Feminist pedagogy in higher education has focused on how teachers should address their power over students. Understanding how to improve student learning in a caring environment is especially important for universities with large numbers of minority and first-generation students. Without a clear understanding of how teachers’ powers can be used to enhance student learning, feminist pedagogy can fall into permissive teaching that unintentionally produces a form of covert discrimination. This happens when students attend school with deficits in their learning (and instead of helping students understand what they need to know and do), teachers pat such students on their backs and give them the feeling that they are doing just fine. Teachers who do this may believe that they are being caring and getting connected with such students’ sense of cultural awareness; this treatment, however, may reinforce inequity. We claim that this inequity flows from dichotomous thinking that assumes students are educable (or they are not), and that this thinking leads to tracking students into college bound, referral programs or others. For sure, this sort of approach does not stress educating students per se. Consequently, a disproportionate number of students are left uneducated.
In this article, we demonstrate how different conceptions of power result in either sorting students to enter already existing social milieu or educating students so they are empowered to succeed and prepared to have an equal chance for success. Without a clear understanding of the relationship between feminist power and caring, teaching may become little more than an empty or feel-good experience for middle-class students, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion and gender. This approach to teaching can be especially devastating for poor, minority, and first- generation college students. In addition, understanding feminist power and assessment is also important for teacher educators.
Feminist pedagogy in higher education has focused on the interaction between teachers and students in the classroom and how feminist teachers should address imbalances of power (Cohee, et al, 1998; Maher & Tetreault, 1994; Ropers-Huilman, 1998). Shrewsberry (1993) suggested that democratic principles guide feminist pedagogy to say that faculty share power with students. Although we support the notion of a democratic classroom, we have concerns about how power can be shared and how it may affect learning.
Ideally, teachers would like to consider life stages and experiences of students, and vary their teaching approaches, depending upon whether teachers plan to engage students in a dialogue or in providing feedback on individual student products. We are concerned about how and when the attempt to create a democratic classroom goes astray. To clarify our concerns, we provide several brief examples:
A professor may say she is feminist in her teaching and that she shares power yet be overbearing in her control of classroom dialogue. Conversely, she may hand the classroom over to the students while maintaining that she is attempting to share power, and be a co-equal. In the latter case, she may say that her classroom is democratic, but in giving control to the students, she does not become aware that two or more students have taken over and deprived the other students in a class, for example, of their democratic participation.
In another example, a professor becomes very committed to co-equal sharing of dialogue and assignments, to the degree that she announces to students that they have to assign grades to their own papers. She never gives feedback on how well the papers are to be written, and gives blanket As.
These examples show the complexity of sharing power with students in the classroom and how demanding a democratic classroom can be. Although the ideal of sharing power in the classroom sounds good, we ask the question: “How does it assure that students are learning what they need to live their lives, and to become informed and successful leaders in their communities?” To us, this is an important question to ask.
A growing body of literature has focused on feminist assessment (Hutchings, 1992; Lambert, 1997; Musil, 1992a, 1992b). To add to this, an advisory team of women’s studies faculty from ten institutions of higher education developed a set of nine feminist principles of assessment shown in Table 1.
The principles in the Table above were developed through a 1989 United States Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) grant. Two collections of essays published by the Association of American Colleges described the results of this investigation (Musil, 1992a, 1992b), and yet provided little detail on how the professors in the study assessed student learning in the classroom.
Lambert (1997) claims that the principles in Table 1 are concerned with power, politics, and transformation, and that the principles place the student at center. To us, the principles are broadly worded, vague, and not readily adaptable to any classroom. They do, however, underlie an important point Lambert makes. The author says that, “Feminist theory offers the potential to challenge hidden assumptions and beliefs and thereby effect change in ways that can improve the lives of those who have been invisible, powerless, and disenfranchised” (p. 4). In this article, we encourage reflections about hidden assumptions made by a number of White and middle-class feminists. We encourage this experience because of the fact that a false reading of the distinction between matters of educational equity and democracy may injure the very students that feminists purport to help.
