Curriculum, Knowledge and
Learning
Oct 2nd, 2006
Curriculum, Knowledge &
Learning
• Who teaches?
• How is the material taught?
• What material is taught?
Who Teaches?
• What do the stats tell us?
• What are the implications?
How is the material taught?
• Pedagogy is the art or science of
teaching
• Critical pedagogy is a teaching
approach which attempts to help
students question and challenge
domination, and the beliefs and
practices that support the proposed
domination.
Feminist Pedagogy
• embraces the idea of treating female
and male students equally
• embraces the idea of transforming the
curriculum to make it more genderinclusive
• Traditional classroom replicates
patriarchal power relations
Key Points
• shifts the attention from the teacher to the students
• encourages students to take control of the material and to
relate it to their every day experiences.
• discussion of the reading material is given precedence over the
traditional lecture/delivery method
• students participate in collaborative, connective learning: we
learn from each other
• knowledge is socially constructed and that there is always a
tendency to create knowledge in one's own image.
• Students learn to reject monolithic solutions to complex
problems, learn to contextualize discourse, and learn to
question the very criteria of what has been defined as
"appropriate" knowledge
Key points continued
• collaborative learning environment where
student ideas count as contributions to
knowledge
• they also believe that students must learn to
be responsible for their own learning
• strives to make classrooms more hospitable
to women by drawing on examples from their
lives, acknowledging the broad range of their
accomplishments, and treating their life
experiences as normal.
Themes in Feminist Pedagogy
• Authority
• Position
• Empowerment
• Non-neutrality of education
What material is taught?
• Epistemology: The branch of philosophy
that studies the nature of knowledge,
its presuppositions and foundations,
and its extent and validity.
• Feminist epistemology consists of
theories of knowledge created by
women, about women's modes of
knowing, for the purpose of liberating
women.
Dominant knowledge practices
disadvantage women by…
• (1) excluding them from inquiry,
• (2) denying them epistemic authority,
• (3) denigrating their “feminine” cognitive styles
and modes of knowledge,
• (4) producing theories of women that represent
them as inferior, deviant, or significant only in the
ways they serve male interests,
• (5) producing theories of social phenomena that
render women's activities and interests, or
gendered power relations, invisible, and
• (6) producing knowledge (science and technology)
that is not useful for people in subordinate
positions, or that reinforces gender and other
social hierarchies.
They aim to…
• (1) explain why the entry of women and
feminist scholars into different academic
disciplines, especially in biology and the
social sciences, has generated new
questions, theories, and methods,
• (2) show how gender has played a causal
role in these transformations, and
• (3) defend these changes as cognitive, not
just social, advances
Three approaches to Feminist
Epistemology
• feminist standpoint theory
• Knowledge socially situated
• feminist postmodernism
• Knowledge exchanged - not one privileged over
another
• feminist empiricism
• Is science neutral and bias free?
Academic freedom
• It is the right to teach, learn, study and
publish free of orthodoxy or threat of reprisal
and discrimination.
• It includes the right to criticize the university
and the right to participate in its governance.
• Tenure provides a foundation for academic
freedom by ensuring that academic staff
cannot be dismissed without just cause and
rigorous due process
Academic Freedom
http://www.caut.ca/en/policies/academicfreedom.asp
What are your thoughts on the pros and
cons of this?
Blog Work
• How do you envision the ‘perfect’
classroom?
• What styles of learning work best for
you?
• How do your learning experiences in
HE compare/contrast with your style of
learning?