Essai critique / Review Essay

Feminist Pedagogy : Transformations,

1

Standpoints, and Politics

Ann Manicom
dalhousie university

The true aim of the teaching I have been describing is . . . to empassion students
with feminist knowledge. . . . It is true that we must not preach. But we must
passionately teach. . . . We are deeply involved in the things we study. We
cannot pretend we do not care. We look at our subject with passion because we
are our subject. (Raymond, 1985, pp. 57–58)

Feminist educators have a passion for their teaching, and are driven by a
vision of “a world which is not yet.” They work differently, depending
where and what they teach and what their politics are. They interrogate their
teaching practices from a variety of perspectives. But whatever questions
feminist teachers ask, they do so with a remarkable intensity, gazing inward,
reflecting on their classroom practice, and outward, refining their critique of,
and action in, the broader social world. This habit of reflection on teaching
practices, although increasingly common in public schooling, is unusual in
higher education settings. The attention feminist university teachers (includ-
ing many in teacher education) pay to their classroom teaching practices
thus provides an exemplary model for approaching teaching and learning in
universities.
Feminist pedagogy is not a handy set of instructional techniques. Rather,
feminist pedagogy is a standpoint (Briskin, 1990). The standpoint of a
feminist teacher is political: to develop feminist analyses that inform/reform
teachers’ and students’ ways of acting in and on the world. Central here is
feminist movement toward social justice, and a pedagogy that fosters this
movement.

This emphasis on social change recognizes feminist pedagogy as a form of

feminist practice having its roots in the women’s movement, and firmly situates
feminist pedagogy in the traditions of critical and radical pedagogies that see
education as a form of empowerment and a tool for social change. The intrinsic
link between feminist pedagogy and organizing for social change reflects the
connection between the classroom and the world outside it, and the feminist
understanding that change is necessary and must be systemic. (Briskin, 1990, p.
23)

365 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 17:3 (1992)

366 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

Feminist pedagogy is teaching with a political intent and with visions of

social change and liberation—not simply with an aim to have (some)
women “make it” in the world of (some) men, but to learn to act in and on
the world in order to transform oppressive relations of class, race, and
gender. It is teaching, not to change women to fit the world, but to change
the world.
This essay outlines ideas about “teaching for transformation” found in
normative accounts of feminist pedagogy,2 and then raises questions about
three key themes in feminist pedagogy literature: “experience,” “collabor-
ation,” and “authority.” The central claim of this essay is that attempts to
attend to experience, to foster collaborative forms of learning, and to reduce
relations of authority in the classroom are to be valued; nonetheless, these
practices are full of complexities and contradictions, and must be challenged
and deconstructed if the political project of feminism is to be advanced.
One feature of teaching is that it is irremediably context-bound; context
shapes what is possible. Thus in discussing what feminist teachers do,
context and material working conditions must be taken into account. Work-
ing conditions include the institutional setting (level of education, formal or
informal); mandated practices (of curriculum, evaluation, and attendance);
classroom demographics; and intensification of work in the current cutback
climate.

FEMINIST PEDAGOGY: TRANSFORMATIVE WORK

Feminist pedagogical practices have developed in the context both of the

women’s movement and of the long (although often marginalized) tradition
of learner-centred progressive pedagogies in twentieth-century public school-
ing in North America. Pedagogical principles visible in the progressive
schooling literature include a critique of authority relations in the teacher-
pupil relationship; a commitment to non-hierarchical, more communal co-
operative classrooms; and the assumption that learning should begin in, and
value students’ experiences. Some of the progressive schooling literature is
concerned with developing a critique of social relations and ideologies, and
all of it includes some sense of learning/teaching for empowerment. Feminist
pedagogy literature refers to some aspects of this literature frequently, par-
ticularly the humanist, radical, and critical traditions (Gore, 1990; Hoffman,
1985; Hofmann Nemiroff, 1989; Leck, 1987; Maher, 1987; Schniedewind,
1985). Connections with other traditions are made less often (for example,
with Afrocentric pedagogy,3 whole language teaching,4 global education,5
and reflective teacher education6).
What is distinctive about feminist pedagogy? Clearly, it is more than
making gender a focus for discussion and debate (although to do that alone
is no simple task). Challenges to, and transformation of dominant power
relations are central. Feminist pedagogy is, at its core, about the feminist
critique (which challenges the basis of all knowledge and ways of knowing),
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 367

and the feminist project (which aims to transform oppressive and interlock-
ing power relations in pursuit of a world characterized by increased social
justice).
Feminist pedagogy is a pedagogy of liberation: “Liberating education is
not just a question of methods or methodologies, but it has a radical and
fundamentally different relationship to knowledge and society” (Hofmann
Nemiroff, 1989, p. 7). Feminism “necessitates not only the development of
new knowledge, but also new forms of relationships between people”
(Schniedewind, 1983, p. 262). Feminist pedagogy concerns itself with trans-
formation both of relations among people in classrooms and of relations of
power in the world at large.
If to engage in feminist pedagogy is to take a political standpoint that
seeks to transform relations of domination and oppression, how does this
appear in practice?

Classrooms

In perhaps the most widely cited article on feminist pedagogy, Schniedewind

(1983) outlines five typical goals in transforming classroom practices:
development of an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust, and community;
shared leadership; cooperative structures; integration of cognitive and
affective learning; and action (pp. 262–270). “To reflect feminist values in
teaching is to teach progressively, democratically and with feeling” (p. 271).
Transforming classroom practices is centrally about transforming rela-
tions of power in the classroom, relations between teacher and student, and
relations among students. This transformation manifests itself in feminist
pedagogy literature in discussions of particular kinds of classroom practices,
where students’ own experiences, emotions, and knowledge form a basis for
discussion, analysis, and assignments; where small-group work tends to
replace lectures, both to acknowledge learners as teachers and to reduce the
status of “teacher as expert”; where dialogue and collaborative work is
valued; where evaluation includes self-evaluation, ongoing process evalu-
ation, and collective criteria for evaluation; where shared forms of leadership
and decision-making are attempted; and where empowerment and action are
regarded as central.
Summarizing this attention to transformation of teaching and learning in
feminist classrooms, Kathleen Weiler contrasts the typical ways that knowl-
edge is approached in schools (teacher as dispenser, knowledge as straight-
forward and factual, students as passive recipients) with the views of the
feminist teachers she studied, whose

vision . . . is deeply opposed to this view of learning and teaching. Instead, they
emphasize that students are knowers and creators of knowledge. For them, the
classroom is potentially a place where consciousness and ideology can be
interrogated, where critical thinking is encouraged, and where for both students
and teachers, “It’s okay to be human.” (Weiler, 1988, p. 122)
368 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