In contrast to feminist assessment literature described above, many feminist authors (Fiksdal, 2001; Maher & Tetreault, 1994; Ropers-Huilman, 1998) treat classroom assessment in less desirable ways. Although feminist concerns about the misuse of assessment are legitimate, we suggest that feminist pedagogy (including the nine principles of feminist assessment strategies) address directly student learning concerns.
Too few feminist scholars discuss how they assess students’ knowledge and products. Without a clear discussion of how feminist scholars assess students, their suggestion to share power with students leads to confusion. The question is: “Does sharing power mean relinquishing power to students or does it mean balancing power so that the teacher maintains authority, and yet provides avenues for students to develop power?” Maher and Tetreault (1994), for example, describe dialogue with students, and yet ignore a discussion of how they grade and provide learning feedback. We believe, therefore, that while dialogue is important to teaching, it is surely one of the many factors that might lead to effective teaching.
In a shared democratic classroom, even the idea that professors have the power to give grades grants them power over students. The following are a few questions for reflection: Is giving grades just a judgment? Or does giving grades provide feedback to students, so that they may improve? Or do students really earn their grades? If giving grades does not clearly articulate to students how to improve, then giving grades may not be enough, especially for first generation college students (and students of color) who may not have had adequate feedback at the lower levels of their education. For many students of color, suffering from class or race-based discrimination is a common occurrence in the schools.
In any culture, it must be said that using grades to discriminate against students is grossly unacceptable. To describe this issue in broad terms, we use the terms overt and covert discrimination. Overt discrimination may take place when a teacher tells students that they are not smart enough to understand or complete assignments. Covert discrimination occurs when a teacher pats students on the back, tells them they are doing just fine; but covertly believes that the students are really not capable of learning. This could also occur when a faculty member does not provide adequate feedback on a poorly executed student work; or when a teacher abdicates his or her responsibility to use appropriate assessment instruments to determine whether a given body of students understand materials taught in class.
We believe that a blanket interpretation of shared power in the sense of issuing grades may not take into account the experiences and needs of the poor, working class, or first generation college students, people of color, and other groups. The point we are making here is that some of the ways feminists interpret notions of power and control may inadvertently reinforce stereotypes, because their interpretations assume middle-class experiences that less privileged students may not have. On the one hand, for example, a White and middle-class student with a strong high school background in reading and writing may not suffer in a classroom in which an instructor focuses on dialogue, and chooses to give everybody As on papers whether they needed continued work or not. On the other hand, a less privileged student with deficiencies from a low functioning high school, for example, will suffer because this behavior on the part of the instructor only exacerbates his/her poor educational beginning. This student is not going to benefit from the course instruction; and the instructor would have deprived him/her from learning by the use of his power to assess the student’s learning conditions. Research indicates that first-generation college students are often disadvantaged in academic preparation, are more likely to attend less prestigious colleges or universities, and are not as likely to complete their education (Warburton, Bugarin & Nunez, 2001; Pascarella, Pierson,Wolniak & Terenzini, 2004).
Although our main focus is on classrooms at the university level, we must include a discussion of K-12 pedagogy to clarify our position. A K-12 teacher cannot abdicate his/her power to students without serious consequences. S/he may maintain a democratic classroom, but s/he also holds the authority to make decisions that affects his/her students. By implication, the teacher’s function is to use power to teach children how to make good choices. Teaching functions, therefore, suppose that the teacher has knowledge and skills to impart onto students, and thus suggests a necessary balance between teachers’ authentic power and students’ quest for self-regulation, actualization and efficacy.
We first discuss the history and current literature on how educational inequity occurs. We demonstrate how different conceptions of teaching and assessment result in either sorting of students (which is a way to prepare learners for different socio-economic positions) in American society or educating students so that they have a greater chance for social mobility and success. We then discuss ways to overcome these pedagogically discriminatory practices.
The belief that ability (nature), or development (nurture) is the primary basis of intelligence continues to spill into judgments about learners in the classroom. The belief in innate intelligence as the factor for success, however, conflicts with democratic ideals that hard work leads to life success. In some cases even though ability could mean incremental ability (as related to learning), it can also mean innate ability (that ability is an in-born trait). For example, in the United States parents, teachers, and students are more likely than their Asian counterparts to believe that a student is successful because of ability rather than hard work (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992).
