Strand 7

Toward new forms of feminist pedagogy?

Trends, interpretations and available resources

Coordinators:  Aino-Maija Elonheimo, University of Helsinki; Brunella Fiore, University of Milano-Bicocca; Giulia Selmi, University of Verona; Giovanna Vingelli, University of Calabria.

→ abstracts to be sent to: efrc.strand7@gmail.com, info@atgender.eu 

The challenges posed by the contemporary world have long required a rethinking of educational concepts, policies, and practices. Institutions play a key role in the construction of gender and in the reinforcement of gender inequality, affecting choices and opportunities by unequally allocating resources and privilege.

In recent years the education field – and especially academy – have gone through massive changes, which can be attributed to the desire to internationalise, globalise and marketise higher education and implementing neo-liberal approaches. Teaching and learning are entangled processes taking place within specific systems of power. Organised across different levels from kindergarten classrooms to academia and from activist communities to national ministries, teaching and learning have historically been associated with the (re)production of intersecting social hierarchies (i.e., sexism, racism, classism, homotransphobia) but also with moments of social transformation. Scenarios, reflections, and practices fostering the possibility of change towards the reinvention of the educational field as a driver of more general and global changes are centerstage topics of the strand.

The strand aims to discuss such issues by creating a forum to debate current issues surrounding critical feminist pedagogy and discuss how and where feminist research is impacting practice and policy and where practices and policies are driving new research, inside and outside the academia while resisting to the growing anti-gender and antifeminist sentiment. What contribution can a feminist approach offer to the teaching-learning process? (e.g., positive learning experience, active learning practices, development of critical thinking and open-mindedness…). What are the main barriers and challenges with implementing feminist teaching (e.g., societal, institutional, personal)? How can feminist methodologies influence future education and ‘reinvent’ education at all levels in the transition towards post-pandemic times?

 At this juncture, we invite papers collecting theoretical and empirical contributions exploring the connections between teachers and students; teaching/learning and materialities of bodies; teaching aims and outcomes; teaching and political praxis; disciplines and knowledges; theories taught and learnt in class and individual embodied and embedded experiences inside and outside university/ school corridors. We also seek proposals for feminist pedagogical practices that respond to and resist new and old forms of colonial, racist, or neoliberal feminist thought. How can feminist teachers respond effectively to practices and ideologies of mass incarceration, settler colonialism, homonationalism, pink washing/watching, and the neoliberal rhetoric of personal responsibility and choice that obscures the elimination of the welfare state? What opportunities and obstacles does the shift toward neoliberal universities present for promotion of gender equality in academia? What impacts do current shifts in terms of research and teaching assessment and funding for universities and research organizations have in terms of curricula, research questions etc. in gender and feminist studies? How do precarity and casualization of academic employment impact on the content of knowledge/the learning process/academic citizenship?

Against this background, this strand invites papers and panels from a wide range of (inter)disciplines, both empirical and theoretical contributions, on topics which include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Teaching/learning challenges for feminist teachers/students today

  • Building feminist alliances across different educational contexts

  • Feminist pedagogies, potentials and problems/ possibilities for connections and resistance

  • Teaching feminist pedagogy in educational settings 

  • Trans*feminist action and pedagogy

  • Gender, race and class in the academic labour market: getting in and staying in?

  • Hybrid and remote pedagogies – feminist questions on it

  • Practices of feminist pedagogy: safer space, trigger warnings, pronouns, cultural cloning etc. 

  • Feminist educational tools against homotransphobia, homotransphobic bulling and gender-based violence

  • Transnational alliances, praxis and coalitions

  • Feminism, STEM and information literacy

  • Feminist digital technologies in education and/for civic engagement

  • Feminist encounters and coping strategies with work, the new economy, education and families

  • Feminist support (mentoring, supervising, peergroups  etc)

  • Pedagogies of decentering whiteness, cisgender experiences, or heterosexuality

  • Teaching global feminisms and intersectionality

  • Feminist pedagogies for and of the precariat (students, teachers, administrators)