Broader Social Relations

The second arena of challenge in feminist pedagogy is in transforming ways

of knowing the world and acting in/on the world. Feminist pedagogy is
“aimed at interrupting relations of dominance” (Lather, 1991, p. 122);
challenging dominant patriarchal frameworks; making visible women’s
actions, achievements, and concerns; and causing social change. Feminist
teachers have a “political commitment to building a more just society”
(Weiler, 1988, p. 113).
Feminist teachers are concerned to teach feminist critique and analysis:

What does it mean to bring feminism into the classroom? In the first instance it
means studying the feminisms—both historically and theoretically, and the
multiplicity of feminist practices; this goes beyond studying women and gender
issues. Feminism as a world view allows us to make sense of our individual
experiences; pulls us away from individualism and individual instances of
discrimination to an understanding of the systemic character of oppression;
moves us from a dependence and reliance on individual solutions (which often
result in blaming the victim, who is unable to overcome the limits of her individ-
ual life) to collective strategies and social and political solutions. (Briskin, 1990,
p. 19)

Thus, in classrooms where feminist pedagogy is practised, the aim is both to

develop an analysis and critique of relations of domination, and to construct
visions of the social world that might emerge if relations of domination were
to be interrupted.
But feminist pedagogy is not only about developing ideas; it fundamen-
tally is concerned with social change:

[B]ringing feminism into the classroom means linking the struggles in the
classroom to struggles in the community. This means building an active connec-
tion with the women’s movement, environmental and anti-racist groups, trade
unions and other progressive community forces organizing for social change.
(Briskin, 1990, p. 20)

This means forging alliances with men and women across differences of
class and race. And forging such alliances to engage in action for social
change means making connections to the world beyond the classroom not
just in theory but also in practice.

Such thinking involves an active, not a passive, relationship to the world. It

requires confidence that your thoughts are worth pursuing and that you can make
a difference. And it demands looking beyond how to make do and into how to
make “making do” different—how to change the structures that control our lives.
My goal in teaching feminist theory is to provoke women to think about their
lives and society in this way. (Bunch, 1983, p. 256)
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 369

Schooling and Feminist Pedagogy

The issue of “teaching for transformation” is not straightforward. Not all

feminist teachers teach with the same visions, either of transforming the
classroom or transforming the world. Some differences derive from context,
the conditions of teachers’ work. Other differences derive from differences
in the vision of what is to be done.
Feminist initiatives in public schools can be grouped into two clusters
which contrast equal opportunity and anti-sexist approaches. The contrast
shows feminist teachers do not share a unitary conception of social trans-
formation.

Here lies the major difference between the egalitarians (those advocating equal
opportunities) and the feminists (those advocating anti-sexist or girl-centred
education). Whereas the former fail to address the relationship between patri-
archy, power and women’s subordination, the latter place it at the centre of their
thinking. (Weiner, 1985, p. 9)

Many equal-opportunity initiatives have encouraged more young women

to go into science and technology; critiqued curriculum materials for sexism;
and analyzed school practices for gender stereotypes. However, such
initiatives have less to do with transforming and challenging intertwined
relations of race, class, and gender, and more to do with women assuming
power positions similar to those of men.
In contrast, a major restructuring of all societal institutions is vital for
anti-sexist feminist teachers. Weiner’s (1985) description of the characteris-
tics of girl-centred education in schools shows education must take into
account the actual lived experiences of the girls: the curriculum should
include these experiences, as well as historical experiences of women. The
schooling “at the least, should furnish girls and young women with the skills
and knowledge to take on the male system . . . in the workplace” (pp.
10–11); and should “give girls and women a sense of solidarity with other
members of their sex” (p. 11). Finally, feminist schooling (anti-sexist
schooling) should give young women an understanding of “the widespread
oppression of women by men” (p. 11) and thus prepare them for “the
struggles and opposition they are likely to encounter” (p. 11).
Linda Briskin (1990) makes a similar distinction, labelling the two ap-
proaches non-sexist and anti-sexist. Briskin says that typically the non-sexist
approach is the “central informing vision put forward to deal with the
gendered classroom environment. The operative assumption of the non-sexist
strategy is that the discriminatory effects of sexism can be eliminated in the
classroom.” She argues that “such a view conceals rather than reveals struc-
tural inequality” (p. 12). In contrast she posits anti-sexist education, which

makes gender an issue in all classrooms in order to validate the experience of

students, to bring it into consciousness, and to challenge it. . . . [B]y extension,
370 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

an anti-sexist strategy takes up race, class and sexual orientation, which interre-
late in complex patterns with gender. (p. 14)7

Those who take an anti-sexist approach assume there is no point in

providing equal opportunities in schools if societal structures (in the family,
workplace, legal system, social welfare system) remain unchallenged. Anti-
sexist pedagogy in schools involves a fundamental critique and an orienta-
tion to active political struggles to achieve desired social transformations.
This critique, this challenge, and this politics underpin much writing on
feminist pedagogy. However, the literature on public school classrooms is
only beginning to include accounts of feminist teachers who challenge
relations of power and domination in public school settings (for examples,
see Britzman, 1989; Novogrodsky, Kaufman, Holland, & Wells, 1992;
Weiler, 1988).

ASSUMPTIONS RECONSIDERED: EXPERIENCE, COLLABORATION, AUTHORITY

Feminist pedagogy literature includes intense discussion of issues central

both to feminist and to other progressive pedagogies. Three central themes
interest me here: “experience” (that women’s “experiences” must be made
visible and form the most valid basis for learning); “collaboration” (that
“collaboration and sharing” are good processes which will lead to women
identifying their common oppression and developing mutual support and
collective strength in their struggle for social change); and “authority” (that
“dismantling authority relations” in classrooms is a means of equalizing
power relations). In many accounts of feminist pedagogy, these premises
have been somewhat naively advocated and perhaps overly romanticized.
However, there are feminist attempts to “withdraw . . . from pedagogical
romanticizing” (Martel & Peterat, 1988, p. 90), and the ensuing debates
“bode . . . well for those of us who want our intellectual engagement to
matter in the struggle toward social justice” (Lather, 1991, p. 164).