In the United States judgments have been used to sort out students as though a fair contest (a meritocracy) encompassing student ability and hard work exists in classrooms, even against a democratic paradigm, which suggests that those who study and work hardest will rise to the top. This point is important when and where we draw on our personal relationships with colleagues.
In almost all of the classes that we teach, we have observed that, even after discussing the distinction between innate (ability) and incremental ability (development), colleagues, teacher education candidates, and pre-service teachers continually fall back to the issue of academic success based on innate qualifiers. Could this phenomenon be an accident? Or that the connection between Eighteenth Century belief in innate intelligence and Social Darwinism (which suggests that the most fit--the intelligent-- will rise to the top) (Blum, 1978; Lewonton, Rose, & Kamen, 1984) is here to shape American education for many decades to come? This belief may be deeply embedded in American society.
Too often, the belief in innate abilities causes parents and educators to either consciously or subconsciously vary their expectations of students based on social, economic and, or racial lines (Finn, 1972; Good, 1983; Rosenthal 1995). For children and young adults the situation could be disturbing. For example, where children and young adults learn a selected group of students are more endowed than they are, they internalize their beliefs about their ability (or lack thereof), and might exaggerate or minimize their own options (Davis & Yates, 1982; hooks, 2002; Moldoveanu & Langer, 2002). Dweck (1986, 2000, 2002) found a strong negative correlation between students’ performance and their beliefs about whether ability is innate or can be improved. Additionally, the study concluded that students who believed that they had low ability levels realized decreased performance in the testing situation.
The argument above is interesting because research also demonstrates that people who believe they have control over their learning do better than those who do not (Ames, 1992; Weiner, 2000; Weiner, Russell, & Lerman, 1978. Having control is, nevertheless, associated with beliefs in innate ability (Dweck, 2000, 2002). While discussion of innate abilities and personal development appear to be on opposite sides of establishing a literate democratic society, there are other issues, which equally present undue challenges to teaching such as social inequalities in the form of sexism, racism and classicism.
Social inequities in the forms of sexism, racism, and classicism become means to insure inequity. They can be used to treat a given body of learners as if they are not capable of learning. Students with less than desirable educational experiences perform less well in school because they are given lower-level assignments, believed to be less capable, and end up being handicapped academically. Could this practice on the part of some teachers be a deliberate effort to push certain students into less desirable social, political, and economic conditions, so that certain learners have better sustaining life conditions than others? In which case then [we would argue] the schools have become a habitat for determining and securing coveted positions for certain groups of students at the expense of others. Further, if there are distinctions between educational institutions and business enterprises, then since when did the former become the latter? Or are the two inextricable companions?
Research by Willis (1981) and Anyon (1978, 1980) have demonstrated that different students learn different things based upon a hidden curriculum that supports the status quo (i.e., maintaining class, race/ethnic, and gender-based expectations of what students should know and do). This hidden curriculum consists of the various ways that some textbook companies, administrators, teachers, and parents keep students from poor socio-economic backgrounds in their place, as if there is an ordained place for this group.
To call this a conspiracy could be a misdiagnosis of the real issue. It is rather a process of layering knowledge, and perhaps an expectation among higher echelons of power to maintain their statuses. This is to say that class, and race as well as gender expectations do play a role in what we refer to as the hidden curriculum.
Schooling socializes learners to find their fit in values and norms of the larger society (Feinberg & Soltis, 1992). Thus, pupils’ behaviors, characteristics, knowledge, and skills that are encouraged in schools are those that prepare them for their place in society. This preparation is structured in curricular-tracking of ability groups at the elementary levels and in vocational-tracking and high schools relative to curricula and texts selections compounded by teachers’, administrators’ and parents’ expectations of the materials students ought to learn (Oakes, 1985). We believe that use of limited or emergency licenses in certain states, coupled with the fact that many urban K-12 teachers attend colleges where high standards are not emphasized, urban students entrusted to poorly prepared teachers do not learn the basics of academic survival. Because of their own educational handicaps, the teachers tend to have concerns about their own abilities and that of their pupils as well (Finn, 1999; hooks, 2002). The result is that many K-12 pupils are not adequately prepared for college.
