Critical Feminist Pedagogy Research Articles

“They bring the topic [of social justice] but stop there”: Nursing students' perceptions of teaching practices that develop awareness and engagement with social justice

BackgroundPedagogical frameworks grounded in social justice, such as decolonizing and anti-racist educational practices, are essential in nursing programs. While scholars have begun to examine nurse educators' conceptualizations of social justice, there remains a lack of knowledge about student perspectives regarding nurse educators' approaches to incorporating social justice in education. ObjectiveTo understand nursing students' perceptions about educational strategies that develop critical awareness and engagement with social justice and positively influence professional practice. DesignA qualitative study informed by Critical Feminist Pedagogy and guided by Interpretive Description methodology. SettingsA school of nursing in Western Canada. ParticipantsTen undergraduate and graduate nursing students recruited through convenience sampling. MethodsStudents participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. A set of questions developed to facilitate data analysis allowed the deconstruction of the data to identify broad-based inductive categories. Contrast and comparison methods were also used. Members of the research team provided analytic insights into the categories, and subsequently, all members discussed the findings and developed the interpretive frame. ResultsStudent participants reported that educational strategies promoting awareness and engagement with social justice need to go beyond superficial engagement and awareness of social justice. Researchers' analysis suggests that cohesiveness between awareness and action in social justice is urgently needed within academia to adopt a decolonizing and anti-racist pedagogy in nursing and better prepare students for professional practice. From the data analysis, teaching strategies that enhance cohesiveness include: embracing personal development, creating community spaces and disrupting knowledge and curriculum hierarchies. ConclusionsUnderstanding students' perceptions and incorporating their suggestions is critical to integrating socially just teaching practices that embrace a learner-centred pedagogy. Our findings offer suggestions for teaching strategies that foster critical awareness and engagement with social justice. Combined, these contribute to our understanding of signature pedagogies in nursing with the intention of increasing the adoption of anti-racist and decolonizing approaches.

Critical Feminist Pedagogy in English Language Education: An Action Research Project on the Implementation of Feminist Views in a German Secondary School

AbstractBased on an action research project, this paper provides innovative teaching approaches for ELT to ensure gender equality through critical pedagogy. The qualitative study focuses on the reconstruction of students' perceptions through the analysis of group/peer talk allowing for the display of changing viewpoints after having dealt with feminist issues in class. Given the still limited representation of multiple individuals not only in society but also in secondary ELT coursebooks, critical educational practices have been concerned with the transformation of exclusionary schooling practices for the purpose of ensuring a just and equal future. Critical language education has been known to promote students' autonomy and sense of responsibility when it comes to the abolition of oppression and marginalization. Likewise, feminist approaches have the goal of fostering feminist principles and ethics of gender equality. The study, conducted in a German secondary school, reveals that the majority of learners welcome an exploration of feminist matters in the ELT classroom, because they recognize the significant connection between language learning and the exploration of societal issues. The implementation of critical and feminist ethics helped students become aware of prevailing gender inequalities; and their willingness for societal transformation highlights a visible increase in learner autonomy.

Gender, affectivity and sexuality in primary education: case study of a Chilean program

Contributing to the many initiatives around the globe that foster gender education in primary school, we present the pioneering case of Paillaco (Chile). An educational program on “gender, affectivity and sexuality”, implemented since 2014, which has been influential in challenging gender injustice in education in the region and offers a potential template for others to follow. This case study, framed as Feminist Activist Research, aims to identify: the theoretical and pedagogical discourses that shape the program; the subjectivities of the schoolteachers appointed as “gender monitors”; and the effects and challenges perceived in and by the community. Results show that the program draws on critical-feminist pedagogies, queer theory and appeals for the provision of a comprehensive sexuality education. Training the teachers emerges as the key for raising gender awareness. Finally, positive changes such as reduction of gender violence are perceived because of the implementation of the program.

Teaching Women's Filmmaking: Dossier Introduction

This introduction to the dossier on Teaching Women’s Filmmaking contextualizes the contributions among recent work that examines classroom praxis and relevant innovations in film and media studies scholarship, such as videographic criticism and online publication. It considers three key components of building a course—what to study, how to run a classroom, and how to implement assessments—and discusses each area according to critical feminist pedagogies.

The Joy of Many Stories: Zine-making and Story-mapping in Planning Pedagogy

ABSTRACT In this article, we reflect on our experiences of teaching urban planning courses that through storytelling center on issues of globalization, urbanization, planning, and social and spatial inequalities. We contemplate using zine-making and multimedia story-mapping to overcome impediments instructors usually face in engaging diverse students in appreciating the complexities of social justice on global and local scales. In light of critical feminist pedagogies and critical race theory and based on re-reading students’ multimedia products and follow-up conversations, we discuss the pedagogical strengths, limitations and opportunities of zine-making and story-mapping approaches to collaborate with students in imagining more humane urban futures.