Experience: The Claims

Attention to women’s experiences is a cornerstone of feminist pedagogy. In

the classroom, women’s experiences are drawn on and validated so women
may see themselves as authoritative constructors of meaning. The feminist
claim has been that many women (both teachers and students) have to
(re)learn to value concrete, subjective knowledge, and that the academy must
be challenged in its consistent devaluing of such knowledge.
This injunction to begin in women’s experiences essentially derives from
consciousness-raising practices and from feminist epistemological critiques.
In many disciplines, feminist critiques have shown that what is taken to be
official and sanctioned knowledge about women and their relations to the
world is in fact riddled with distortions and omissions. One reason, there-
fore, for beginning in women’s experience is to transform knowledge
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 371

production—to produce knowledge from the point of view of women them-

selves.
A related reason for “beginning in what women know” is that it is
assumed women, too, have learned to devalue/undervalue their knowledge.
If women have come to devalue their own knowing, mirroring the ways
women have been portrayed in many theoretical and popular accounts, then
feminist classroom practices must validate what women in the classroom
already know, based on life experiences. In consciousness-raising meetings
in early years of the women’s movement, women learned from this process
of treating one another as knowledgeable, developing analyses based on
their collective experiences.
A third reason for the injunction to begin in “what women know” is the
claim that connecting to personal experience is women’s “preferred” way of
learning, often described as concrete, contextualized, relational, subjective.8
Such learning is also described as “connected” learning, seeing “all knowl-
edge in its human, social and historical connections” (Martel & Peterat,
1988, p. 86).
An assumption of feminist pedagogy is that in a feminist classroom these
personal experiences will be valued and validated, not trivialized, dismissed,
or marginalized. In addition, it is assumed that by building on women’s
experiences, women can construct new ways of knowing and analyzing the
world. The knowledge thus constructed is more likely to be a valid and
reliable account of women’s lives, and of their relationships to the world.
The literature on feminist pedagogy begins with this first principle: that
a feminist classroom is a place where women’s personal experiences are
foregrounded. This permits, or so was initially thought, the naming of the
un-named, the breaking of silence on experiences hitherto ignored, and a
re-naming of those experiences previously misrepresented.
What are the problems here?

Experience: What Has Remained Unproblematized?

In much writing about feminist pedagogy, there has been surprisingly little
analysis of the concept “experience,” or of “telling one’s experience.” In
addition, there has been little exploration of links between feminists’ cri-
tiques of dominant forms of knowledge and critiques of dominant knowl-
edge from other subordinate groups. Let me address first the ethnocentrism,
and second the attachment of this outlook to a realist epistemology.
Assumptions about “experience” in feminist pedagogy are challenged by
recent analyses of the views of Afro-American/Afro-Canadian women and
the articulation of a black feminist epistemology. It may be that in tradi-
tional educational and political institutions, abstract, objective knowledge is
valued over personal and subjective ways of knowing. Further, it may be
that in dominant social structures white women, too, have assumed these
forms of knowledge were more valuable. However, the same cannot necess-
372 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

arily be said of all cultural groups. For example, in Wendy Luttrell’s (1989)
study of women’s views about knowledge and intelligence, working-class
black women and working-class white women valued their personal knowl-
edge differently. Luttrell claims that unlike the white women, “black women
are not distanced from their knowledge and power” (p. 42). This point is
supported by black feminist epistemologists, who make it clear that within
the Afro-American community, concrete knowledge has always been valued.
Patricia Hill Collins (1989, 1991) describes how in Afrocentric epistemol-
ogy, experience and concrete images are frequently invoked as criteria for
truth claims. Furthermore, emotion and subjectivity are not placed in opposi-
tion to knowledge and reason: “Neither emotion nor ethics is subordinated
to reason. Instead, emotion, ethics, and reason are used as interconnected,
essential components in assessing knowledge claims” (Collins, 1989, p.
770).
In addition, Collins points out that black women do find validation in
their communities for valuing concrete experience, emotional expressiveness,
and a capacity for empathy. In contrast, “few white social institutions except
the family validate this way of knowing” (Collins, 1989, p. 768).
Such insights from black feminist epistemology do not mean that femin-
ists cannot claim women’s knowledge has been devalued. The insights
simply demand that feminist teachers understand that how knowledge is
valued/devalued is context-dependent.
So a first critique of “validating experience” as a normative tenet for
mainstream feminist pedagogy is its ethnocentrism. Feminist teachers must
construct ways of valuing personal knowledge by learning from cultures and
communities that have long valued these forms of knowing.
A second critique of assumptions about “experience” lies in the align-
ment of the concept “experience” with a realist epistemology. Until recently,
people writing about feminist pedagogy assumed the validity of women’s
descriptions of experience as the basis for learning. It has been asserted
unproblematically that women are the only “authentic chroniclers” of their
own experiences, that women are the best knowers of their world, that a
feminist pedagogy allows “authentic voices” to emerge (Belenky, Clinchy,
Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Friedman, 1985). Yet, simultaneously, other
feminists (as well as many other social theorists) have explored the com-
plexity of such concepts as “identity” and “narrative,” and these ideas are
beginning to be incorporated into discussions of feminist pedagogy.
Several points should be made here. To assert there is an authentic
knower is to assume that to describe one’s personal knowledge is to produce
knowledge both representational and factual: a person is “telling it like it
is.” Yet phenomenological and interpretive analyses of how humans “know”
the world, as well as the post-modernist and post-structuralist accounts of
subject and identity,9 remind us that personal accounts are not raw facts but
constructions: personal narratives/stories/descriptions are selective and
partial, constructed in particular spaces at particular times for particular
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 373

audiences. Each of us has only to remember stories we have told about our
lives: how the recounting of experience differs in relation to the person(s) to
whom we are talking, and how personal stories change over the years as we
apprehend them afresh. Personal narratives develop as lives do, and personal
accounts of experience differ from telling to telling.
But it is more complex than this. Accounts of a woman’s individual
experiences cannot be conceived unproblematically as necessarily more
“pure” and more “real” than the ideological accounts produced in the
academy about “women” as a group. Our accounts are not simple reflections
of an individual’s “true past”; accounts are constructed through discourse
and practice. There is an ideological and constructed quality to memory
itself. Personal experiences and reactions to experience are “colonized by
dominant patterns of thought” (Lather, 1991, p. 95).
The oversimplification of some basic feminist pedagogical claims thus
becomes visible when juxtaposed with analyses produced in the fields of
narrative, oral history, and memory work.10 The analyses display ways
ordinary “individual” memories of people are deeply affected by how the
past is already (re)presented in dominant discourses.

