Feminist Classroom Research Articles

Education for the Heart and Mind: Feminist Pedagogy and the Religion and Science Curriculum

Feminist educators and theorists are stretching the boundaries of what it means to do religion and science. They are also expanding the theoretical and practical frameworks through which we might present curricula in thosefields. In this paper, I reflect on the implications of feminist pedagogies for the interdisciplinary field of religion and science. I begin with a brief discussion of feminist approaches to education and the nature of the feminist classroom as a setting for action. Next, I present some theoretical and practical issues to consider when developing a feminist praxis and an antisexist curriculum. This leads into a discussion of the role of language and critical reflection in the religion and science classroom, the risks associated with reflective discourse, and considerations in the use of ‘feminist’ teaching tools such as small group work, journals, and portfolio assessment. Iconclude with a reflection on how feminist pedagogy promotes an epistemology that speaks to the hearts and minds of participants in the dialogue of religion and science.

Using Feminist Classroom Rules to Model Empowerment for Social Work Students

This paper describes a set of feminist classroom rules adapted for the undergraduate social work classroom. The rules were utilized to help students examine and practice interactions which underscored empowerment principles aimed at ending discrimination, enhancing the capacity of clients to meet their needs, and promoting social justice. The rules provide a framework for examining racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other institutional forms of oppression and privilege in American society. The paper examines the feminist rules in the context of a project designed to teach empowerment to students. Implementation strategies for social work educators and implications for researchers are discussed.

Writing multiplicity: Hypertext and feminist textual politics

This article explores how hypertext might be used in the composition classroom to explore the gendered nature of text production. By exploring the theoretical connection between hypertext and feminist theory, this article suggests that writing multivocal hypertexts can help make students more aware of the multiplicity of their subject positions and the ways in which academic contexts try to silence those positions. Through a critical reading of a feminist, multivocal hypertext written by one of the authors, this article highlights both the successes and limitations of this theoretical premise. Although the article points to the ways both the academic context in which such hypertexts are situated and the nature of hypertextuality itself ultimately interfere with the writer's attempt to enact all aspects of a feminist intervention into textual politics, it concludes by recommending such a practice for the classroom. Despite its limitations, the process of creating such a text enacts many goals of a feminist classroom: finding a place for marginalized voices and interrogating the gendered power relations of academic discourse.

The construction of feminist pedagogy in nursing education: a preliminary critique.

This project was completed in response to articles that have appeared in nursing journals calling for feminist pedagogy. The object of inquiry is the current discourse of feminist pedagogy. In critiquing the discourse, Foucault's notion of "regime of truth" was used as a tool for analysis. It is the author's contention that feminist pedagogy, as currently constructed in nursing education, has likened Freire's notion of liberatory education with feminist scholarship. Feminist scholarship has taken a subordinate role to stories of classroom processes. Many so-called feminist strategies are, in reality, progressive educational strategies adorned with seductive language. Adopting a questioning stance, rather than merely proclaiming that "all is bliss" in the feminist classroom, would benefit all who are involved in the construction of feminist pedagogy. If nursing education is to seriously engage with feminist scholarship, as the author believes it must do, then it must not play a secondary role in feminist pedagogy.

The Connected Classroom

ABSTRACT This article describes an innovative educational tool designed for the dual purpose of evaluating teaching and learning and teaching skills for evaluating practice. Drawing from the literature on feminist pedagogy, group process and classroom evaluation, the authors designed and implemented a classroom evaluation instrument and process for enhancing teaching and learning. Results of this evaluation process are presented and its strengths and limitations are discussed. Use of this tool models one approach to evaluating group work practice interventions while at the same time providing useful data to improve students' experiences in the classroom.

