Speaking up at University: The Transformative Potential of Feminist Pedagogy and Academic Discourse about Gender on Gender Norms in Society
Abstract
Our focus is on university as a privileged field for social transformation, through the implementation of feminist pedagogies (Bailly et al. 2021). We are aware of the criticisms levelled at university, which is often associated to an "ivory tower" (Light et al. 2015: 3) inaccessible to the less privileged. But we believe that university is also an environment that can have an impact on society. Even if students are still in the process of self-construction, they are mature enough to appropriate theories in order to deconstruct socially imposed norms and they can have the necessary hindsight on their own culture to compare it to others. Moreover, at the end of their studies, they are directly confronted with society through research projects, particularly in education sciences. At a time when the freedom of teaching is under severe attack in our research fields, the implementation of feminist pedagogies in
universities is also a political issue, akin to resistance against conservatism.
According to Claudie Solar (1992: 267), "feminist pedagogy is the science of education that examines teaching, learning, knowledge and the educational environment from a feminist perspective, that is, a body of knowledge that underpins action toward a transformation of the social division of gender." Acknowledging the importance of the back-and-forth movement between the classroom and society, this panel aims to highlight three cases of implementation of feminist and inclusive pedagogies in three different academic fields : (i) the teaching of English to non-specialist students in France; (ii) the teaching of FFL (French as a foreign language) and the training of FFL teachers in Turkey; (iii) the training of primary school teachers in France. Which methods can university teachers use in order to foster the possibility of change in the field of education and, more broadly, society?