Feminist Pedagogy: Identifying Basic Principles. (the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) (2002)

Abstract A comprehensive review of multidisciplinary literature revealed six principles of feminist pedagogy: reformation of the relationship between professor and student, empowerment, building community, privileging voice, respecting the diversity of personal experience, and challenging traditional pedagogical notions. Feminist Pedagogy: Identifying Basic Principles While scholars have long been concerned with the role of women in American public education (see Schmuck, 1987, for review of relevant literature), academic feminists only recently began articulating the principles of feminist pedagogy or feminist methodology for teaching (Bright, 1993). Although definitions of feminism vary (Arnold, 2000; Weiler, 1995), most authors would agree with Shrewsbury's definition of feminist pedagogy as a theory about the teaching/learning process that guides our choice of classroom practices by providing criteria to evaluate specific educational strategies in terms of the desired goals and outcomes (1993, p. 8). The theory of feminist pedagogy challenges the current emphasis on efficiency and objectivity that perpetuate the domination of masculine rationality (Scering, 1997) by offering alternative views based on feminist principles. These innovative pedagogical notions have enjoyed broad application. Instructors have employed feminist pedagogy in the elementary school classroom (e.g., Christie, 1997), high school classroom (e.g., Brady, 1994; Roy & Schen, 1993), the college classroom (e.g., Blumenstyk, 1997; Bright, 1993; Chapman, 1997; Cummings, 1998; Middlecamp & Subramaniam, 1999; Motoyama, 1996; Novek, 1999; Robertson, 1994; Scering, 1997; Schniedewind, 1993; Shrewsbury, 1993; Wood & Lenze, 1991), the computer lab (Parry, 1996), and the professional conference (e.g., Bell, 1993). As feminist pedagogy enjoys increased adoption, notions about feminism itself are changing and thus opening up wide range of ways to be feminist and to do feminist scholarship (Thompson & Walker, 1995, p. 848). Given this diversity, it is challenging yet necessary to explicate the principles of feminist pedagogy emerging from recent literature. The purpose of the present essay is to review the extant literature on feminist pedagogy to distill its basic principles. While previous author offered list of feminist principles suggested for application in educational settings (e.g., Briskin, 1990), the present authors could locate no previously published work that reviewed the literature on feminist pedagogy to ascertain the common principles acknowledged across various disciplines and applications represented in this growing body of literature. Instructors might use the identified principles when designing new course or alternative teaching methodology for an established class. While earlier writings proposed more radical feminist pedagogy (see Kenway & Modra, 1992, for review of relevant literature), recent articles articulated methodology that could enjoy more widespread acceptability. Our reading and synthesis of this recent work yielded six central principles of feminist pedagogy: reformation of the relationship between professor and student, empowerment, building community, privileging the individual voice, respect personal experience in its diversity, and challenging traditional views of theory and instruction. Each principle contributes to the creation of collaborative learning experience that is the goal of contemporary feminist pedagogy. 1. Reformation of the relationship between professor and student. Feminist pedagogy offers both the professor and students new relational roles. Power becomes shared as students assume more responsibility for teaching and teachers for learning. However, deeply embedded attitudes and norms of language can hamper this reformation. In feminist classroom, teachers model feminist perspectives (Bowker & Dunkin, 1992) and democratic relationships. …