Final Statement by John Lisec & Jenny Saplis

Through this semester, our feminist pedagogy class has spent significant time/energy developing and contributing various thoughts and opinions regarding feminism within education. While incorporating a variety of current topics, engagement with academic scholarship, and feminist pedagogical examples, this blog will hopefully serve as a source of future reference by scholars who wish to engage in discussions surrounding feminism in the classroom. This blog should be useful to not only provide examples of what feminist pedagogy looks like in the feminist classroom, but to increase awareness and dialogue surrounding feminist teaching practices. Our feminist pedagogy class should also expand conceptions and possibilities of feminism within the classroom as many students provide a unique perspective by coming from such different areas of study and sub-disciplines. Additionally, this blog will also serve as a site of documentation of our learning experience so other scholars can build in the future. By incorporating discussions of feminism through new media, this blog will also expand notions and perceptions of social media in education.

By implementing feminist pedagogy within the classroom, it is important to instill a sense of comfort and safety, to encourage openness/sharing of personal experiences, and to collaborate with others. However while a feminist pedagogy provides opportunities for collaboration of ideas with others, it can also provide feminist teachers the ability to maintain a strong presence in the classroom as a facilitator of learning through curriculum. It is also necessary to embrace social media as a viable teaching tool to enhance learning both in and out of the traditional classroom setting. However, potential problems exist while utilizing social media through limited access according to socio-economic status and the commercialization of new media resources/content that serve to strengthen a presence of traditional media that often contradicts or opposes feminist pedagogy principles. Additionally, those choosing a feminist pedagogy must remain rather flexible to challenges of utilizing technology in the classroom and cognizant of opposition to use of social media is possible from learners as well as colleagues and administrators due to limited perceptions of social media within education.