We wanted to break down the opposition between the imaginary and the real,
and to show for personal life narratives as for anywhere else, that no statement
that is made about one’s past individually, is in any way innocent of ideology or
imaginative complexes. We wanted to break down the differences between the
public and the private, and the personal and political, by showing that the same
kinds of imaginative paradigms which structure ideology and which structure
politics, also structure the ways in which people understand their own lives.
(Samuel, 1988, p. 15)

Personal accounts are thus never only personal and individual.

The telling of experience is constructed in relation to how we have come
to understand the world. Narratives are threaded through with theory, with
hegemonic discourse, and with dominant ideologies, as well as with chal-
lenges (both implicit and explicit) to these discourses. Narratives (the telling
of “experiences”) therefore are not only potentially ideological, they are also
potentially full of contradictory moments. In light of this, consider the
notion of an “authentic knower,” a notion that presumes a coherent subject.
Feminist pedagogy literature speaks of a woman’s “voice,” as though each
of us has a voice. But analyses of narratives show each of us is full of
contradictions; each “voice” is partial, multiple, and context-bound. To use
the phrase “woman’s voices” may name the issue more accurately, but does
not remove the tensions embodied in it. Ellsworth (1989) points to this in
her discussion of critical pedagogy: “Pluralizing the concept of ‘voices’
implies correction through addition. [Such unproblematic pluralizing] loses
sight of the contradictory and partial nature of all voices” (p. 312). Feminist
scholars interested in women’s narratives have explored the contradictions
in personal narratives, thus demonstrating ways people reconcile contradic-
374 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

tions, and ways they leave contradictions unresolved. All these analyses
produce a much richer understanding of “experience” as a cornerstone of
feminist pedagogy.
In general, recent analyses suggest that we as women interpret our
pasts—and therefore name our experiences—with far more inscription of
dominant patriarchal (and classist, racist, heterosexist) ideologies than we
might have hoped. So “beginning in experience” is not straightforward,
because we have to deconstruct experience to show both its social and its
ideological character. The implication here for teaching is that not only do
women’s experiences need to be validated and legitimized (for this is indeed
important, and I do not want to minimize how central it has been for many
of us to name the unnamed), but the experiences also have to be critiqued,
interrogated, and deconstructed, since the sense-making of our lives will be
inscribed with dominant ideologies. We cannot develop a feminist critique
of how official forms of knowledge are produced without looking at the
production of our own personal knowledge. We cannot claim the importance
of beginning in personal knowledge and experience, without attending to the
character of this knowledge.
The feminist classroom must therefore be one where students and
teachers alike analyze the nature of “experience” and deconstruct the very
lives the feminist classroom is “expected” to validate. This clearly creates a
tension that adds to the complexities of feminist teaching. Such tensions, if
unexamined, can produce conflict for those who have just begun to explore
feminist pedagogy or who are committed to the principle of validating
women’s lives. This claim “to begin in women’s experiences” can continue
to be made only if there is at the same time a deconstruction of “experi-
ence” and of its telling. There must be no romanticizing of the “authentic”
or the “personal.”
Recent analyses of “experience” (subject/identity/voice) also illuminate
an ongoing puzzlement for feminist teachers—female students who reject
feminist analysis. This has variously been labelled false consciousness or
resistance, and has too often been conceptualized as a flaw in the student
herself. However, as Lather (1991) points out, using recent analytical
frameworks,

understanding people’s complicity in their own oppression becomes a matter of

developing a non-reductive problematic that focuses on the relationship between
conscious understanding and the unconscious dynamics embedded in social
relations and cultural forms. This requires a poststructuralist theory of subjectiv-
ity where ideology is seen not as false consciousness but as an effort to make
sense in a world of contradictory information, radical contingency and indetermi-
nancies. (p. 119)

The feminist project of political struggle against varying forms of

oppression will be hampered if “experience” continues to be romanticized.
In the following discussion on “collaboration” this is more sharply brought
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 375

into view. Considering “collaboration” shifts us from contemplating the

character of any one female student’s “experience” to linking experiences
among women students, for both analysis and action.

Collaboration: The Claims

The second central theme in feminist pedagogy, concerning collaboration,

connectedness, and sharing, requires us to consider learners as a group. In
feminist pedagogy literature, sharing and collaboration are described as basic
principles underlying classroom processes. In classrooms, this is frequently
visible in the physical set-up of space, with chairs in circles rather than
rows. Many activities and presentations are organized in groups. Experiences
and feelings are shared, often in small-group discussion. Sharing and
attentive listening are fostered through explicit activities and directives.
Caring is seen as important, and mutual support is encouraged.
What underpins this belief in collaboration as an important principle for
organizing learning experiences? There are two broad claims, one rooted in
psychology and one in politics. First, those who write about women’s ways
of knowing argue that women prefer collaborative learning over competitive
learning (see note 8). An implicit suggestion here is that shared and egalitar-
ian modes of discussion are “natural” to women. Second, it is argued that
collaborative learning practices allow women to recognize and build connec-
tions with one another, forging the solidarity required for collective struggle.
It is assumed that as women share their knowledge and experiences, they
will develop a broader analysis, will see how their experiences are linked,
will build a sense of community and sisterhood, and will construct possibil-
ities for collective action.
So in a feminist classroom, speaking one’s experiences and one’s
emotions is assumed to be routine good practice, for both psychological and
political reasons. The assumptions of “sharing” in feminist pedagogy include
that it is “a good thing” to share; that people want to share; that it is safe to
share and that trust exists; that relations of mutuality and respect and
equality exist among the students as well as between teacher and student;
and that when one “shares” one will be listened to. These imply an egalitar-
ianism, a valuing of one another, a nurturing environment where women can
safely speak. The literature often does not explicitly discuss the power
relations among people in the classroom, power relations masked by such
words as “sharing” and “collaboration.”

Collaboration and Sharing: What Is Unproblematized?

Two sets of questions arise here, the first in relation to the psychological
claim that sharing and collaborative approaches to learning are preferred by
women, and the second in relation to the political aim to build analysis and
solidarity in a feminist classroom.
376 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

Is It Only Women?