Response from the feminist classroom: A response to Maralee Mayberry

Journal of Research in Science TeachingVolume 35, Issue 4 p. 461-462 Response from the feminist classroom: A response to Maralee Mayberry Frances A. Maher, Corresponding Author Frances A. Maher Department of Education, Wheaton College, 67 May Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130Department of Education, Wheaton College, 67 May Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130Search for more papers by this author Frances A. Maher, Corresponding Author Frances A. Maher Department of Education, Wheaton College, 67 May Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130Department of Education, Wheaton College, 67 May Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130Search for more papers by this author First published: 07 December 1998 https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(199804)35:4<461::AID-TEA15>3.0.CO;2-CAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume35, Issue4April 1998Pages 461-462 RelatedInformation

Response from the feminist classroom: A response to Maralee Mayberry

Response from the feminist classroom: A response to Maralee Mayberry

Culture Shocks: Feminism and Difference in the Classroom

Across the past two decades feminist movements world-wide have been responding to the question of cultural difference. Comfortable notions of universal sisterhood have increasingly given way to contingent alliances shaped by new understandings of difference, power, and pluralism. In extending some of the contemporary debates in cross-cultural feminism into the domain of teaching, this essay will explore how some of these debates are influencing the methods and ideals underpinning feminist pedagogy and will consider how responsive the “feminist classroom” has been to a range of cross-cultural dilemmas. As feminist pedagogic practice is inevitably informed by shifting cultural and power politics at play in individual contexts, the essay will seek to address some of the specific issues arising in different cultural contexts, including the politics of “political correctness” and multiculturalism in Australia and North America and the politics of colonialism and postcolonialism in Hong Kong. How do these issues affect the meaning(s) of feminism in the classroom? How do they redefine our understanding of “radical pedagogy”?

Culture Shocks: Feminism and Difference in the Classroom

Across the past two decades movements world-wide have been responding to the question of cultural difference. Comfortable notions of universal sisterhood have increasingly given way to contingent alliances shaped by new understandings of difference power and pluralism. In extending some of the contemporary debates in cross-cultural feminism into the domain of teaching this essay will explore how some of these debates are influencing the methods and ideals underpinning pedagogy and will consider how responsive the feminist classroom has been to a range of cross-cultural dilemmas. As pedagogic practice is inevitably informed by shifting cultural and power politics at play in individual contexts the essay will seek to address some of the specific issues arising in different cultural contexts including the politics of political correctness and multiculturalism in Australia and North America and the politics of colonialism and postcolonialism in Hong Kong. How do these issues affect the meaning(s) of feminism in the classroom? How do they redefine our understanding of radical pedagogy? (authors)

Learning in the Dark: How Assumptions of Whiteness Shape Classroom Knowledge

In this article, Frances Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault revisit data presented in their book, The Feminist Classroom. In the book, they located their analysis in a traditionally feminist position of marginality, where they saw themselves allied with women of color in resisting a patriarchal academy. Subsequent discussions with colleagues and the proliferation of literature on Whiteness led them to realize that their own Whiteness, and the effects of Whiteness itself, remained uninterrogated in their original work. In this reanalysis of data from their book, they examine how assumptions of Whiteness shape the construction of knowledge as it is produced and resisted in the classroom. Drawing on classroom and interview data, they investigate how students' constructions of gender, class, ethnicity, and race are informed by unacknowledged assumptions of Whiteness.

The family silver: essays on relationships among women

In an inventive and controversial collection of essays, sociologist Susan Krieger considers the many forms of wealth, both material and emotional, that women pass on to each other. This domestic heritage - the 'family silver' - is the keystone for a discussion of mother-daughter relationships, intimate relationships between lesbians, ties between students and feminist teachers, the dilemmas of women in academia as well as in the broader work world, and the importance of female separatism. Drawing on her experiences as a lesbian, a feminist, and a teacher, Krieger presents a stunning critique of higher education. She argues for acknowledging gender in all areas of women's lives and for valuing women's inner realities and outer forms of expression. Krieger has developed a distinctly feminist approach to understanding and scholarship. Her style is self-revelatory, emotional, and at the same time deeply analytical. Her essays pioneer a new method of locating, defining, and honoring female values. The Family Silver includes a thought-provoking discussion of gender roles among women, including the author's experience of being mistaken for a man; an exploration of teaching in a feminist classroom; and, a description of the controversy that resulted when the author refused to allow a hostile male student to take one of her courses. Beautifully written, The Family Silver addresses issues of central concern to feminists, postmodernists, and queer theorists and encourages new insights into how gender profoundly affects us all.