Chinese Facilitators’ Transformative Learning in a Community-Based SEL Study

This qualitative study focuses on three female facilitators and their narratives of participating in a community-based social and emotional learning (SEL) study in China. A combination of communities of practice and critical feminist pedagogy is used as theoretical framework. Narrative inquiry is applied to portray and make sense of each facilitator’s transformative learning experience. The dialogical space that is created by the study allows them to bring in their personal experiences and assists them in critically examining voice and silence in the current trend of SEL in China. The narratives provide a critical lens to re-examine the localization of Eurocentric SEL frameworks in the Chinese context as well as empower individual educators to become agents of change for social transformation. This study suggests an alternative framework based on interpreting social and emotional meanings in the local context to offer insights and critiques to the SEL global movement.

How the “neutral” university makes critical feminist pedagogy impossible: intersectional analysis from marginalized faculty on three campuses

While critical pedagogy emphasizes the marginalized status of the learner, feminist pedagogy challenges the presumption of a one-dimensional power dynamic in the classroom by illuminating the intersecting axes of power along which everyone in a learning community, including the pedagog, can simultaneously enjoy privileges and experience marginalization. Yet there has been little empirical intersectional research on how the university as an institution interferes with critical and feminist teaching. Extending Torres’s intersectional theorization of critical pedagogy and building on sociological research on workplace inequality, we investigate the role of the neoliberal university in facilitating/obstructing feminist critical teaching. We conducted ethnography on three campuses across two countries, the United States and Peru. While we expected that our unconventional teaching methods combined with our foreignness, womanhood, and queerness would invite resistance from students, we found that the messages sent by the race- and gender-neutral neoliberal university were at the root of the illegibility of our teaching and our intellectual existence. We argue that the neoliberal university as it exists is antithetical to critical pedagogy in general, and feminist teaching in particular, attesting to the urgency of returning critical pedagogy to its roots in political organizing beyond formal education.

Knowledge, authority, and positionality in Asian immigrant female faculty teaching diversity classes

Abstract This paper is a self-reflective narrative of our teaching experience as two immigrant Asian female professors who teach Multicultural Education. Employing collaborative autoethnography (CAE), the study addresses the issues of authority, positionality, and legitimacy of knowledge claims in critical feminist pedagogy. Two research questions guided our inquiry: 1. How does a teacher’s racial positionality play out in exercising professional knowledge, and conversely, 2. How does seemingly neutral professional knowledge become racialized in the discussions of race? Major findings demonstrate the double-edged contradictions in the body/knowledge nexus manifested in our everyday teaching contexts. On the one hand, the bodily dimension of teacher knowledge is de-racialized because of institutional norms and cultures. On the other hand, there are times professional knowledge becomes racialized through the teacher’s body. Understanding the body/knowledge nexus that invites precarious power dynamics in racial discussions and even blatantly dismisses our professional knowledge, we, as an immigrant faculty of color, find it impossible to create a safe environment for participatory, critical discourse. Acknowledging our triple marginality, we put forth the concept of “pedagogy of fear” (Leonardo, Z., & Porter, R. K. (2010). Pedagogy of fear: Toward a Fanonian theory of ‘safety’ in race dialogue. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 13(2), 139–157) which squarely disrupts the idea of a safe environment in race dialog and urges teachers to confront their own/their students’ fear and create a space of teaching vulnerably.

Fiction as feminist pedagogy: an examination of curriculum and teaching strategies embodied in the novel

ABSTRACTThis article argues that fiction can operate as a critical feminist curriculum and discusses how this manifests itself in terms of content and teaching methodologies. It uses a close reading of Naomi Alderman’s dystopian fiction The Power (2016) to explore this, complemented by an analysis of a discussion between Alderman and readers participating in a book club organised through the UK discussion forum Mumsnet. It concludes that fiction can stimulate learning and critical reflection, in this instance with respect to gender and power, thus functioning as critical feminist pedagogy.

Teaching Jewish Holidays in Early Childhood Education in Israel: Critical Feminist Pedagogy Perspective

Teaching Jewish Holidays in Early Childhood Education in Israel: Critical Feminist Pedagogy Perspective

Doing Sociology of Gender in the Classroom: Re-imagining Pedagogies

While curriculum constitutes an important facet of teaching and learning, what is of critical importance is how we engage with the curriculum and what pedagogical strategies we use to engage students. This article is an attempt to engage in a serious dialogue on how we do Sociology of Gender in our classrooms. How students effectively construct, represent and transform knowledge and how they develop competence in and beyond the learning areas depend much on the pedagogical insights that instructors employ in classrooms. The article argues for a critical feminist pedagogy that sees the classroom as a site of possibilities, believes in engaged student learning and recovers students’ voices.

