Rethinking Feminist Pedagogies: Examining Identity and Positionality in Teaching Social Justice

• In Event: Rethinking Curriculum and Pedagogies Through Feminist Praxis

Abstract

In recent years, interrogation of positionality has become doctrine both as pedagogy and research method (Pillow, 2003) within the humanities and social sciences. Challenging “traditional” notions of objectivity in knowledge production, feminist epistemologists argue that knowledge is always ‘situated,’ produced by positioned actors (Haraway, 1988; Noddings, 1998). However, few scholars have examined the pedagogical impacts of teaching students to reflect on their positionalities. This paper asks: What political projects does attention to positionality open, and what does it circumscribe? Ethnographic data was collected from an undergraduate class that uses a pedagogy and curriculum informed by feminist epistemologies. This study finds that though feminist pedagogies help students understand the centrality of oppression in America, they ironically discourage students from addressing it.

Author

• Joanne Tien, University of California - Berkeley