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Pedagogy Part III

Reading through Siebler, I thought she made some really excellent points. Not only was the text written in a very accessible manner–which I appreciated–but by working through her sixteen tenets and later, discussing how three individuals enact feminist pedagogy I felt I was getting a pretty good “lay of the land.” But I got pretty upset reading her conclusion. Here, she writes “I do not believe men can be feminists because they do not reside in that position of gender disempowerment. Men can only work toward feminism (men can be profeminist, but not feminist) because they inherently embody an identity on which the systemic oppression those gendered female is built” (199-200). This came on the heels of her writing about how outdated the slogan “Feminism is teh radical notion that women are people” because it excludes Blacks, Hispanics, queers, transsexuals, transgendered people, transvestites, children, the poor, etc. (199). This seems to me a bit contradictory and to me, a bit infuriating. My wife tells me that one of the reasons she was interested in dating me was because she viewed me as a “feminist.” And, I might add, my wife considers herself a feminist with a very social justice agenda. When she heard this, she also got a little irate. Because, according to Siebler, I can’t be a feminist. I’m just part of the problem, so all I can do is be pro-feminist.

I’m not sure what to do with all of this, other than say it really bummed me out. To be honest, this course has really complicated what feminism is, and who can be called a feminist and who can’t. I return to what I mentioned in my post last week–I think that a lot of the 16 tenets Siebler lists are admirable things to strive for in the classroom, and they are things that I would like to consider including. And indeed, my final project looks to engage feminist pedagogy with expressivist pedagogy (much to Harriet Malinowitz’s chagrin, I’m sure) because I think that these pedagogies–and a lot of pedagogies under the composition umbrella–should be in conversation with each other.

But yeah. I guess men can’t be feminists. Yeesh. What a bummer–and a shocker.

Published in: Uncategorized on December 4, 2010 at7:40 pm Comments (4)

Pedagogy Part II

I’m not sure I have a cogent response this week, but rather impressions I had from the reading.

  1. If I were to do am ethnographically inspired study—and I suppose I am, since I’m hoping my dissertation will make use of case studies or focus groups—I’d be (and am) absolutely petrified of receiving an email similar to the one Kay Siebler received from Lynn Worsham. On page 112, Worsham understandably tells Siebler that she “was perplexed you didn’t discuss them [16 feminist pedagogy themes] with me, if not before the visit then after. Why didn’t I tell you that I was nervous about your approach? You didn’t tell me what your approach was […] it didn’t feel very ‘feminist’ of me to be kept in the dark about the measure through which I was being interpreted.” Siebler handles this well, I think, by acknowledging her own error of not offering full disclosure. But her rationale for not providing full disclosure in the first place also seems sound (she didn’t want her 16 principles to potentially influence the way her case studies taught/acted in the classroom). The way Siebler owns up is laudable, writing “After receiving Lynn’s email, I knew I had made a wrong decision in not sharing the themes with her (and others). If I were to do the research again, I would use the historical definition/themes to begin a conversation about what feminist pedagogy is” (113). I’d feel badly if I made a similar, well-intentioned error in my own study. Still, I know if I had been on Siebler’s end, my face would have turned awfully red after reading that email.
  2. I’m really curious how Siebler would respond if someone enacted only one of the sixteen principles in their pedagogy and called themselves feminist instructors. I’ve been talking about this point before, but Siebler seems pretty disconcerted that many people enact principles of feminist pedagogy and instead call it critical or libratory pedagogy. I’m so curious, in fact, that I may just email her.   
Published in: Uncategorized on November 29, 2010 at11:41 am Comments (5)

Pedagogy Part I

 

This post could be a recipe for disaster: it is 10:19, I’m a bit tired and hungry, and I’ve got a massive head-ache. I’ve been using the term half-baked a lot today, and to continue that theme, I’m going to apologize up front if my ideas seem, well, a bit half-baked. I’m going to deviate a bit from the suggested prompt, though I will attempt to tie this back to teaching philosophies as much as possible. Though I know I should probably try to bring in all the readings–and hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to respond to posts about the other readings–I was quite intrigued by Noddings chapter on Moral Education (chapter 8). I was reading through it, a lot of the ideas presented reminded me of expressivist pedagogy. I marked a couple of passages that struck me as potentially expressivist, and I guess I’ll share them here.

