The Pedagogy of Childbirth: Disrupting a Science Museum Encounter at Science World, Vancouver, Canada

• In Event: Connections and Relationships Shaping and Redefining Queerness in Education

Abstract

This paper critically explores the pedagogical space of Science World in creating disciplined, birthing patients within the BodyWorks gallery on display in Vancouver, Canada. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, I explore the ways in which power/knowledge circulates to regulate and de-agentalize bodies in a science museum encounter. I consider the regimes of truth that emerge regarding the good/right/correct way to give birth and to be female: white, heteronormative, slender, conforming, always a mother, mostly a uterus. In exposing regimes of truth within the encountered curriculum of the science museum, the hope is that educational responsibility can be acknowledged, giving space for disruption.

Author

• Michelle Turner, The University of British Columbia