Much of the rhetoric defending “No Child Left Behind” sounds as though this legislation is about improving education for all children in the United States. However, the implementation of standardized tests seems to punish teachers and schools. Johnson and Johnson (2002) describe the negative effects of standardized tests on a small Louisiana school. The authors rightly point out that the test-makers are selling millions of dollars worth of tests in spite of the fact that children in Redbud School have few supplies and only one drinking fountain for the entire school. It is our opinion that the current use of standardized tests is an example of how beliefs in innate (and, not incremental) ability and characterize the education of young minds.
We argue, therefore, that if standardized tests are being used to determine what students know and in which areas they need to improve, then they are worthwhile. More often than not, standardized tests provide little specific feedback to students and teachers, and so both groups fail to pinpoint specific areas for improvement. By all standards, nonetheless, standardized tests lead to a more narrowed curriculum with increased interest to teach to the test (Wei, 2002), particularly in the preparation of less prepared and minority students (Lomax, West, Harmon, Viator & Madaus, 1995).
In urban schools in Northwest Indiana, test scores are low because of such practices (Indiana Department of Education, 2004), and teachers and their students are excessively demoralized (Johnson & Johnson 2002). Therefore, teaching to the test in the context of Leaving No Child Behind is [to us] sorting out students. In contrast to sorting, we believe that teachers must find ways to teach and assess student learning using techniques that enable students to increase their understanding and skill levels. To such strategies, we distinguish between arbitrary and unfair use of assessment against useful and necessary assessments as measures.
Feminist pedagogy (Fiksdal, 2001; Maher & Tetreault, 1994; Ropers-Huilman, 1998) focuses on how grading or assessment points to the use of power in the classroom and how a priori standards used in assessment are arbitrary or unfair. Astin (1996) suggests that assessment outcomes and selection of instruments are matters of judgments in values. Given the expectation of higher standards across the country as supported by the No Child Left Behind Act and statewide assessment systems, identifying whose values and standards are at play in the schools has increasingly become important and challenging.
In the educational environment, the power that the teacher holds at the point of issuing grades is under-girded by his/her authority and values. Maher and Tetreault (1994), for example, suggest that “The teacher’s authority in the best of situations is paradoxical and conflicted issue, because it also represents the teacher’s standards for excellence and the different kinds and levels of progress and achievement desired for students” (p. 213). The authors argue that grades also can be interpreted as a means to sort good students from bad, or provide a weak form of feedback that may or may not reflect an official standard. The authors went on to say that:
Unfortunately the most frequently used tool for the assessment of student progress is the grading system, which represents an institutional normative demand that students be held up to certain a priori standards of achievement and treated as isolated individuals who take their places along a uni-dimensional hierarchical continuum. . . .Grades cannot assess learning situations when students may be learning different things or learning as a group and not as individuals or learning from each other and not only from the teacher (p. 213).
Noddings (1999) states that standards are unfair. The author discusses the increasing number of students who pass standardized tests and still question their knowledge. While Noddings talks about ”respect for all forms of honest work” (p. 14), the author expresses the concern that a just and caring educational system should accept the variability in all learners involved in a learning exchange.
Based on mainstream cultural expectations, standardized tests usually have one right answer. All such tests are norm-referenced and they can be used to sort out learners. The problem is that where learners have internalized concerns about their lack of innate ability, and are of the fear that such tests will publicly expose their inadequacies, they then become anxious about their ability to do well on standardized tests, and thus perform poorly on such tests (Willig, Harnisch, Hill, & Maehr, 1983). Disadvantaged Caucasians, Hispanics, African American and other minority students have been found to be prone to this kind of test-anxiety (Crocker, Schmitt, & Tang, 1988; Hembree, 1988).
Although feminists correctly warn about the misuse of standards, tests, and grades, they understate the alternative—teachers need to know what learners ought to be learning. As teachers ourselves, we are not against standards and grades but rather on how we treat students in relation to these measures. We ask the question whether traditional tests or performance-based assessments provides for students’ growth and development?
