Power, Pedagogy and Empowerment

Abstract

As mentioned in previous chapters, feminists have often chosen to concentrate their efforts on knowledge production and pedagogical interventions, rather than on policy development in the academy. Pedagogy can represent a key message system and entail an alertness to the micropolitics of the classroom. This chapter explores the concepts of power, pedagogy and empowerment in relation to feminism in the academy. It critically examines empowerment discourses and raises questions about the contradictory role of feminist teachers and authority in dominant institutions of knowledge production. Issues of student resistance, group dynamics, difference and diversity in women-only groups are interrogated using the theoretical frameworks of critical and feminist pedagogy and postmodernism. The chapter draws on interviews with feminist academics who were asked how they applied feminism to their pedagogy/teaching methodologies, and students who identified as feminists were asked for their views on styles of classroom interaction.