Destabilising Pedagogies Towards Intersectional Gender Justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2957-3645/15594Keywords:
socially just pedagogies, participatory parity, recognition, representation, transformative justice, gender studies, photovoice, higher education, feminist pedagogiesAbstract
AbstractHow and to what extent can pedagogies in higher education work towards disrupting injustices and promoting participatory parity for students? This article emerges from a doctoral study which explored this question through investigating the pedagogies of two undergraduate modules in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. These modules draw on feminist and multimodal pedagogies and participatory learning and action techniques in seeking ways of disrupting conventional divides between activism and the academy to promote alternative forms of knowledge production. This article indicates that consistently centring and drawing on students’ lives and prior knowledges, connecting these to theory, and opening these up for dialogue and debate among differently positioned peers promotes students’ awareness of and insights into injustices stemming from hegemonic norms. Using students’ own contexts and diverse prior knowledges and lived experiences allows the development of critical thinking skills necessary to think beyond entrenched, essentialised norms and enables students to see how they are both products of and implicated in reproducing injustices. Sharing these moments of awareness, agency and activism in the classroom is a necessary first step in developing graduates who are committed to promoting social justice.
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