Clearly, performance-based assessments are not meant to sort out students. They are assessments based upon criteria, and allow for possibilities for meeting criteria in numerous ways. Performance-based assessments provide concrete ways for teachers to convince students that they are not defined by the results of tests, and that they are intelligent beings and can improve. Similarly, hooks (1994) tells students that grades are something they can control through their effort. To ensure that students are learning and improving their skills, performance-based assessments may be the only way to convince students that they can control their effort and improve their performance. Teachers, however, must provide clearer criteria, avenues for revision, and make known to learners that different contexts require different criteria for assessment. For instance, we have students who have taken writing classes and then assume that they have learned the correct ways to write without being aware of the fact that there are many different forms of writing such as fiction, non-fiction, scientific, technical writing, and others.
We try to help our students understand that in many situations, what constitutes a criterion, or a “right” answer can change depending upon the audience. Similarly, students may assume that they have one chance to do something correctly. Noddings (1999) discusses providing students with avenues to make revisions in their work. For example, she suggests that students be given more time in math, and be allowed to re-take math tests. However, teachers may find that allowing for revisions or more time for students to learn is not always easy, because other students may see this approach as unfair to those who learn more quickly.
Because we expect our students to work until they get it, in our experience, some of our strong students have complained that we are “not fair.” If students believed that everyone has a right to know, then fairness would not be an issue. We try to make clear that many real-life situations require that everybody understands and performs. For example, we ask our students the questions: “Do you really want to rely on teachers down the hall from you who don’t get it?” At other times we ask: “Do you really want the nurse taking care of your mother to not get it?”
Through such dialogue in the classroom, we try to work with students to understand that sorting undermines learning. This understanding is especially important for students who do not come from the majority culture. For underrepresented students, they need to be able to code switch from what is accepted as best or right in their own culture to what is accepted in the mainstream culture (Delpit, 1995). In effect, this code switching is a form of consciously connecting with a rather different social environment, and its expectations.
In teacher education programs the professor’s role is to empower K-12 teachers to avoid recreating gender, class, and race-based educational inequity. To do this, teachers are encouraged to understand not only the history of oppression but also how oppression is reproduced, and played out in societies. For example, some feminist teachers build their case on a notion of essentialism–that women are innately superior to men. That is, feminist pedagogy assumes that caring is a feminine attribute. As authors, we believe that caring is an important value that many women strive for and support. This point seems counter to females’ innate superiority to care as compared to their male counterparts.
Dealing with the results of feminist essentialism is important because male essentialism is used against the education of women. The point needs to be made that human characteristics do vary by experience, culture, and education. Blier (1986) said, “Rather than biology, it is the cultures that our brains have created that most severely limit our visions and the potentialities for the fullest possible development of each individual (p.162-3). The complexity of teaching cannot be limited by assigning erroneous attributes that hinder the development of either male or female students. If we resist all efforts that women cannot comprehend mathematics and science, then we cannot believe that men cannot as caring.
The fact of it is that caring does not rule out appropriate use of judgment and power (Delpit, 1995; hooks, 1994). Teachers and parents are aware that they must use judgment and power in their relationships with children and youth. The act of caring thus connotes a form of power over others. Noddings (1984) defines caring as a way of apprehending another’s view of reality. A caring person begins to feel the other’s reality and acts, accordingly. We want to push the idea further to clarify what this sort of empathy entails.
What about a student who is naïve or immature? What about a student who is angry in learning situations? Do some teachers falsely empathize to the point that they say, “It’s OK, I know how you feel,” and yet abdicate their responsibility to still push students to learn? While false empathy may alleviate teachers’ discomfort, it does not help students to move through their fears and anxieties for and about learning. Teachers with true empathy recognize when students do not know enough about what they are learning, or even understand the subject of instruction and, yet are able to determine rather meaningful strategies that ensure that students do learn.