Questions have arisen about feminist claims that collaboration is one of

women’s preferred modes of learning. It is true that analyses of how women
learn have brought into view important and undervalued aspects of learning,
such as caring and connection. However, despite rich insights in this
research, there remain concerns that the notion of women’s ways of knowing
borders on an essentialist claim.11 Other critics point out that not only
women prefer collaborative work. For example, it is argued that collabora-
tive learning is preferred in the Afro-American/Afro-Canadian community.
Afro-American feminists, discussing epistemological and political practices
in black communities, argue that Afro-American women are not strangers to
solidarity; building a community of women has not been something they
have had to learn to forge through feminist teachings. In a similar vein,
writings on Afrocentric pedagogy point out that ways of learning compatible
with black cultural practices include collaboration and connection to com-
munity (Ladson-Billings, 1990). Thus, care must be taken, in arguing for
collaborative classroom practices, that feminists do not claim that such
learning practices are preferred by women in any essential way. Feminist
pedagogues can learn from and acknowledge those places where collabora-
tive learning and collective struggle have long been a familiar way of life.12
In general, the critiques suggest that cooperation and collaboration in and
of themselves are neither essentially female nor restricted to feminist
teaching.

[W]omen do not have a common understanding of their gender identities and

knowledge. But what they do have in common is the organization of knowledge
as a social relation that ultimately is successful in diminishing their power as
they experience the world. To understand women’s exclusion requires an examin-
ation of the similarities and differences in the objective conditions of women’s
lives, as well as an analysis of how ideologies of knowledge shape women’s
perceptions and claims to knowledge. Since women do not all experience the
work of being a woman in the same way, it is impossible to identify a single
mode of knowing. (Luttrell, 1989, p. 44)

More recently, other questions about collaboration and sharing have

arisen out of the critiques of experience outlined in the previous section. In
contrast to a view of the feminist classroom as a place of nurturing, cooper-
ation, and collaboration, comes a view of that classroom as a place where
resistances exist and relations of oppression operate. If voices are contradic-
tory and multiple and inscribed with dominant relations of oppression, then
these relations are going to exist in the classroom. Questions demand to be
asked: Who shares? Whose sharing is blocked? What is shared easily and
what with difficulty? When is sharing empowering and when is it disem-
powering? Such questions challenge the political assumptions (of building
analysis and constructing solidarity) which underlie claims of “mutual
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 377

support,” “caring,” “connection,” and “validation” in the feminist pedagogi-

cal literature.

The Politics of Sharing: Silences

Silence is the underbelly of sharing. Several kinds of silences/silencing have

become visible. First are the silences that come from not being present.
Briskin (1990) is critical of the assumption that solid analyses can be
constructed beginning in the collective experiences of students. She argues
that an incomplete analysis arises because of the systemic exclusion of
certain women from particular educational settings:

The danger in such an approach is that student knowledge, especially at the

university level, is often class, race and sex specific, that is, heterosexual, white
and middle class. An overemphasis on the centrality of that experience to
understanding the world can make invisible the experiences of working class and
poor women, native women and women of colour, many of whom may not be in
the university classroom to put forward their experience, and if in the classroom,
may be silenced by the hegemony of the dominant viewpoint. (p. 10)

Second are the silences that occur when a woman is present but not
heard (what Briskin describes as being silenced “by the hegemony of the
dominant viewpoint”). Some women speak of the futility of sharing their
views and experiences. Black women have attested to how their voices are
often never really heard, whether in feminist classrooms or in other purport-
edly progressive spaces. When one’s experience and one’s telling does not
“fit” for the hearers, it may be dismissed or passed over. This not-being-
heard is constructed in part through practices that privilege certain voices.
This can be a privileging (and therefore a simultaneous silencing) of class,
of race, of gender, of sexual preference, or of politics.
Several studies illustrate how oppressive power relations operate in
feminist (as in other) classrooms. The often painful self-criticisms of
teachers are very evident in these writings, and demonstrate feminist teach-
ers’ commitment to interrogate their practice critically. Hillyer Davis (1985)
reflects on how feminist voices in her classroom were privileged over
non-feminist ones. Weiler (1988) describes an incident where one student’s
feminist views were awarded more “attention” from the teacher than were
the views of a young woman whose ideas were less feminist and also
bounded by working-class culture. Gardner, Dean, and McKaig (1989)
similarly describe a teacher valuing views voiced by lesbian feminists in the
class over those of non-lesbians. Another aspect of power relations is
brought into view in Magda Lewis’s (1990) insightful article on male power
in a mixed-gender classroom. One of the things she points to is how men do
not have to be present to act as silencers; a classroom can be equally
gendered by their invisible presence (and power).
378 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

Third are the silences resulting from a sense that it is not safe to speak.
Despite claims that feminist classrooms are nurturing and caring, there is no
self-evident safety. Classrooms are places where people, previously unknown
to one another, are together, often for only a couple of hours each week.
Confidentiality cannot be assured, and fellow students may react in ways
that marginalize, patronize, objectify, or stereotype other women who, for
example, speak of experiences of poverty or welfare, claim a sexual prefer-
ence for women, or disclose their experiences of sexual abuse or rape or
disability. Some speaking may be merely uncomfortable. In other instances
it is dangerous. How safe is it for a woman (either teacher or student) who
has been sexually abused to speak from/of her experience in a classroom?
(Brookes, 1990). How safe is it for a woman who has been battered by her
spouse? Can such experiences be “shared” in a mixed-sex classroom? Can
these be shared with women whose talk seems threaded through with
“blame-the-victim” ideologies?
Finally, there are the silences that preserve privilege. In classrooms
where, for example, race or class oppression are being discussed, white
middle-class women may stay silent out of fear of saying something
“wrong.” “For many who consider themselves members of liberal or radical
camps, acknowledging personal power and admitting participation in the
culture of power is distinctly uncomfortable” (Delpit, 1988, pp. 283–284).
Similarly, Gardner, Dean, and McKaig (1989) write: “Guilt about class
privilege often keeps people paralysed. They try to relieve their guilt by
ignoring and denying class differences or by refusing to accept their own
privilege. Both denial and guilt reinforce the fear of difference” (p. 70).
However, such silence actually maintains privilege: staying silent means not
having to confront one’s own privilege, and reduces the likelihood that one
will be challenged.
At work in these descriptions of fear of speaking, of not being heard, and
of being silenced, are relations of power and dominance. “Sharing” assumes
a set of equal relations. This assumption renders invisible the very present
operations of power. Broader social relations of class, race, and heterosexist
oppression are fully operative in the feminist classroom. Gardner, Dean, and
McKaig (1989) describe their separate analyses of different classroom
experiences, where in all three,

[r]egardless of whether our focus was on differences in knowledge, class, or

sexuality, hierarchical modes of responding to the diversity of women’s lives
emerged. Differences were used by the superordinate group to gain power over
others or were ignored or denied. (p. 73)

Given these points, it would be simplistic to assume that sharing and

collaboration can happen easily and in some natural way in the feminist
classroom. Instead, the feminist teacher must take as a necessary project the
making visible and the dismantling of power relations reproduced and
reinscribed in the classroom. Safety must be consciously constructed to
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 379

allow women to speak of certain of their experiences. This dismantling and

reconstructing is essential, both to deepen the feminist critique of the social
world and to develop an analysis that will permit formation of alliances
across differences. Such alliances may then help move forward the feminist
political project.

