Reading Response: Feminist Pedagogy

According to Laura R. Micciche, the following are values of feminist teachers she had encountered are:

• the personal and political
• theoretical, political, intellectual, and emotional understanding of intersectional identities
• systemic analyses of inequality aimed at uncovering the production of knowledge, meaning, power, and belief in particular contexts
• writing as a tool for self-revelation, critique, and transformation
• distributed agency through collaborative practices and alternative classroom arrangements
• content focused on women's experiences and contributions to knowledge-making
• teaching and mentoring as forms of professional activism

I would like to believe that it is less chauvinism on my part and more simple ignorance of the basis of feminism, but I certainly expected more about women in terms of values. I'll qualify this by saying that the term feminism is about women's rights and equality, but perhaps there is a difference between feminism and feminist pedagogy.

In fact, the above difference is certainly there. Feminist pedagogy seems to take into account not only the worthiness of women but all fringe identities that have trouble finding a voice. There is, too, a very big emphasis placed on the personal voice in both private and public spaces. More than anything, however, the primary word I find myself associating with feminist pedagogy is disruption; disrupting power structures, disrupting perpetuated stereotypes or assumptions, disrupting norms which are detrimental to fringe or voiceless groups. In this light, it is a necessary tool to incorporate into a pedagogy if for no other reason than because the students that we teach will not only come from dominant dispositions. If a structure for teaching can be setup that better incorporates ALL students as opposed to favoring one group over another, it is obvious that the inclusive structure be established.