Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Introduction

Introduction Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon, PhD University of Tennessee, Knoxville The Background In 1994 Lynda Stone published an outstanding collection of feminist writers who were writing about feminist theory and pedagogy in connection to educational theory and practice.1 Right around the same time, Barbara Thayer-Bacon developed a “Feminist Epistemology and Education” course that she began teaching at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). This course employed Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule’s Women’s Ways of Knowing as the starting point, continuing with the articles and essays of current work in feminist epistemology (which eventually evolved to using Thayer-Bacon’s own book, Relational “(e)pistemologies,”) and ending with Lynda Stone’s edited book, The Education Feminism Reader.2 The course was cross-listed with Women’s Studies and Educational Foundations and Inquiry, and offered graduate students a possible course toward a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies. Students from various programs across the campus such as American Studies and Communications Studies took the course and found the connections between feminist theory and educational theory important and exciting. When Thayer-Bacon was hired by the University of Tennessee (UT) in 2000, she found that there was a shortage of course options available to graduate students who wanted a certificate in Women’s Studies, which was offered at UT as well. This was especially the case for students earning degrees in the College of Education. She introduced her “Feminist Epistemology and Education” course (CSE 609) to the UT curriculum, and when another feminist scholar joined the Cultural Studies in Education program, the title of the course was broadened to “Feminist Theory and Education” so either one of us could teach CSE 609, and each offer our own unique course design. Thayer-Bacon continues to follow the same list of readings for her course, as it has been very successful and students’ feedback continues to be that they are not being exposed to this material in other courses. The readings provide the students a foundational base in feminist theories in education, and many students have gone on to use the works in diverse and creative ways for their own scholarly projects. Over the past eighteen years, Thayer-Bacon has witnessed many students shape master’s theses and doctoral dissertations around various 1 2 / Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon scholarship that is included in the course, which is exciting indeed. The last several years CSE 609 has been offered, Stone’s The Education Feminism Reader has become harder and harder to find as it is now out of print. Students have been able to find copies through on-line purchases, but this has become more difficult each year. Thayer-Bacon’s students have pretty much bought up what is available. She began to worry that once again women’s work was going to no longer be available for students, and that once again we would find ourselves having to recover important feminist work that was lost to public knowledge. That concern is what originally motivated her to seek a way to republish the book, The Education Feminism Reader. Katharine Sprecher (Thayer-Bacon’s Graduate Assistant at the time) worked with Thayer-Bacon on updating our feminist reading list for CSE 609 to include work from this past decade to add to the readings, thinking they would at least have these to use in the next teaching of CSE 609. We wanted to make sure students understand that this work is continuing, and they too can add to the scholarship on feminist theory and education. At the end of the fall semester, 2010, students in CSE 609 were polled for their feedback, and they all requested that we not lose the current, what we are now calling the classic selections in Stone’s The Education Feminism Reader. The students in CSE 609 wanted us instead to add to what is already there (there were 18 students in the course from various programs across the campus, including Nursing, Sports Studies, Child and Family Studies, Applied Educational Psychology, as well as Cultural Studies in Education). Sprecher and Thayer-Bacon searched for another text to use instead of The Education Feminism Reader, but we have not been able to find anything. What we find are collections of important feminist theory essays, classic and contemporary, but not feminist theory that relates directly to educational issues. The book Lynda Stone published in 1994 is unique and there is nothing like it on the market that can be used directly...