For sure, caring does not mean pleasing students. To us, it means as much as respecting and engaging students in search for truths, even when it may be uncomfortable. Students who find that their old ways of thinking no longer apply will experience cognitive dissonance of sorts. This dissonance is a powerful agent for change in thinking (Festinger, 1957; Halpern, 1996). Given this dissonance, a teacher who may be weak in this habit of care might extremely empathize to the point that s/he relinquishes the power to cause students to think critically. A skillful caring teacher can recognize their students’ cognitive dissonance and maintain a caring attitude about his/her students in order to promote students’ ability to (1) integrate a learning focus, and also (2) develop an overall successful attitude to learning.
As faculty, we believe that the major concern we have about feminist pedagogy is that it cares more for students’ self-esteem than actual learning. This point is crucial because for those teachers concerned solely about self-esteem of their students, they knowingly (or unknowingly) discriminate against students and create an atmosphere of what we call laissez-faire solicitousness that reinforces students’ lack of necessary academic knowledge, skills, and performance.
To demonstrate how a teacher’s misguided concern with self-esteem can backfire, one of us uses a role-modeling simulation in a teacher education foundation’s class. This faculty member selects three students who have similar ethnic and gender characteristics, so that the simulation is free of possible stereotypes. At the outset, the class is told that the three students are sixth graders who have performed the same on a brief word-problem on a mathematics test. She walks up to the first student, looks at the student with obvious disgust, and throws the paper on the desk. She then walks to the second student and gently places the paper on the desk. She smiles and pats the student lightly on the back, and says, “You did just fine.” Then she moves to the third student and gently places the paper on the desk. She generates a warm smile, and says, “The next time you take a test, I would like you to pay attention to the wording of the question. See, here . . .” and then explains what the student must do and think about for the next test. After the simulation, she asks the three students how they felt during the simulation and asks the rest of the class what happened in the simulation.
For the first two students they claimed to have been put down. The students understood that the teacher had little expectation of them. Although intimidating, the third student admitted that she felt understood and that the teacher expected her to do well next time. During this class discussion, the students talked about how they felt; and for the fact that the faculty member’s concern for the second student’s self-esteem was off target and, in fact, damaging. After the simulation, we discussed what self-esteem really means—and, that it can be [or that it is] laissez-faire solicitousness and, as such a mask for contempt, if it supports failure.
The simulation makes two important points. The first of which explains why students respond best to helpful criticisms. Baron (1988) found that students respond to constructive criticism with increased self-efficacy. By contrast, destructive criticism leads to decreased self-efficacy. The second point relates to what we mean by caring. To us, caring involves the courage to provide constructive criticism to enable students to understand expectations.
We suggest that the balance between caring and power happens through this constructive form of criticism—a very different form of power than the use of destructive criticism. When teachers provide constructive criticism, they are using their power and authority. Feminist pedagogy, however, makes problematic the use of power and suggests that teachers be co-equals with their students. This belief in teachers as co-equals flows from an essentialist position that women are naturally caring and do not use power; but women do use power when raising their children and in classrooms. Even teachers who claim they want to avoid the use of power in classrooms find it is inherent in their roles. For example, Ropers-Huilman (1998) said, “Teachers often discussed their beliefs that despite attempts to eradicate power from the teaching roles that they assumed, there was no way to avoid the institutionally sanctioned power that they held by virtue of their position” (p.64-65). We believe that feminist teachers must recognize that they, too, do use power, and that this power must be used constructively even if it means to cause some inconvenience or discomfort in the lives of students.
A way we have made students uncomfortable to promote student growth is found in a “Town Meeting” simulation (Akyea-Gray & Sandoval, 2002). In this classroom activity, students draw brief descriptions of a character’s life situation and concerns. Students talk to individuals like the character and/or read about someone with the characteristics of their chosen character. We then hold a Town Meeting, where students take on the role of their characters.
In the beginning of this class activity, many of the students appear to be uncomfortable. A few White students begin with a statement like, “I can’t be a black man.” One Black woman said, “I don’t know anything about Islam, how can I play this part?” We tell these students that the point of the exercise is to find out about what life is like for the other. We also remind the students that whatever comments are made by each student during the simulation is descriptive of their assumed characters, and not their own beliefs. Afterward the students reflect on their experiences in writing. We end the activity with a discussion about their discomfort, as we discuss their feelings of dissonance as well as the change process. Many students describe having an aha experience after the event. Feedback from the students suggests that the activity should be an integral part of the course. As faculty members, we have found out that this exercise contains the same risks for stereotyping as any class discussion on race, ethnicity, or gender. The experience appears to open up students for important discussion on race, ethnicity, gender, age, among others, in terms of making assumptions, and stereotyping others.
