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 gender-inclusive

• 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?