The Politics of Sharing: Interrupting Dominance13

A final issue in relation to the “collaborative sharing classroom” centres on

the feminist conviction that as women share their lived experiences, they
will build solidarity. This claim is problematic given the counter-claim that
classrooms embody relations of domination; students will produce narratives
(or silences) riddled with dominant ideological frameworks (for example,
racist or classist or heterosexist), as well as with counter-hegemonic ones.
The analyses of voice, identity, and narrative (see above) have helped
feminist teachers make sense of conflicts that arise among students and
between student and teacher. The feminist teacher is more often than not
faced with voices (including sometimes her own) that require challenging or
critiquing.
This of course raises problems about claims that practices in feminist
classrooms “validate experience.” How can people in classrooms, both
teachers and students, hold on to the principle of validating and legitimizing
women’s knowledge in those moments when one person’s “knowledge” does
violence to another woman’s life and experiences? There are some glimpses
of classroom practices that help teachers and students work through this in
Britzman (1989), Brookes and Kelly (1989), Ellsworth (1989), Gardner,
Dean, and McKaig (1989), Kelly (1991), Lewis (1990), Martindale, Shea,
and Major (1991), and Morgan (1987). More such accounts are required.
Feminist teachers and students need not be paralysed by these diffi-
culties. The point is that if teacher and students alike are open to interrogat-
ing their own experiences and listening to what is silenced in every speak-
ing, then the potential is very rich for developing a broader and deeper
analysis of the issues being discussed. In the long run there will also be
greater potential for alliances to be forged across difference so that women
collectively engage in the transformative feminist political project.

Authority

These issues bring us to the question of authority in relations between

teachers and students. This third basic theme in feminist pedagogy literature
orients us to the precept that hierarchical relations should be minimized
between teacher and student: the teacher’s role as expert should be dis-
mantled. This call for the democratization of the classroom “emphasiz[es]
student expertise based on the authority of their experience and . . . de-
emphasiz[es] the leadership role” of the teacher (Friedman, 1985, pp.
380 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

204–205). The reduction of teacher-student authority relations has taken

many forms in feminist classroom practices: less directive teaching tech-
niques, circular class seating, small-group discussions, students seen as
experts, shared leadership, and collective decision-making about course
content and grading. The themes of valuing women’s experiences, building
collaboration, and establishing non-authoritarian classrooms are intertwined
and mutually reinforcing. Critiques of any overly simplistic approach to
authority have roots similar to issues discussed above.

What Is Problematized and What Is Not?

Much has been written about authority in feminist classrooms, and need not
be restated here. I want only to look at the implications for an analysis of
authority of the preceding discussions about “experience” and “collabor-
ation.” I claimed at the outset of this essay that a goal of feminist pedagogy
is to work toward transforming relations of oppression both within and
beyond the classroom. Yet, the problematizing of “experience” and “collab-
oration” suggests that exhortations for teachers to relinquish power may
often mean that other relations of domination and subordination in a class-
room remain uninterrupted.
In contrast to the initial general acceptance of the concepts “experience”
and “sharing,” the complexities of de-emphasizing authority and hierarchy
in feminist classrooms have been problematized from the outset (Briskin,
1990, pp. 7–10). It has long been recognized that teacher power operated
despite intentions to reduce that power: it had become implicit rather than
explicit (Hillyer Davis, 1985). More recently, critiques have arisen from
other cultural perspectives about normative views of authority in “progress-
ive” classrooms, pointing out the ethnocentrism in the pedagogical goal of
dissolving hierarchical relations. Those writing about Afrocentric pedagogy
and black feminist epistemology have described how authority is viewed
differently and less problematically in black communities.14
Early on, feminists pointed to a central paradox: to equalize classroom
relations, feminist teachers seemed intent on silencing their own voices so
that women students’ voices could be heard, legitimated, and valued; yet
teachers frequently did this in settings where they had struggled (and
continued to have to struggle) so hard to have their own voices heard
(Friedman, 1985). It was argued that feminist teachers had to recognize that
they, too, had experience and a voice; Culley (1985), for example, has
insisted that the teacher must claim “the authority of her intellect, imagin-
ation and passion” (p. 215). But there is another reason for claiming one’s
authority as a teacher: a vital teacher role is to respond to (and interrupt)
power relations operating among students. In attempts to minimize teacher
authority, teachers’ silence all too often reinforces relations of dominance.
Interrupting relations of dominance requires teacher intervention.15
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 381

This is a central question in rethinking the role of teachers with libratory inten-
tions. How can we position ourselves less as masters of truth and justice and
more as creators of a space where those directly involved can act and speak on
their own behalf? How do we do so without romanticizing the subject and
experience-based knowledge? (Lather, 1991, p. 137)

Clearly, one struggle for a feminist teacher is to find ways to use her voice
and her authority on certain matters in ways that do not silence women in
the classroom.

We must acknowledge that our role as teacher is a position of power over others.
We can use that power in ways that diminish or in ways that enrich and it is this
choice that should distinguish feminist pedagogy from ways of teaching that
reinforce domination. (hooks, 1988, p. 52)

Teacher authority should be exercised, not abolished. It is possible to trace

in the literature a shift in the image of the feminist teacher from that of
teacher as midwife (providing a supportive environment for women to
speak); to teacher as translator (helping women understand one another’s
perspectives, acting as mediator among the varying voices) (Hillyer Davis,
1985); to teacher as interruptor (challenging dominant and oppressive
ideologies) (Lather, 1991). The importance of critique in helping people
challenge privilege and domination exists in tension with the concern to
problematize the exercise of teacher power (often white and usually middle
class). “To deconstruct authority is not to do away with it but to learn to
trace its effects, to see how authority is constituted and constituting” (Lather,
1991, p. 144). Only by challenging practices of privilege and domination
can we transform classrooms and forge alliances across difference such that
collectively women can challenge forms of domination outside the class-
room.