Belenky, Bond, and Weinstock (1997) concluded that during adults’ college years, engaging adults them in dialogue as a teacher/facilitator, enables them to rethink their deeply held values and ideas. We believe that this kind of deep learning happens in feminist classrooms; however, a positive use of power demands that the teacher facilitates student dialogue, so that everyone is able to participate in the learning process. From our perspective, deep learning is sometimes painful, because accepting as wrong a deeply held belief is hard (Stanovich, 2002). This deep learning can also be exciting as students engage in heated discussion and learn to disagree without offensiveness or rudeness. This is when teachers must use their power in the classroom to demonstrate respect for differing views, while maintaining respect and order in the classroom. We hold the view that teachers must help students to find their own power to make thoughtful arguments about racial/ethnic, class and gender biases. Sadker and Sadker (1994) support the idea of using teacher power to engage students in classroom dialogues.
Our syllabi indicate that all students are required to participate in class discussion. In some cases, if a student is extremely reticent or unprepared, we allow an “I’ll pass,” but then we remind the student that s/he is required to do the readings and participate in class discussion, while monitoring the number of times students participate in class. No student is allowed to take the entire discussion time. If a student continually raises his or her hand, then we will say, “I want to hear from someone we have not heard from recently.” If a student breaks in to discussion, or persists in not being responsive to other students’ rights, we talk to that student individually after class.
When students do group work, we monitor their group work to assure that no student is left out. We talk to individual students about their under-bearing or overbearing presence in groups. Because we present this monitoring system as an equitable treatment of students, students have been extraordinarily receptive. One student, for example, came to me after one of such classes ended, and said, “Thank you for making me speak up in class. I never talked because I was afraid to. Because you made me, I found out that I could express my views and I do it in classes all the time now.” Although our students generally feel quite free to complain in course evaluations, no student has commented negatively about having to talk in class or being told to respect other students’ space to speak.
Although we use a great deal of dialogue in our classroom, we are uncomfortable with a feminist view of pedagogy that focuses on dialogue at the expense of writing. Writing requires a deeper level of self-analysis. Many of our first generation students come with poor writing and absence of critical thinking skills. Finn (1999) and Rose (1989) describe their own transformations from working-class kid to educated adult, and they both talk about the role of learning to write. Mike Rose (1989) said:
The teachers I had during my last three years at Layola assigned a tremendous amount of writing. But it was Ted Erlandson who got in there with his pencil and worked on my style. He would sit me down next to him at his big desk, sweep book sand pencils across the scratched veneer, and go back over the sentences he wanted me to revise (p.55).
Feminist teachers do a great injustice when they fail to provide constructive critique of students’ writing, and not just journaling. Although journaling can require high levels of critical thinking and is useful in many circumstances, it sometimes becomes little more than daily logs. Students need to do complex writing that requires systematic thinking, organization, and integration of references. They must also be able to express opposing views and show how they have used evidence to come to their conclusions. Golden (1998) is one feminist who confirms her commitment to critique student writing. She reports:
I require a lot of written work, and I comment extensively on student papers. I want students to recognize their weaknesses in writing and to realize that good writing requires hard work. I’m not sure where so many of them picked up the notion that one either is or isn’t a good writer and that effort has little to do with it. (p. 21)
First generation and working-class students are not as likely as their middle-class peers to have developed good writing skills. Even students entering a graduate program at a comprehensive institution like ours may not have done this kind of writing. These students require a great deal of help to write explicitly and systematically, which requires explicit use of faculty power. In our experience, if students are not asked to rewrite, then they rarely read the comments on their assignments and, or forget them soon after. We believe that this process is more likely to make some students uncomfortable in the short run, and yet [we believe] it will transform and empower them in the long run.