Breaking the silence: teaching about difference

PurposeEven as sites for higher education work to transform curricula and strive for greater diversity among students and faculties, little is done to create safe, inviting environments for people to openly discuss the contradictions and challenges in teaching about differences. The authors' purpose is to examine multiple and intersecting systems of power and privilege that deny marginalized voices a forum to challenge conventional hegemonic discourses of differences and stereotypical representations within learning. The recognition of contradictory subjective locations occupied by all the participants in the classroom, including the teacher, is accounted for in critical feminist pedagogies that challenge who speaks, who listens and why. As such, bridging the gaps, cracks, holes or crevices from which commonalities and differences emerge is part of the process required in understanding the differences.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides suggestions for college faculty who want to critically challenge their students to explore their beliefs about persons deemed “different” in society, and examine the nature of stereotypical perceptions embedded in the representations of the “other”.FindingsThe authors maintain that faculty must provide opportunities for discussion while creating a safe environment free of judgment during this time of exploration and discovery for all participants.Originality/valueMultiple strategies for exposing college students/teacher candidates to differing views on cultural perceptions and misconceptions are provided. The authors challenge college faculty to not only expose students to an array of views but also encourage students to voice their own views by interrogating the inherent systemic power of inequity in society.

Transforming Classroom Norms as Social Change: Pairing Embodied Exercises with Collaborative Participation in the WGS Classroom (with Syllabus)

This article explores tensions between critical feminist pedagogy and the neoliberal corporate university, asking how engaging the body and redistributing student agency highlights larger questions of power that haunt the academy as a whole. Including specific embodied exercises used in WGS classrooms, this essay argues that as students and professors engage within an increasingly corporate university system, embodied activities that incorporate the body as a site of learning and critical analysis can access situated knowledges while projects that de-center power and responsibility are viewed with skepticism. I attribute this discrepancy to the neoliberal structure in which we teach and learn, arguing that we need to value and make visible the labor that goes into critical pedagogy.

Book Review: Feminism in Community: Adult Education for Transformation by English, L. M., & Irving, C. J.

English, L. M., & Irving, C. J. (2015). Feminism in Community: Education for Transformation. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 218 pp. ISBN: 978-9463002004 (paperback) Feminism in Community (2015) takes a wide-ranging look at feminism and adult education. Throughout the book, English and Irving explore these two topics as separate disciplines, as well as intersecting fields. authors use Feminism in Community as a vehicle to present a sample of feminist organizations across the globe, including those in the fields of performing arts, public health, and religion, to emphasize why feminism is important, how it is operationalized in several different contexts, and ways in which feminist leaders have approached adult education. Examples include a generic description of how funding may be a challenge for any feminist organization to web-based resources like Wikipedia edit-a-thons to increase the representation of women's history on web-based databases. Chapter 1 opens with the Introduction, while Chapter 2 Organizations was extremely attentive to feminism exercised within social and political organizations. Chapter 3 Adult Health For With Women focuses on the topic of health education as a tenet of adult education. While Chapters 4 through 7 explore feminism in the context of such areas as art, religion, and research; Chapters 8 through 12 present discussions of the impact of feminism and adult education within various settings, including classrooms and communities. Chapter 8, Critical Feminist Pedagogy, extends beyond simply teaching about feminism to inform the reader of ways in which feminist pedagogy is created, enacted, and evaluated. Chapter 9, Social Transformative Learning and Women, not only addresses teaching with a feminist approach but also provides examples of scholars within the field equipping the reader with tools to continue researching the topic if desired. Chapter 10, Power, Resistance and Informal Learning, discusses the results of a research project conducted by the authors. Through the use of interviews, the authors analyzed data collected from 16 women serving in leadership roles to address how the participants learned about feminism, negotiate levels of power within their respective organizations, and what they have learned from other women. Chapter 11, The Nexus of Policy, Practice and Payment, presents discussions on intersectionality, examples from a global perspective, and implications for practitioners. …

From a Politics of Dilemmas to a Politics of Paradoxes

Transformational learning is a process resulting in deep and significant change in habitual patterns of identity, thought, emotion, and action, enabling new approaches to role enactment. This article explores how moving from a framework of dilemmas, which require solutions and one-sided choices, to a framework of paradoxes that embraces tensions and contradictions can contribute to meaningful transformational learning in the context of women’s leadership development. Drawing on recent theories of paradoxes and on critical feminist theory, we propose a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes for developing women’s leadership of social change enterprises. This perspective is put forth based on our analysis of an experiential course in a graduate gender studies program wherein participants take on leadership roles and interrogate them, by integrating theoretical discussions, reflection, and practical engagement in social activism. We use case studies from our students’ experiences in the field and in the classroom to demonstrate and explore the use of paradoxical thinking for teaching complex modes of leadership. We then show how fundamental, unresolvable paradoxes can be generative of novel ways of enacting social change leadership. We suggest several advantages and implications that this critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes can have on the development of women’s leadership.

