Poststructural feminist pedagogy in English instruction of vocational-and-technical education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a poststructural feminist pedagogical model and to investigate whether vocational-and-technical college students receiving poststructural feminist instruction would exhibit better learning achievement and critical thinking ability, and express greater satisfaction with their classes than those receiving traditional instruction. In applying a poststructural feminist model, the researchers intended to help both the teacher and students work together to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have long been the norm in the contemporary Chinese education system. The research results show that the poststructural feminist pedagogy had a positive effect upon the participants in the experimental group. Several conclusions are elicited from the study. First, in the English language achievement post-test, the participants receiving the poststructural feminist instruction significantly outperformed those receiving the traditional banking instruction in terms of listening, vocabulary, grammar, and reading. Second, in the critical thinking ability post-test, the participants significantly outperformed those receiving the traditional banking instruction in terms of length, focus, content, organization, and style. Third, in regard to the students' satisfaction, it was clearly shown that the students who received the instruction informed by poststructural feminist pedagogy expressed significantly greater satisfaction than those who had received traditional banking instruction in terms of instructional objective, teaching method/materials, teacher quality, class environment, and assessment.

Creating a Positive Learning Environment for Students with English Classroom Anxiety

“…Student Satisfaction Questionnaire (SSQ).-After the intervention, a 34item SSQ (Wang, Chao, & Liao, 2011) was administered using a 5-point rating scale with anchors 1: Strongly disagree and 5: Strongly agree to measure students' satisfaction toward the intervention in terms of learning objective, learning content and methods, instructor's qualities, learning environment, assessment, and overall. The range of possible scores was 34 to 170, and in a pilot study of 126 students the Cronbach's αs for the subscales and overall questionnaire were .…”

“…A post-structural feminist pedagogical model (PFPM) allows students to use democratic dialogues to actively take control of the learning process and become empowered for knowledge construction (Wang, Chao, & Liao, 2011). Liao and Wang (2010) showed that both male and female students instructed under PFPM obtained higher English learning achievement, better critical thinking, and greater satisfaction, for they had more opportunities to speak their opinions without being criticized.…”

Gender-Inclusive Educational Programs for Workforce Development

“…Gender roles and class contribute to social support, expectations of women in vocational education, and women’s participation in male-dominated vocations. As discussed by Wang, Chao, and Liao (2011), applying feminist instruction can lead to all students’ enhanced performance in vocational education programs. Instruction styles are influential in students’ success and decision-making processes.…”

A feminist teacher’s account of her attempts to achieve the goals of feminist pedagogy

“…I do this as a personal choice; I prefer the use of it as a singular term to emphasise its contrast with other forms of pedagogy, and to underline the commonality of purpose of the various approaches it embraces. Many other authors have also opted for this singular terminology (Webb et al, 2002;Markowitz, 2006;Brown, 2009;Wang et al, 2011;Coia and Taylor, 2013;Light et al, 2015). Nevertheless, I stress that by using the singular term, I am not attempting to suppress the diversity of feminism or feminist pedagogy.…”

“…This was important because as Lawrence (2016) states, the wealth of USA literature on feminism and feminist pedagogy means it is easy to see work from the USA as the dominant narrative, but work from many other countries has also contributed to debate and enabled commonalities to be explored. For example, Wang et al, (2011) working in Taiwan discuss how a model of teaching based on poststructural feminist pedagogy had a positive effect on students' achievements and abilities to think critically.…”