Feminists have suggested two forms of educational activism. The one based on democracy (Maher, 1999; Scering, 1997), and the other based in critical theory as exemplified by Freire (1970, 1997). In both cases teachers’ efforts are designed to illuminate the extent of inequities in societies for students. Feminist assessment needs to be illuminating and transforming so as to provide knowledge and skills students need to make informed choices in their lives. Teachers can challenge traditional notions of power and yet be caring. As we have discussed, caring in this case means providing clear and honest feedback (without sarcasm, sympathy or pity) on students’ products or performance. This is to mean that teachers must encourage students to go on to succeed, and not give up.
Our model of feminist assessment flows from Friere’s (1961) work. Friere said, “The school we need so urgently is a school in which persons really study and work” (p. 46). Later Friere (1997) points out how easily good intention can thwarted when he says:
There is another kind of classroom, in which, while appearing not to affect the transfer of content, also cancels or hinders the educand’s ability to do critical thinking. This is, there are classrooms that sound much more like children’s songs than like genuine challenges. They house the expositions that “tame” educands, or “lull them to sleep”–where, on one side, the students are lulled to sleep by the teacher’s pretentious, high-sounding words, and on the other, the teacher likewise doing a parcel of self-babying (p.118).
Freire pointed out that traditional education is based on a “banking model,” where knowledge is poured into students’ heads. Freire also criticized radical leftist education that treated students as though they are mindless robots most of whom are mired in false consciousness. The author also pointed out that an authoritarian leftist approach was as unsuccessful as the traditional banking model. Feminist teachers do express concern about authoritarian teaching; however [we], are concerned with babying students.
Caring and insisting that students learn regardless, requires thoughtful constructive criticism found in criterion referenced testing or performance-based assessment that provides opportunities for improvement. The following is an example of the issue at stake. In 1974, Alverno College for women used the word assessment as a new way to view education (Loacker & Mentkowski, 1993). Through the efforts of Alverno College and other like-minded institutions, assessment has come to mean a process through which faculty continually monitor their own teaching and student learning. This form of assessment provides a better way to assure student learning and to provide constructive critique for student improvement. Students learn to use their work as samples that provide evidence that they have met clearly stated criteria depending upon the intended audience. Students improve their work until they have met the criteria and show their work over time to demonstrate to themselves and others that they have improved their knowledge and skills. Assessment and evaluation at Alverno have been documented through their longitudinal study of learning in the college years (Mentkowski & Associates, 2000). It shows that Alverno College faculty consistently practiced a form of feedback that engaged students’ critical thinking and motivated students to examine what went on well in their learning, along with what could have been improved.
We believe that a caring teacher is not permissive. Rather, a caring teacher provides a safe place for students to experiment intellectual, social and relational activities, so that dissonance is permitted to be a part of the learning process. Although no guarantees exit that every student will benefit from caring and concerned teaching practices, teachers must encourage free speech in their classrooms and use their classroom powers to question students about their knowledge of content and to ensure equity in students’ behaviors in the classroom. A caring teacher also encourages students to learn the knowledge and skills they need to make real choices about their present (and futures) lives.
Students also benefit when teachers’ provide formative feedback based on clear criteria, so that students continually improve the quality of their work. As Delpit (1995) suggests, when students are of the other background, teachers must respect the students’ home cultures and feel free to teach them mainstream cultural expectations. To bridge the home culture and mainstream culture, the teacher must include discussion of what is valued and why. Feminist teachers, therefore, must provide an awareness that is transforming to make possible for students to identify for themselves historical limitations based on race/ethnicity, class or gender, and yet not to become mired in self-pity. Feminist teachers need to find a balance between caring for students’ needs and pushing them to learn.
Students must be able to read and write using English found in the workplace and demonstrate critical thinking skills. These skills are essential to assure them a fair understanding of becoming involved in the social and political systems, or working to critique such systems. To this end, we believe that a caring and concerned perspective as embraced by educators should include creating opportunities for learning that begins with students’ knowledge, attitudes, and skills centering on experiences, and expanding students’ understanding of the world in which they live. In addition, a caring and concerned teaching perspective should ensure opportunities for students to be active change-agents, and leaders in both their own communities and others.
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