WTF? Feminist pedagogy and 3D printing in a preservice virtual field experience

Abstract

Systemic gender inequality and sexual discrimination continues across a wide spectrum of social, political, and economic fields. Using three key feminist curriculum and pedagogy principles (decentering norms, centering difference, distributing leadership) we employ feminist pedagogy by facilitating curriculum development and implementation that is empowering for not only junior high school students but also preservice teachers, and the collaboration between a junior high school teacher and university preservice educators. We introduce artists that use 3D printing in ways that embody feminist principles and social justice activism to inspire preservice teachers to develop feminist curricula and pedagogy that includes 3D printing. By introducing the artists, we highlight why and how feminist content is part of feminist pedagogy, and how feminist pedagogy works to challenge feminist concerns. Given that most preservice teachers did not experience feminist art pedagogy in preK-16, we designed opportunities to experience feminist art pedagogy in teaching junior high school art classes. As teachers (and students) create feminist curriculum to use and share with others, they gain political power as engineers of progressive educational change towards ending sexism. WTF? (Where's the feminism?) is about our (re)searching feminist pedagogy in a junior high school context through a collaborative form of distributed leadership.