CONCLUSION

There is no one method for thinking and there is no one way to teach it.
(Bunch, 1983, p. 258)

Various practices of feminist pedagogy are visible in classrooms. In the

public school system, there are classrooms that employ many feminist
practices (sharing, cooperative learning, small-group discussions, beginning
in experience, journal writing), yet which are not explicitly feminist in
attending to gender relations in curriculum content or classroom interaction;
there are classrooms where attention is paid to gender interactions, to
sex-role stereotypes, to making women visible in textbooks (whether in
readers, stories, history texts, or science texts) but where these processes are
not addressed as relations of power or as critiques of patriarchy; and there
are (fewer) classrooms where relations of domination (whether of gender,
382 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

race, class, or heterosexism) are challenged. In university settings, there are

classrooms where the topic is not gender per se, and where pedagogy is
traditional (primarily lecture, teacher as expert), but where the presence of
a feminist critique (for example, of history, or of research methods, or of
literary canons) is felt; there are classrooms where the topic is gender and
where the feminist critique is available but where “normative” feminist
teaching practices do not occur to any extent; and there are classrooms
where normative feminist pedagogical principles (voice, experience, sharing,
collaboration) are adhered to but where little attention is paid to what is
silenced in speaking, or to what is not shared, where there is no interroga-
tion of “experience,” and where relations of domination in the classroom are
not made an explicit topic for analysis and critique.
This list could continue, into community and adult education settings.
With all these differences (and there are no doubt others), one might ask:
Can some be named as “properly feminist” and others not? Are there criteria
which could be used to “judge” some classrooms as more feminist than
others? Perhaps centrally, is such judging an enterprise in which we wish to
engage?
In this essay I have discussed three themes characteristic of feminist
pedagogy: that teaching should begin from women’s experiences; that
sharing experiences is a way of building women’s sense of solidarity and
mutual support; and that authority relations in the classroom should be
dismantled to equalize power relations. Each claim has turned out to be
problematic and complex. But it is clear from the feminist literature that the
claims themselves are important—we do need to begin in people’s experi-
ences, we do need to discuss these experiences in order to collaborate in
building an analysis of (and action against) shared forms of oppression, and
we do need to think about authority and power in classroom settings. What
this essay suggests is the complexity of these processes and the richness of
the current debates. It reminds us that continuous reflection on and attention
to issues of classroom practice are required. And it shows we need more
accounts from feminist teachers and students as they tackle issues around
experience, sharing, and authority in their classrooms. Clearly, feminism
must be anti-racist and anti-classist in its pedagogy, in its analysis, in its
political project. Doing anti-racist, anti-classist feminist oppositional work
means developing and critiquing our knowledge; analyzing more thoroughly
the concepts of experience, sharing, and power; and thinking more carefully
about the implications of the first two for the processes we claim as feminist
pedagogy.
So, to return to the question raised above: Would it be helpful or wise to
develop a set of “rules for feminist pedagogical practice” as an ideal toward
which we should strive? Or is such an endeavour too normative, too likely
to set up as “failed feminist pedagogues” those who do not implement such
practices? My review of the literature suggests that formulating a set of
“rules of practice” is the wrong way to go; that we ought rather to conceptu-
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 383

alize feminist pedagogies as a set of things to think about as one constructs

one’s practice. This makes sense also when one contemplates the range of
practices used by “good” teachers, the conditions of the work of teaching,
and the potential for oppression in each practice that has been claimed as
feminist.
To return to feminism itself. What is the feminist project? Feminism is
about transformative politics, working to ending oppressive relations of
class, of gender, of race, of heterosexism. In discussing this essay with me,
a feminist community activist who works with women with a low income
said immediately that the central question surely had to be: “Why are we
teaching?”. And the answer surely had to be: “To change the world. That’s
what’s at the centre of feminist pedagogy.” Her words are mirrored in many
feminist teachers’ comments: what Martel and Peterat (1988) call “our
authentic heart-felt hopes for a better present and future” (p. 91), what
Janice Raymond (1985) would call teaching with a passion for change.
The literature and critiques of feminist pedagogical principles and
practices suggest the futility of establishing a normative set of practices.
What therefore can we say? What might be the central question a feminist
teacher might ask of her work? What might a standpoint of feminist peda-
gogy be? I propose that we ask ourselves the following: “Is what I am doing
as teacher enhancing our capacity for transformative practice? In my particu-
lar circumstances, what kind of teaching and learning has the most potential
to develop a collective capacity to engage in transformative feminist prac-
tice?”

Feminism’s long-standing tendencies toward self-reflexivity provide some

experience of both rendering problematic and provisional our most firmly held
assumptions and, nevertheless, acting in the world, taking a stand. Women’s
simultaneous experiences of positions of both privilege and marginality is the
material ground for the development of practices of self-interrogation and
critique. (Lather, 1991, p. 29)

NOTES

1
The literature on feminist pedagogy is prolific and wide ranging. In this essay
I limit myself to literature produced in Canada, the United States, and Britain.
Articles have appeared in journals since the very early seventies, including a
number of review essays (see, for example, Shrewsbury, 1987 and Hofmann
Nemiroff, 1989). Entire issues of journals have been devoted to the topic: see,
for example, Radical Teacher, 18 (1981); Women’s Studies Quarterly, 15(3/4)
(1987); Journal of Thought, 2(3) (1985); and Sociology of Education, 62(1)
(1989). An American journal, Feminist Teacher, is devoted entirely to the
topic. Classic collections describing and analyzing feminist pedagogy include
Charlotte Bunch and Sandra Pollack, Learning Our Way (1983); Gendered
Subjects (1985), edited by Margo Culley and Catherine Portuges; and Learn-
ing Liberation (1983), by Jane Thompson. More recent books include Teach-
ing Women: Feminism and English Studies (1989), edited by Ann Thompson
and Helen Wilcox; Sue Rosser’s Female Friendly Science (1990); Belenky,
384 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule’s Women’s Ways of Knowing (1986);

