Page 82 - Šolsko polje, XXXI, 2020, 5-6: Teaching Feminism, ed. Valerija Vendramin
P. 82
šolsko polje, letnik xxxi, številka 5–6
experience the best way of connecting to the personal interests of children
is to let them take on the teaching role.
If I want to engage a student who only cares about football, I would not bring in an
article about football. But I would ask him questions about football, make him be
the teacher, make him tell me things.
As we can see, the active engagement of students is an important el-
ement of feminist classrooms. Once the students are engaged, it is up to
the teacher in which direction to go. Nina talks about the importance of
group discussions in shifting the thinking in new directions. New ways
of thinking can also have a significant role in the context of social agency.
I think that learning doesn’t finish in the classroom, you have to take ... both ... the
actions you learn in the classroom out there and you have to bring the outside into
the classroom. It goes both ways.
Moving learning beyond the classroom creates a praxis, defined
by the circular motion of mutually informing theory and action that
Shrewsbury (1987) mentions in the context of creating a learning and
teaching community, where the personal can be recognised as political.
Conclusion
If equity and equality are among the main goals of educational environ-
ments, then gender is a topic that must be addressed, constantly and in
different ways. Feminist pedagogy offers a good starting point for such
discussions as it facilitates the use of positive practices that create active,
open and communal feminist classrooms which integrate educational di-
chotomies, rethink concepts of power and authority, respect diversity,
build on personal experience, and demand social action.
Pedagogy must be understood as potentially reproducing power re-
lations, as David Lusted points out, noting the contradictions in its con-
tent, which call for change, and its form, which reproduce the existing
relations. To connect the learning with actual change in consciousness,
namely – to transform theory into practice – requires a constellation of
open-ended and specific pedagogies sensitive to context and difference,
addressed to the complexity of experience constituting any student’s or
group’s “gendered, raced, classed, aged and discrete biographical social
and historical identity” (Lusted, 1986, p. 10). From the teachers’ perspec-
tive, this means that their role in feminist classrooms is to help students
find the language for the different experiences they bring in with them,
to understand the wider social, cultural and political context of their
80
experience the best way of connecting to the personal interests of children
is to let them take on the teaching role.
If I want to engage a student who only cares about football, I would not bring in an
article about football. But I would ask him questions about football, make him be
the teacher, make him tell me things.
As we can see, the active engagement of students is an important el-
ement of feminist classrooms. Once the students are engaged, it is up to
the teacher in which direction to go. Nina talks about the importance of
group discussions in shifting the thinking in new directions. New ways
of thinking can also have a significant role in the context of social agency.
I think that learning doesn’t finish in the classroom, you have to take ... both ... the
actions you learn in the classroom out there and you have to bring the outside into
the classroom. It goes both ways.
Moving learning beyond the classroom creates a praxis, defined
by the circular motion of mutually informing theory and action that
Shrewsbury (1987) mentions in the context of creating a learning and
teaching community, where the personal can be recognised as political.
Conclusion
If equity and equality are among the main goals of educational environ-
ments, then gender is a topic that must be addressed, constantly and in
different ways. Feminist pedagogy offers a good starting point for such
discussions as it facilitates the use of positive practices that create active,
open and communal feminist classrooms which integrate educational di-
chotomies, rethink concepts of power and authority, respect diversity,
build on personal experience, and demand social action.
Pedagogy must be understood as potentially reproducing power re-
lations, as David Lusted points out, noting the contradictions in its con-
tent, which call for change, and its form, which reproduce the existing
relations. To connect the learning with actual change in consciousness,
namely – to transform theory into practice – requires a constellation of
open-ended and specific pedagogies sensitive to context and difference,
addressed to the complexity of experience constituting any student’s or
group’s “gendered, raced, classed, aged and discrete biographical social
and historical identity” (Lusted, 1986, p. 10). From the teachers’ perspec-
tive, this means that their role in feminist classrooms is to help students
find the language for the different experiences they bring in with them,
to understand the wider social, cultural and political context of their
80
