The Feminist Challenge to Pedagogy in Higher Education.

This essay makes an argument for bringing a feminist perspective to pedagogy in higher education. The paper opens by reviewing the history of gender roles, relations, and perceptions in society before the industrial revolution. Subsequent sections describe women's participation in academia and develop a description of feminist pedagogy. Feminist pedagogy would raise the issue of the missing or invisible voice of women throughout higher education and seeks to bring solutions to recognizing, valuing, and teaching the female perspective and contribution in all disciplines. In explicating this view the essay discusses feminist philosophy, and presents a critique of the traditional academic disciplines from a feminist perspective. Such critiques suggest that current approaches deny expression to and negate the creative works of the non-powerful, are taught chronologically, assume hierarchical approaches, and are founded on competition. Another section describes what is involved in forming a non-gender biased curriculum. A discussion of the underlying values of feminist pedagogy covers the basis for teaching methods. The essay concludes by proposing a study to investigate the influence of change in pedagogy on attitudes about the female voice and its place in the curriculum of higher education. Sixteen references are included. (JB)