Feminist
pedagogy, sometimes referred to as
“feminist liberatory education,”
places issues of power as a central theme. Power is implicated in teacher-student
relationships, in access to opportunities, and in self-realization. Many
feminist pedagogues (e.g., Kimmel, hooks) emphasize social responsibility,
taking ideas into action, and political struggle as important aspects
of feminist pedagogy. Feminist art pedagogues seek to empower students
to create societal knowledge through self-representations that confront
gender, race, economics, age, health, and education as mediating conditions
of representation.
Feminist educators form their pedagogical approach from their particular
feminist values adjusted in accordance to a specific context. Maher and
Tetreaut (1994) note that student-centered learning is an
important feminist
teaching strategy in which student learning is constructed “through
the interactions of communities of knowers” (Garber, 2003, p. 22).
Feminist educators of psychology, Tomlinson and Fassinger (2002), found
that “one common ingredient within feminist pedagogy is an intentional
focus on women, women’s oppression, and/or gender relations”
(p. 38). They argue that feminist pedagogy is built on “feminist
principles of shared leadership, attending to process, and valuing all
voices” (Tomlinson & Fassinger, 2002, p. 38). Feminist art educator,
Elizabeth Garber states “while scholarship on feminist pedagogy
emphasizes personal experience as part of mastery, expertise, and voice,
experience tells me that this is most successful
when the teacher is comfortable
with her or his mastery and authority of the content” (2003, p.
66).
From a comprehensive review of feminist pedagogical literature in feminist
journals and books, Linda Forrest and Freda Rosenberg (1997) concluded
that feminist pedagogy is “the fusion of feminist values into the
process and methods of teaching” (p. 179). According to Tomlinson
and Fassinger’s (2002) survey of feminist educators, they found
that feminist teaching practices value and draw out personal experience
for personal growth. In contrast Judy Chicago emphasizes the transformation
of personal experience into content-based expression that is a tangible
form. While most feminist educators privilege process over content, according
to the
survey, for Judy Chicago the process is valuable to the degree
it helps to make tangible works of art. Similar to the feminist pedagogues
surveyed, Chicago supports honest expression of emotions, including those
by the facilitator or teacher. However, she is opposed to teacher as “mommy,”
who is expected to make everything better. Chicago does not align with
feminist pedagogy that coddles students and instead is honest and direct
in her critiques to prepare students for professional art practice.
Chicago believes in feminist pedagogical practices of non-hierarchical
classrooms and assessment strategies, multiple perspectives, diversity
in ways of producing knowledge, and social action. Like others, she stresses
transforming dominant power relations is a central goal of
feminist pedagogy
(Lather, 1991; Ellsworth, 1992; Manicom, 1992; hooks, 1994; Forrest &
Rosenberg, 1997; Tomlinson & Fasssinger, 2002).
Feminist art pedagogues in the 1970s initially focused teaching on the
inclusion of women artists as role-models and to encouraged women to express
in visual form their lived-experiences. Second wave feminist art educators
guided their students to look for contradictions between socially expected
gender roles and their everyday desires, hopes, and experiences. Since
the 1990s, feminist art educators have increasingly included content about
the diversity of women’s experiences of oppression, power, and privilege;
and draw attention in their teaching to issues of gender, race, age, sexual
orientation, social class, and education
as co-creating this diversity.
When Judy Chicago went back to teaching in 1999 she made a conscious decision
to include both men and women in the courses and projects that she and
Donald Woodman facilitated. A central tenet of feminist pedagogy is that
knowledge is not value-free, therefore teaching is always a political
act when one is aware that choice of teaching approach impacts learners
in specific ways. Chicago’s decision on mixed gender projects is
a political act to teach men to listen to women and to teach women to
speak out and with conviction when men are present. She found this worked
best when the ratio was two-thirds women and one-third men in the group.
Similarly, The Envisioning the Future (ETF) participants included
46 women and 16
men. However, the ETF project was purposefully planned
to be a 50/50 gender mix of facilitators to challenge the methodology
to build group support structures that encourage all to reach for excellence
in completing work. |
The
art teaching approaches experienced previously by the 70 participants and
8 facilitators in The Envisioning the Future project are typical of the
range of adult art education. The participants ranged in age from 25 to
78 years and also differed in cultural backgrounds.
A few were either self-taught or learned through apprenticeship situations.
Most had earned undergraduate or graduate degrees in art, or had taken some
university studio courses. Self-taught approaches were also commonly used
by those in university art programs that were “experimental, liberal,
and encouraged exploration.” These participants learned from reading
about and looking at art and from attending presentations by visiting artists.
Some participants described very hierarchical situations in which the students
were “expected to kneel at the master teacher’s feet who adamantly
opposed feminist and conceptual art.” Or the teacher
discussed the
work rather than asking students to discuss their goals in the work. Several
mentioned teaching approaches in which students were told what to do and
how to do it.
Many described that their art education consisted of emphasis “on
technique without reference to subject” or requests for the student
to use specific media and subject matter such as drawing from the nude without
specifying the context or concern for what the work communicated.
Others noted that self-expression was not encouraged; yet some were encouraged
to create from their interests and passions. The typical teaching approach
in studio courses involved teacher demonstrations of techniques and faculty
critiques to the whole class about the visual form of each student’s
work. The
critiques emphasized color theory and composition.
Other teaching approaches experienced included emphasis on concept development,
class-wide collaborations, or students were required to create several works
based on a single theme.
The Chicago/Woodman methodology is an entirely different model. “It’s
a model where the teacher helps to first make each student feel valued.
By listening to what the students have to say, communicates the fact that
what the students have to say is important. And that their experience is
worthy of examination. And next, that in their experience is potential content
for artmaking, which also makes their experience important. If you can turn
your experience into artmaking, then it validates your experience. It really
is a very simple process, but
sometimes implementing the process is not
so simple. It has to do with going around in a circle, giving everybody
a time and space.
The expectation for excellence is communicated in a number of ways; urging
the participants to become informed on the subject in which they are interested,
learning about previous work on the subject, and through what might be described
as a feminist version of the Socratic method, e.g., probing, questioning,
and asking the participant to think more deeply about their intentions.
Also, by doing research that forces the students to actually look at a level
of accomplishment, a bar is established, which helps to raise the level
as well as the expectations of excellence. At the same time as they are
being supported there is also the insistence that they aspire to
excellence”
(Judy Chicago, 11/23/2002, interview).
References |
