Social Foundations of Education: Feminist Perspectives

Feminist scholars have contributed significantly during the past forty years to the interdisciplinary development of the social foundations of education through their teaching, writing, performances, and activism. Many philosophers, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists in the social foundations field have worked diligently to counteract the omission of women's thoughts and work from teacher education programs.

The lack of emphasis on women's issues and perspectives can be explained in part as reflecting the dominant male hegemony in the culture. Also, although the teaching of children and youth has been overwhelmingly a female profession, professorships in the social foundations of education were held primarily by men until recent years. Most coursework perpetuated study of the history, philosophy, and sociology of education from male perspectives.

Feminist writers and teachers seek to disrupt White, male, Protestant, Western European, heterosexual, middle- to upper-middle-class domination of ideas and practices within education. They wish to heal dichotomies, such as the mind/body split and valuing the intellect and reason over knowledge gained from emotion, intuition, and imagination. Connecting issues of power and control to educational success or failure, feminist thinkers investigate systemic problems long institutionalized in schools. They urge that varied sources and kinds of knowledge be respected as legitimate within the teaching/learning process. In addition to recognizing the needs of girls and women in academic environments, the cultural wealth of diverse students from families and community connections contributes to the construction of new knowledge.

Feminist scholarship has recovered some of the writing and activism of teachers from past eras. Using insights from historiography, which critiques how and why certain histories are written, Kathleen Weiler documented the experiences of teachers in California during the early decades of the twentieth century. Similarly, Kate Rousmaniere preserved the effects of school reform efforts on teachers in New York City during the 1920s. In Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman, Jane Roland Martin examined the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, three women whose work was instrumental in developing early philosophies of education.

Continuing the work of historical restoration, several scholars focused on women's influences on the early development of pragmatism, as espoused by John Dewey and others. Pragmatism centered on integrating the needs and experiences of the students into the learning environment. Women whose work affected this movement include Jane Addams, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Elsie Ripley Clapp, and Alice Chipman Dewey.

Feminist theories also add emphasis on moral issues related to teaching and on the ways that women's thinking differs from that of men. Writing by Carol Gilligan and by Mary Belenky and colleagues represent groundbreaking work in these areas. New curricula for girls in grades K-12 in mathematics and [Page 725]the sciences resulted from awareness of their different learning needs. Feminist researchers and writers also place importance on listening to the stories and learning from the experiences of diverse individuals. Many voices and stories from marginalized and oppressed people are now included in evaluating how public schools affect the teachers and the students.

As a feminist professor of the philosophy of education, Maxine Greene taught teachers to include the creative processes and products from aesthetic pursuits in their search for meaning. Embracing pluralism, she used many examples from literature and the arts to foster awareness of the role of the imagination in learning.

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