Kathleen Weiler’s Women Teaching for Change (1988); and Patti Lather’s
Getting Smart (1991). Canadian materials include Linda Briskin’s Feminist
Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning Liberation (1990); Unsettling Relations
(1991), by Himanni Bannerji, Linda Carty, Kari Dehli, Susan Heald, and Kate
McKenna, on feminism in university classrooms; and Jane Gaskell, Arlene
McLaren, and Myra Novogrodsky’s Claiming an Education (1989) (although
only portions of the latter deal with pedagogy). It is important to note here
the attention given to teaching processes in these articles and books, which
are strongly characterized by introspection and self-critique. This attention to
teaching processes is rare in higher education. For a bibliography on feminist
pedagogy, see Sue V. Rosser (1990), Female Friendly Science, pp. 134–141.
2
The concept “pedagogy” as used here means the interaction between teachers
and learners as they construct knowledge together. The teaching/learning
process thus is viewed as an interaction where the teacher is not a transmitter,
where the learner is not a passive vessel, and where knowledge is understood
to be jointly constructed within a particular spatial/temporal context. This
concept of pedagogy “focuses attention on the conditions and means through
which knowledge is produced” (Lather, 1991, p. 15).
3
Carol Lee, Kofi Lomotey, and Shujaa Mwalimu (1990) describe principles of
Afrocentric teaching, which include the ethics of the culture, the history and
achievements of the Afro-American community, the need for political and
community organizing, and teaching techniques that are “socially interactive,
holistic and positively affective” (p. 52). Of Afrocentric pedagogy, Gloria
Ladson-Billings and Annette Henry (1990) say: “[C]ulturally relevant teach-
ing uses the students’ culture to empower students to be able to critically
examine educational content and process and ask what role they have in
creating a truly democratic and multicultural society” (p. 82).
4
Whole-language teachers are committed to “learning communities,” cooper-
ative learning, students as active meaning-makers, and learning that begins in
students’ experiences. More recently, and somewhat more marginalized, are
writings pointing to the transformative potential of the whole-language
approach (see, for example, Harman & Edelsky, 1989).
5
This includes people writing about education for global consciousness
(Boulding, 1988), education for democracy (Gonzalez, 1990), and peace
education (Hicks, 1988; Reardon, 1988).
6
Reflective teacher education explores ways of fostering among school teach-
ers more reflective, student-centred empowerment pedagogies. In public
schools, and in teacher education, there is a growing tradition of developing
teacher-reflection—see Sears and Marshall (1990), Schön (1987), and Clan-
dinin (1986). See also the description by Schniedewind, Adams, and Pardo
(1990) of how they teach teachers to use empowerment principles in their
classrooms: valuing students’ experiences; structuring groups for cooperative
learning; challenging racist, homophobic, and sexist statements; and moving
to action.
7
A clear example of the distinction between non-sexist (equal-opportunity) and
anti-sexist approaches can be found in how feminist analysis has influenced
literature on science teaching in schools. In general, the analysis has led to
efforts to increase girls’ attachment to science and scientific careers through
such measures as increased collaborative work in laboratories and exposure
ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY 385

to women working in scientific fields (Fennema & Leder, 1990; Kelly, 1987;
Rosser, 1990; Whyte, Deem, Kant, & Cruickshank, 1985; and two special
theme issues of Women’s Education/Éducation des Femmes — CCLOW,
1991a, 1991b). But these practices do not challenge science itself, its episte-
mology, its rules of logic. Most schooling literature on girls in science takes
an equal-opportunity (non-sexist) rather than anti-sexist approach.
8
For the reader unfamiliar with feminist literature on women and learning, see
Sara Ruddick (1980) on maternal thinking; Jane Roland Martin (1985) on
care, concern, and connection as key to women’s education; Belenky, Clin-
chy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) on women’s preference for “connected
knowing”; and Gilligan (1982) and Gilligan, Lyons, and Hanmer (1989) on
women’s ethic of care. Key words used to characterize women’s ways of
knowing include: concrete, collaborative, context-specific, shared. Critiques
of this literature suggest that it is potentially essentializing, and that it makes
universal claims about women which do not hold true for all women, and
which do, on the other hand, hold true for some men. Despite criticism, the
ideas have come to have the status of truth.
9
For a discussion of postmodernism and poststructuralism in education, see
Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn, and Walkerdine (1984) and Cherryholmes
(1988). See Lather (1991) for a helpful discussion of postmodernism and its
relation to feminist pedagogy: “postmodernism foregrounds how discourses
shape our experiences of ‘the real’ in its proposal that the way we speak and
write reflects the structures of power in our society” (p. 25); postmodernism
focuses on “what makes our knowledge both possible and problematic” (p.
41).
10
See Luisa Passerini’s book Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural
Experience of the Turin Working Class (1987); Interpreting Women’s Lives,
by the Personal Narratives Group (1989); and Frigga Haug, Female Sexuali-
zation (1987). The latter two books have influenced numerous feminists to
begin to examine “memory” and to look at how power, dominance, and
subordination are inscribed in their/our subjectivities.
11
In refuting the charge of essentialism, many feminist theorists argue that it is
not that women naturally learn in certain ways, but that they have been
socialized such that these are their preferred modes. The works of both
Rockhill (1991) and Brookes (1990, 1992) show that women’s learning is
deeply affected by the material conditions of their lives.
12
The schooling literature on collaborative learning captures the contradictions
in the claims. In the schooling literature on gender, collaboration is seen as
a good thing for girls in particular, because girls and women prefer to learn
this way. For example, based on her research findings, Betty Collis (1991)
claims that girls working with computers in high schools prefer collaborative
work over competitive and solitary work. Similarly, Sue Rosser (1990) in her
review of the literature on girls/women in science, argues that collaborative
work in science is a pedagogic principle that should be employed to make
science classrooms “girl-friendly.” In contrast, the “general” schooling litera-
ture depicts collaborative learning as “a good thing” for everyone, not just for
women or girls. In the cooperative learning movement, as in the earlier open
classroom movement, and in whole-language teaching, learning for all learn-
ers is understood to be social; collaborative learning is the preferred norm (at
least theoretically); and it is assumed (among the more radical elements of
386 ESSAI CRITIQUE / REVIEW ESSAY

these movements, at least) to be a necessary component for females and

males alike in any collective struggle for social change.
13
Lather (1991) speaks of “pedagogy aimed at interrupting relations of domi-
nance” (p. 122). “[P]edagogy becomes a site not for working through more
effective transmission strategies but for helping us learn to analyze the
discourses available to us, which ones we are invested in, how we are
inscribed by the dominant, how we are outside of, other than, the dominant,
consciously/unconsciously, always partially contradictory” (p. 143).
14
Delpit (1988), a black educator critiquing the oversimplified acceptance of
process approaches to literacy, writes that “[b]lack children expect an author-
ity figure to act with authority” (p. 289). Foster (1990) suggests that in the
Afro-American community, a teacher gets to be a teacher because she has
expertise and is authoritative; thus one would expect her to act with authority.
15
I do not mean to imply here that only the teacher will act to challenge
relations of domination in the classroom. Students often do this as well. But
the teacher must recognize the challenge and assist in providing space for it,
or insist that it be taken up (or, if not brought up by others, bring it up
herself). In each of these instances, the teacher is using her authority to
enhance the possibility of challenging power relations in the classroom.

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