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Incorporating Feminist Pedagogy into Your Courses

By Emily Smith and Misbah Hyder

What is feminist pedagogy?

Feminist pedagogy disrupts power dynamics that undergird the traditional classroom. Rather than a classroom headed by an instructor who bequeaths knowledge to their students, feminist pedagogy creates a classroom of people dedicated to the co-construction of knowledge. By emphasizing the classroom as a space of community, feminist pedagogy fosters connections and cooperation between students and instructors.

Feminist pedagogy began with the assertion that male-dominated hierarchies and institutions of learning had created a system of education that disempowered women in the classroom and that hindered women’s opportunities to succeed and develop as learners. Intersectional feminism expands this understanding of feminism to acknowledge the ways in which race, disability, ethnicity, age, class, gender identity, and sexuality compound inequality to create further barriers to learning. This does not mean that feminist pedagogy is confined to courses and fields centered on women, gender, or sexuality. Instructors across the Humanities, Social Sciences and STEM can incorporate and benefit from a feminist pedagogical approach in their teaching.

Why use feminist pedagogy in your course?

At a time when college students feel increasingly lonely and isolated, and report more depression and anxiety, feminist pedagogy builds community in the classroom by empowering students to become equal partners in their learning process and community. It provides students the space and skills to “enhance the integrity and wholeness of the person and the person’s connections with others” (Shrewsbury).

Feminist pedagogy benefits the instructor as well as the students. Feminist pedagogy encourages instructors to understand themselves as part of this community of learners, and to view participation and engagement with students as contributing to their own intellectual development. Everyone in the classroom is able to mutually participate in a process of learning “where joy and excitement as well as the hard work of learning provide the kind of positive feedback that magnifies the effort put into learning” (Shrewsbury).

In the words of bell hooks, “To emphasize that the pleasure of teaching is an act of resistance countering the overwhelming boredom, uninterest, and apathy that so often characterize the way professors and students feel about teaching and learning, about the classroom experience.”

How can you incorporate feminist pedagogy into your course?

Feminist pedagogy creates a learning community founded on critical reflection and equitable dialogue between instructors and students. It recognizes the importance of knowledge that comes from students’ various positionalities, and values perspectives grounded in students’ disabilities, sexual orientations, and gendered, racial, ethnic, and class-based identities. A feminist pedagogical approach engages seriously with students’ emotional reactions to course content and discussion, and incorporates students’ personal responses and experiences into the class. It challenges instructors to make time and space for all students’ voices to be heard, and to offer opportunities for students and instructors to receive and reflect on one another’s feedback. Feminist pedagogy empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning and the direction of the course. 

We offer 5 principles of feminist pedagogy with strategies that can help you get started with or continue your journey with this approach. You can start with just one of the principles below and explore the strategies provided.

Power & Empowerment

Using a feminist pedagogical approach begins with acknowledging that “the classroom is a space historically rooted within systems of power.” Through this lens, the approach consciously builds a classroom in which students are empowered by encouraging instructor-student and student-student collaboration. What would it look like to acknowledge (1) students as  knowledge-producers and (2) the instructor as part of the classroom community rather than as merely the facilitator?

  • Consider how you structure lessons, discussions, and assessments within your course. What is the role of students within your course? Are they only learners, or are they also actively contributing to the production of knowledge?
  • Invite your class to share what they hope to learn and accomplish over the course of your time together. 
  • Allow students to sign up to take turns leading the class and invite collaboration. Students can present summaries of the reading, prepare questions, and facilitate the discussion.

Challenging Disciplinary Authority

Feminist pedagogy also critically engages the historical legacies of our disciplinary knowledge. Considerations about social justice and which voices in our disciplines are privileged over others are actively integrated into the course material and classroom discussions.

  • Reflect on which readings/textbooks within your field are considered “canon.” Are these texts from privileged voices? 
  • Consider how you can acknowledge that your field is “built on a small subset of privileged voices” – a neuroscience professor, Monica Linden, for example, includes this acknowledgement in a syllabus statement.
  • Integrate classroom discussions and assessments that empower students to contribute to the discipline by building on and/or critiquing existing literature.

Intersectionality & Reflection

Feminist pedagogy is intersectional – this means instructors’ and students’ identities, including their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, and disability, affect their teaching and learning in the classroom. Acknowledging our own and our students’ unique intersectional identities requires a critical engagement with difference. This means that instructors should structure discussions and assessments that leverage student identities as an asset for everyone’s learning (including the instructor’s). Classrooms can be contested spaces and ought to be places for growth. Encouraging all members of the classroom community to engage honestly and respectfully requires some intentional facilitation on everyone’s part.

  • Learn what social, political, and economic conditions shape students’ lives and learning using pre-course surveys that give students the option to share more about themselves.
  • Co-create community guidelines with students and include reminders and opportunities to revise these guidelines throughout the semester. This is an important way to set the tone for classroom engagement.
  • Use reflective writing exercises that ask students to authentically react to the course material. This further emphasizes students’ roles as producers rather than consumers of knowledge. Not only does reflection foster a deeper understanding of students’ own intellectual growth over the course of the semester, it also helps students better retain and recall class content.

Expertise & Personal Experience

Personal experience, including emotions, is critical to knowledge-production and is considered a valid and crucial source of knowledge, alongside other forms, such as academic books and articles. According to this approach, integrating emotions into one’s assessment of evidence facilitates greater and more critical understanding of disciplinary knowledge, especially when contextualized within the course material. Put succinctly, a feminist approach to teaching and learning “breaks down the simplistic division of ‘classroom vs real world.’”

  • You can use 1-minute self-reflection exercises in class to ask students how they react to a particular (maybe controversial) piece of evidence during lecture. Then, in a follow-up discussion, you can ask students to reflect on their reactions.
  • Design assignment(s) that ask students to connect the course material to their own lives.
  • When showing sensitive material in the classroom, intentionally give space for students (and yourself) to process emotions. This space can look like a reflective writing exercise, a stretch break, or a few minutes of silence. You can choose to follow-up on this and ask students if they’d like to share their emotional reactions.

Community & Co-Creation of Knowledge

Building a classroom community in which students and instructors co-create knowledge can be challenging because students might not feel like they are experts. There are several ways that you can build community in the classroom so that their voices and contributions are actively acknowledged throughout the semester.

  • Teach and exemplify active listening skills to encourage students to engage with and reflect on one another’s questions and comments. Having your class reflect on their learning process promotes deeper understanding of the content and rewards metacognition. 
  • Strategically plan a week in your course outline to dedicate your students’ interests. Co-creation in your course provides a concrete way for students to participate as partners in their learning.
  • Consider incorporating small groups and group work into your course design. This facilitates opportunities for your students to learn from one another and to collaborate in knowledge production.

Resources

Carolyn M. Shrewsbury, “What Is Feminist Pedagogy?” Women’s Studies Quarterly 15, no. 3/4 (1987): 6–14. 

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (Routledge, 1994)

Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991): 1241-1299.

A Guide to Feminist Pedagogy, Vanderbilt University

Critical Theory Pedagogies Guide: Feminist Pedagogy, UNC Charlotte

Introduction to Feminist Pedagogy, University of Pittsburgh

Interactive Resource: Feminist Pedagogies, Columbia University