Resisting the Discourse on Resistance: Theorizing Experiences from an Action Research Project on Feminist Pedagogy in Different Learning Cultures in Sweden

Bondestam, Fredrik

doi:10.5406/femteacher.21.2.0139

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Consistent with previous research, the professors who talked with me recognized that confronting issues of privilege, racism, sexism, and homophobia in the classroom can feel difficult for some students (Bondestam, 2011;Johnson et al, 2008). To have honest and productive conversations, these instructors suggested a variety of ways to make students comfortable with the topic.…”

Section: Making Students Feel Comfortable By Creating a Safe Spacementioning

confidence: 55%

“…At the same time, I am sensitive to the concerns of scholars like Ellsworth (1989) and Bondestam (2011), who warn against using the power dynamics of the university to colonize the intellectual space of the classroom. Indeed, insisting on my own perspective as the truth undermines feminist ideals of equality, self-determination, and the immanent value of each student in the room (Foss & Griffin, 1995).…”

Section: Creating a Safe Spacementioning

confidence: 97%

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Engaging Undergraduates in Feminist Classrooms: An Exploration of Professors’ Practices

Spencer

2015

Equity & Excellence in Education

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This article reports the results of a feminist action research project that sought to ascertain professors' best practices for engaging undergraduates in feminist classrooms. In semi-structured interviews, professors recommended assigning readings from a variety of positionalities; creating a safe space for class discussion; relying on data to respond to student resistance; and including issues related to diversity, human identity, and social justice at a curricular level. The article concludes with a discussion of the author's experience implementing this advice in his own teaching for two years.Feminist pedagogies necessarily exist in tension and paradox, fraught with opportunities and challenges. With awareness that one cannot speak of a singular and monolithic feminist pedagogy, in general, we might expect that instructors who identify as feminists want to foster values of equality and freedom in their classrooms-even while institutional roles codify the instructorstudent relationship as hierarchal. Feminist instructors can likely agree that we want our students to become more aware of their own privileges and more capable in relationships and interactions with people from different groups (whether defined by gender, race, class, sexuality, or other axes of difference). Yet, we also want students to recognize that privilege resides not just at the level of the individual but, in fact, emerges as a result of complex structures and systems of power and oppression.Moreover, feminist instructors face impossible paradoxes as employees in institutions that are often organized hierarchically and who are implicated in those same structures and systems of power and oppression we want our students to recognize and resist. Some feminist instructors have institutional privilege and economic security in the form of tenure-track or tenured positions; those with tenure may feel safer to critique their own institutions and the uneven distribution of salary and power on which their institutions (and their own positions) rely. Contingent faculty and part-time faculty, though, have much to risk in offering more radical (or even liberal) points of view. These risks multiply for faculty members of color or who are queer or gender nonconforming, among others. Students, too, come to the classroom differently affected-privileged, disadvantaged, or often in some combination-by those same systems of power and oppression. Students' experiences and perceptions of their own privilege or disadvantage influence their

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Section: Making Students Feel Comfortable By Creating a Safe Spacementioning

confidence: 55%

Section: Creating a Safe Spacementioning

confidence: 97%

Engaging Undergraduates in Feminist Classrooms: An Exploration of Professors’ Practices

Spencer

2015

Equity & Excellence in Education

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“…PAR subverts the hierarchical distinctions between researcher and subject through a democratization of ownership of the research, its aims, and outcomes (Roose et al, 2014). Within this egalitarian forum of shared inquiry, intersectional differences and commonalities, embodied among the research team, led to new insights into our experiential knowledge, survival strategies, and resistance (Bondestam, 2011).…”

Section: Methodological Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project

Crabtree

Hemingway²,

Sudbury

et al. 2020

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Corporatization of Higher Education has introduced new performance measurements as well as an acceleration of academic tasks creating working environments characterised by speed, pressure and stress. This paper discusses findings from a qualitative, feminist participatory action research (PAR) study undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of women academics at a modern, corporate university in England. The study illuminates how corporatized HE erodes faculty autonomy, degrades learning environments, damages professional satisfaction and health. Strategies for resistance and liberation developed through the PAR process are discussed.Key words: slow professor, corporatized academy, Higher Education.

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