A Class Conscious Perspective on the Use of Self as Instrument in Graduate Clinical Training

As an approach to clinical training, the use of self as instrument focuses on the incorporation of personhood and relational skills as necessary tools for clinical competency. Clinical competency hinges on student awareness of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and class. This article describes the author's experience of being a working class feminist, the development of her feminist framework, and the role political education has played in sharpening that framework. The article addresses critical issues in creating a feminist classroom environment, one that supports personal knowledge as a vital source of information. Particular classroom strategies and exercises are presented that examine processes and methods relevant to the stimulation of class consciousness among graduate students in clinical training.

Children, families, and feminism: Perspectives on teaching

Feminist theorists are raising questions about assumptions still common in the fields of family and child development which are relevant to early childhood educators. This article discusses why content and pedagogy work together in feminist classrooms and reviews research on the stages that many students and instructors move through as they learn about ways in which women continue to struggle for equal status in modern American society.

Tilting the Tower: Lesbians, Teaching, Queer Subjects. Linda GarberThe Feminist Classroom. Frances A. Maher , Mary Kay Thompson TetreaultChanging the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum. Jane Roland Martin

<i>Tilting the Tower: Lesbians, Teaching, Queer Subjects</i>. Linda Garber<i>The Feminist Classroom</i>. Frances A. Maher , Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault<i>Changing the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum</i>. Jane Roland Martin

Not Just a "Social Issue": Teaching Feminist in ESL

* I begin with these quotations because they speak to some of the aspirations and contradictions I experience in my own orientation to feminism in ESL. Clearly, antiracist and postcolonial feminisms have posed major challenges to the ethnocentrality of Western frameworks, and hence to what we value, teach, and consequently authorize as feminist. Not only is there the question of maintaining integrity to race as well as gender, but more fundamentally still there is the question of what complacencies of power we assume in supporting pedagogies of transformation, liberation, or coming to voice. Indeed, as these quotations suggest, we need to attend to what we are up to ethically and pedagogically in presuming the creation of safe, nurturing, and inclusive feminist classrooms, and equally, in adopting unproblematically an ESL/feminist ethics of care. These wider shifts in feminist theory, as well as the more specific

Inside Feminist Classrooms: Not A Simple Or Singular Story

The Feminist Classroom, Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault. New York: Basic Books, 1994. 303 pp., $25.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-465-03302–4.

The World We Want and the World We Don't: Feminism and Higher Education

A living tradition, as Alasdair Maclntyre observed once, an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition [9, p. 207]. To judge from these two books, the traditions of academic feminism, and liberal arts education more generally, are very much alive. The Feminist Classroom, by Frances Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, tells a story about how academic feminists are Transforming Higher Education for a Diverse Society. Its purpose is to challenge traditional educational practices and to educate us about the virtues of academic feminism. By way of contrast, Profess-ing Feminism by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge is full of Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies. These authors wrestle with the conflicts they find within academic feminism and seek to reclaim the more customary aspects of educational practices rejected by Maher and Tetreault. In short, the world we want in one book is precisely the world rejected in the other book.

The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for a Diverse Society.

The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for a Diverse Society.

Authority and Egalitarianism: What Can They Mean in the Feminist Classroom?

Authority and Egalitarianism: What Can They Mean in the Feminist Classroom?

Doing feminist ethnography: lessons from feminist classrooms

This essay describes the methodology employed in an ethnographic study of eighteen feminist college teachers. The themes of mastery, authority, and positionality were used to analyze pedagogies in these classrooms. These themes are explored in terms of their methodological implications and the articulation of the authors’ relationships with their informants and their concerns as feminist ethnographers.