Dr Niamh O’Reilly, AONTAS CEO
On this International Women’s Day, during the AONTAS Adult Learners’ Festival, we need feminist pedagogy more than ever.
We need a teaching and learning process that engages learners in an environment that centres on voice and empowerment. It should form the core of education policy in Ireland, if we are to have a more equal society.
Women’s community education organisations across Ireland, including our members the National Collective of Community Based Women’s Networks (NCCWN) and Longford Women’s Link, know the power of pedagogy that supports the affective aspect of learning. While, for instance, offering childcare and learning supports is important, how learners feel is vital.
A feminist pedagogy involves care of the learner and facilitating connectedness through “really listening” to others’ lived experiences with resonance, empathy and caring in order to draw out learners’ own views and “their own voice” (Belenky et al. 1987). The pedagogic process supports women, in what bell hooks calls to “come to voice”, which acknowledges theirs and others’ lived experience in a caring dialogical context. This is particularly important for women who have been silenced by society.
For example, Dr Anne Louise Gilligan, the co-founder of An Cosán, a large community education organisation in West Tallaght, describes a ‘Female Pedagogy’. This includes the learning space as an environment; a method and practice that seeks to reverse a patriarchal society; a curriculum co-intended by participants that is not neutral; and a rigorous critique of women’s exclusion to raise awareness of oppression (Gilligan, 1999). Many adult learners describe their experience of learning in such an environment as empowering and transformational.
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While reading about the AONTAS STAR Award nominees this week, I saw learners describe the deeply personal experience of learning, the challenges and the achievements that are connected to who they are, and who they want to become.
Yesterday also saw the launch of the first public consultation as part of a scoping process in the OECD Skills Strategy for Ireland project. This offers a human capital view of education that sees skills as separate to the human beings who learn, develop and grow through education. Not only is this one world view, and one which would benefit from different understandings of education, the language seems at odds with the challenges the world is currently facing.
It describes core challenges as: “Ireland’s supply of skills and our advantage in the global war for talent, including issues around labour shortages and access to a skilled workforce”. It links to skills policies that reify skills as external commodifiable ‘things’, that exist independently of the bodies of people who exercise particular skills, and of the social relationships (Wheelahan, Moodie & Doughney, 2022).
Education is a route out of poverty, but we also know structural barriers such as sexism, racism and classism impact on people’s ability to gain sustainable employment (if available). And if we are to create greater equity in the adult education system, a learner-centred approach is vital. It is about people, not containers of skills.
Learning is embodied, it is part of being human, and the emotional aspect is central to the experience, particularly for people who are returning after leaving school early. The experience of learners interlinks with their life story: the confidence gained, the feeling of belonging, the friendships, support and feeling of connectedness is very often central to supporting the learning experience. In adult learning, it is the process over the product that is important.
We need a feminist pedagogy that centres on care, empowerment, social and political change, one that equips people to gain good jobs, is a foundation for future learning and enables learners to fulfil their educational aspirations.
Have your say:
Our members continually advocate for policy which takes a broader perspective of learning as learning to be, to do, to know and to live together.
There is an opportunity to respond to the OECD consultation, led by DFHERIS at: https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/56830-national-skills-council-holds-extraordinary-meeting-with-the-oecd-to-discuss-skills-challenges-facing-ireland/
References:
Belenky, M.F. (1996). Public homeplaces: Nurturing the development of people, families, and communities. In: Goldberger, N., Tarule, J., Clinchy, B. and Belenky, M. (Eds.). Knowledge, difference and power: Essays inspired by women’s ways of knowing, (pp. 393-430). Basic Books: New York.
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R. and Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books.
Gilligan, A. L. (1999) Educating towards a feminist imagination. In Connolly, B. & Ryan, A.B. (Eds), Women in education in Ireland, (Volume 1. pp. 201-213). Kildare: Centre for Adult and Community Education.
Wheelahan, L. Moodie, G. & Doughney, J. (2022) Challenging the skills fetish, British Journal of Sociology of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2022.2045186