welcome unconventional classroom interactions and a critical approach to the social structure" (p. 309). Hoodfar reminds us that our agendas for students' learning may not coincide with theirs; they may have more concrete desires to get degrees and well-paying employment.

Central to the goals of feminist pedagogical practice is the "transformation of the student from passive recipient of 'truth' to a subject actively

260



INTRODUCTION

engaged in constructing knowledge" (Currie, p. 342). We suggest this struggle for agency produces complex patterns of resistance. In particular, women students often resist the tendency to characterize women as victims-a standpoint found frequently in both mainstream and women's studies classes. In women's studies, students also resist ideological pressure to adopt a feminist or any particular feminist perspective on women's experience, what they may experience as the "correct" line. In this regard, Martindale warns of the shift from "overt policing" of the traditional classroom to "covert regulation" of the feminist classroom (p. 334).

Attention to student resistance highlights the importance of problematiz- ing concepts of false consciousness. Manicom touches upon this point:

Recent analyses of "experience" (subject/identity/voice) also illuminate an on- going puzzlement for feminist teachers-female students who reject feminist analysis. This has variously been labelled false consciousness or resistance, and has too often been conceptualized as a flaw in the student herself. (p. 374)

Freirian and feminist perspectives on the learner underscore student agency, knowledge, and expertise. They lay the ground for rejecting the idea that we know more about how our students think and feel, or about how they should think and feel, than they do. Such an approach emphasizes that both teachers and students are knowers and agents-indeed, both are teachers and learn- ers. This does not mean negating our expertise as teachers, but rather rejecting a view of students as passive and ignorant recipients of it. It assumes the learning process is more contested and that it should be. Manicom quotes Patti Lather:

[U]nderstanding people's complicity in their own oppression becomes a matter of developing a non-reductive problematic that focuses on the relationship between conscious understanding and the unconscious dynamics embedded in social relations and cultural forms. This requires a poststructuralist theory of subjectivity where ideology is seen not as false consciousness but as an effort to make sense in a world of contradictory information, radical contingency and indeterminancies. (Lather, 1991, p. 119; cited in Manicom, p. 374)

Rejecting notions of false consciousness is especially important if, as teachers, we seek to mobilize and facilitate diversity of perspective and experience in the classroom. Writers on feminist pedagogy are increasingly engaging with the problematic of theorizing the web of class, race, and gender, in particular instances, in interlocking instances, in instances of contradiction. It is interesting to read two articles in this issue together for their insights on theorizing and teaching with a gender, race, and class perspective: Martindale's examination of the significance of her working- class background for her experiences as student and as teacher; and Hood- far's exploration of the significance of race and racism in students' approaches to her as a minority teacher. There is no doubt that one funda-

261



INTRODUCTION

mental challenge facing us is to develop ways to think about, teach with, and theorize difference. At the same time, the first important step has been taken: the recognition of race- and gender-specific knowledge and the acknowledgment of power dynamics based on racism and sexism.

These discussions of power and resistance underline the reality that schools, colleges, and universities are sites where deep gender and race contradictions are expressed and where new pedagogical and policy strategies are needed. Encouraging openly political practices to interrogate power in the classroom is central to these new strategies. This is the critical point that Manicom begins with: feminist pedagogy is about transformation, about politics, and about power.

REFERENCES

Backhouse, C., Harris, R., Michell, G., & Wylie, A. (1989). The chilly climate for faculty women at UWO: Postscript to the Backhouse Report. Unpublished manuscript.

Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books.

Briskin, L. (1990). Feminist pedagogy: Teaching and learning liberation. Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

Brookes, A.L. (1990). Teaching, marginality and voice: A critical pedagogy not critical enough. In D. Henley & J. Young (Eds.), Canadian perspectives on critical pedagogy (pp. 25-34). Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Burgess, R.G. (1989). Something you learn to live with? Gender and inequality in a comprehensive school. Gender and Education, 1, 155-164.

Byme, E. (1990). Grounded theory and the snark syndrome: The role of the international organisations in research in gender and education. In E. Byrne (Ed.), Gender in education (pp. 3-15). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59, 297- 324.

Gaskell, J., McLaren, A., & Novogrodsky, M. (1989). Claiming an education: Feminism and Canadian schools. Toronto: Our Schools/Our Selves Education Foundation.

Gidney, R.D., & Millar, W. (1990). Inventing secondaty education: The rise of the high school in nineteenth-century Ontario. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Grant, L. (1992). Race and the schooling of young girls. In J. Wrigley (Ed.), Education and gender equality (pp. 91-113). London: Falmer Press.

Hall, R.M., & Sandler, B. (1982). The classroom climate: A chilly one for women? Washington: Project on the Status and Education of Women, Associ- ation of American Colleges.

Harris, D.W. (1991). Keeping women in our place: Violence at Canadian universities. Canadian Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme, 11(4), 37-41.

hooks, bell. (1988). Talking back. Toronto: Between the Lines. Kenway, J., & Willis, S. (Eds.) (1990). Heart and minds: Self-esteem and the

schooling of girls. London: Falmer Press.

262



INTRODUCTION

LaFrance, M. (1991). School for scandal: Different educational experiences for females and males. Gender and Education, 3, 3-13.

Lexicon. (1991, March 6). Special supplement on "Gender, power and silence in the classroom."

Light, B., Staton, P., & Bourne, P. (1989). Sex equity content in history textbooks. History and Social Science Teacher, 25(1), 18-20.

McIntosh, P. (1983). Interactive phases of curricular revision. Wellesley: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

Mirza, H.S. (1992). Young, female and black. London: Routledge. Ontario Ministry of Education. (1990). The status of women and employment

equity in Ontario school boards: Report to the legislature by the minister of education. Toronto: Government of Ontario.

Overall, C. (1987). Role models: A critique. In K. Storrie (Ed.), Women: Isola- tion and bonding (pp. 179-186). Toronto: Methuen.

Prentice, A., Bourne, P., Brandt, G.C., Light, B., Mitchinson, W., & Black, N. (1988). Canadian women: A history. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Ramazanoglu, C. (1987). Sex and violence in academic life, or, You can keep a good woman down. In J. Hanmer & M. Maynard (Eds.), Women, violence and social control (pp. 61-74). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Interna- tional.

Rees, R. (1990). Women and men in education: A national survey of gender distribution in school systems. Toronto: Canadian Education Association.

Smith, S. (1991). Report of the commission of inquiry on Canadian university education. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.

Statistics Canada. (1988). Teachers in universities, 1986-87. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services. (Cat. No. 81-241).

Squirrel, G. (1989). Teachers and issues of sexual orientation. Gender and Education, 1, 17-34.

Warren, K.J. (1989). Rewriting the future: The feminist challenge to the male- stream curriculum. Feminist Teacher, 4(2/3), 46-52.

Weis, L. (1990). High school as a site for the encouragement of white male dominance. Buffalo: GSE Publications.

263



la pédagogie féministe / feminist pedagogy || introduction: feminist pedagogy: challenging the...

Documents