Feminist Pedagogy in Early Childhood Teachers' Education

This article discusses the theory and practice of applying critical feminist pedagogy in a teacher’s training college. It is based on an analysis of the education of students in an early childhood teaching program (BEd) that seeks to promote social justice through education. This article discusses the areas of the student’s education that encourage critical thinking, social critique and questioning of the social order that continues to stratify young children into the social class of their birth. The article explains the principles that guide my work as an educator in an Israeli teacher’s college and how I seek to expose students to ideas and concepts like the meaning of a feminine career choice, the potential to transform acquired perceptions, practice in marginalized communities, personal and political narratives and opportunities for resistance.

Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students' Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices

This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study, I go on to criticize my own and other lecturers' tendency to blame the victim by analyzing the structural, cultural, political and social obstacles encountered by Arab students in Israeli institutions of higher education. The paper mainly focuses on the story of my resistance to this prevailing social and political structure. Adopting feminist critical pedagogy in my course "Representing Disability in Literature and the Cinema", I have created a space for my Arab students to overcome at least temporarily their repression by the Israeli academic system. The process of empowerment and the subsequent educational transformative and liberating exchange has enabled all participants to grant Arabs' transparent and excluded knowledge a significant social, cultural and political place, thus creating new and more culturally sensitive knowledge. Confronting the empowering effects of this method, I conclude my paper by suggesting some explanations as to the rarity of critical feminist pedagogies in Israeli academia.

Exploring Dimensions of Critical Reflection in Activist–Facilitator Practice

This article explores how 14 diverse, Canadian activist–facilitators working in international development experience and understand critical reflection as a component of participatory methodologies in facilitation practices. The findings, based on my doctoral study, demonstrate that although critical reflection is often discussed as integral to participatory approaches of facilitation using critical pedagogies, understandings and experiences of what that means in practice vary. For example, study participants often expressed practicing critical reflection through technical-rational approaches and seldom distinguished between critical reflection, reflexivity, and reflection. The findings illustrate three main challenges to applying critical reflection in practice: (1) time and value given to critical reflection; (2) institutional requirements; and (3) personal vulnerability. The results have implications for critical feminist pedagogies, including the development of critically reflective practices that challenge dominant ideologies and hierarchical power structures. The study demonstrates lessons for deepening pedagogical practices around critical reflection and reflexivity.

Exploring Critical Feminist Pedagogy: Infusing Dialogue, Participation, and Experience in Teaching and Learning

Derived from the intellectual traditions of critical literacy and feminist pedagogies, this paper explores the nature, dynamics, and implications of the Dialogic, Participatory, and Experiential (DPE) approach to teaching and learning. These three dimensions are separated analytically, but are interrelated in theory and practice. They are highly fluid and context-specific, pertaining to a variety of classroom characteristics and institutional settings. Our insights and observations of the teaching and learning process emerged out of the practice and experience of a graduate-level course on focus groups in cross-cultural research in which the DPE approach was used. The specific aims of the paper are to (1) explore the meaning and value of dialogic, participatory, and experiential practices in transforming students from passive knowledge-consumers into empowered knowledge-producers; (2) discuss how this shift provides spaces for the emancipation of both teachers and students; and (3) address the challenges and risks that are encountered in the classroom when experimenting with non-traditional pedagogies.

Stepping out of bounds: Performing feminist pedagogy within a dance education community

Sprague (1992) asserts that communication scholars “should be leading other teacher educators”; in communication‐focused research that can better explain how teachers’ behaviors contribute to students’ development of critical consciousness. One useful way of highlighting teachers’ pedagogical behaviors is by viewing them as social performances that can either encourage or subvert students’ abilities and desires to transform society. This critical ethnography examines a dance education culture to see whether or not instructors within this culture perform behaviors that support their espoused critical feminist pedagogical philosophy. Although the authors argue that many of the instructors’ performances help construct a culture in which this philosophy is enacted, they conclude that embedded within some of the instructors’ performances are communicative actions that constrain greatly the development of a truly critical feminist pedagogy.