Feminist pedagogy as a new initiative in the education of South African teachers

Sonja Schoeman

doi:10.19108/koers.80.4.2215

Abstract

Not much has been published about feminist pedagogy and teacher education in South Africa. The purpose of this article is to introduce the above to the South African education fraternity, where it has not yet found a comfortable home. The problem of the study focues on two issues: the lack of an alternative teacher education perspective and experience in South Africa, and the possibility of teacher education for the new gender order, and a revival of the gender equity debate. The purpose of the study is to reflect on the gendered (patriarchal) teacher education models, enhance the pre-service teachers' understanding of the power relations in education, and argue the case for the inclusion of feminist pedagogy in teacher education programmes. A qualitative conceptual document analysis was used as research design. The article is concluded with an exemplar teacher education model in which student teachers are introduced to a critical study of learning to teach (feminist pedagogy), and a feminist classroom setting. https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.80.4.2215

Highlights

Teacher education is subjected to perennial attention and critique
Teacher educators who aspire to the inclusion of feminist pedagogy in initial teacher education programmes often embrace this as an opportunity to involve academics from all educational disciplines in the debate
The problem of this study focuses on two issues: firstly, the lack of an alternative teacher education perspective and experience in South Africa compared to the traditional forms of technicist and atheoretical teacher education; and, secondly, the possibility of the inclusion of feminist pedagogy in South African initial teacher education programmes to promote the new gender order, and revitalize the gender equity and social justice debate in education

Summary

Introduction

Teacher educators who aspire to the inclusion of feminist pedagogy in initial teacher education programmes often embrace this as an opportunity to involve academics from all educational disciplines in the debate. According to Cohee (2004:1), co-editor of the journal Feminist Teacher, the debate focuses primarily on the argument that the academy is a place of pure knowledge, and adding feminism to the mix will politicize education that is inherently not political. During a teacher educator workshop entitled, Restructuring a Syllabus Based on Feminist Pedagogies, the participants put forward the argument that the academy is anything but apolitical, and using feminism in teaching merely makes the politics somewhat clearer (Cohee 2004:1). During the 2013 Annual International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations, feminist teacher educators from a variety of teacher education disciplines have spent a substantial amount of time discussing the positive ways (activism, community building, empowerment, voice privileging) in which the theory and practice of their modules have changed over time trying out the principles of feminist pedagogy (Author 2013: Personal experience).

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Conclusion