“I certainly do not intend to abandon intellectual and aesthetic aims, but I want to suggest that intellectual tasks and aesthetic appreciation should be deliberately set aside–not permanently, but temporarily–if their pursuit endangers the ethical ideal” (174).

“He must be aware always that for me he is more important, more valuable, than the subject” (174).

“[…] she starts from a position of respect or regard for the projects of the other” (176). She later brings up Martin Buber, who “suggests that the role of the teacher is just this: to influence” (177).

“The teacher receives and accepts the student’s feelings toward the subject matter; she looks at it and listens to it through his eyes and ears. How else can she interpret the subject matter for him? As she exercises this inclusion, she accepts his motives, reaches toward what he intends, so long as these motives and intentions do not force an abandonment of her own ethic” (177). This also reminded me of contract grading, incidentally (which Noddings later brings up, ironically).

Throughout the entire piece, there is an emphasis on a dialogue between teacher and student (one-caring and the cared-for). It struck me that in the second quote, if you substituted “the student’s writing/thoughts” for “he” you’d have a pretty good summation of expressivist pedagogy; the first quote also echoes the idea in expressivist pedagogy that the most important thing is writing–to a large extent, intellectual and aesthetic aims are set aside. The idea of teacher as a person of influence really struck me. William Coles Jr. strives to provide a classroom environment in which a student learns to write solely through dialogue (then again, Coles Jr. thought that writing was un-teachable, so maybe we should take that comparison with a grain of salt). The general idea of teacher as a guide/person of influence rather than an authoritarian figure always strikes me as expressivist. I always kind of dug Donald Murray’s idea that when a teacher is talking to a student (not with a student), the student isn’t writing. Noddings notion of student centered learning isn’t too far off from expressivist’s notions of student-writing centered learning.

Does any of this make sense? If it does, I’m wondering what one does with all of this overlap. As most of my colleagues know, I’m a big champion of expressivisim–particularly contract grading (woot!). It seems like a lot of feminist notions of teaching echo expressivism. But certainly not all. So what do I do with that? This goes back to a question I had earlier this year–when a person is a chameleon–that is, a person draws upon several pedagogies and/or research methodologies, what does that make that person? Can I really claim to be one of those umbrellas as my own? That seems a bit unfair to say because I use one or two aspects of feminist research methodologies or pedagogies that I claim to be a feminist. That would sort of confuse what it means to be a feminist (or an expressivist, or social constructionist, or fill in the blank).

Whew. Long post, I’m afraid.

Published in: Uncategorized on November 23, 2010 at10:44 pm Comments (3)

Ethical Dilemmas

Kirsch’s text came at an excellent time for me to read. Throughout the last few weeks I had been working through several questions regarding feminist pedagogy, and many of these questions were raised by Kirsch; while I did not always find her “answers” to be terribly in-depth (several times the questions just lead to more questions), I appreciated knowing that my questions were had by others.

What stunned me throughout reading this text, however, was the way Kirsch advocates dealing with situations where the researcher observes a perceived wrong. One of the examples she gives is Cheri Williams; Kirsch recounts the time Williams “observed a teacher who engaged in problematic, if not abusive behavior toward several  children” (34).  Williams, we find out, was “torn between wanting to speak out on behalf of the children but also wanting to honor the teacher’s trust and cooperation” (35). Though I can see the perceived dilemma, to me, an ethic of care would mandate (well, maybe encourage) Williams tell someone. More troubling than this example, though, is when Kirsch disagrees with Elizabeth Wheatley’s ideas of handling sensitive or confidential info. Wheatley advocates selective reporting, while Kirsch “argue[s] that researchers still need to be accountable for something approximating completeness in their ethnographic portraiture” (53). She later qualifies this with “I want to propose that when and if scholars choose to omit data, particularly data they consider central to their research, they need to explain to readers the extent of and reasons for their omissions” (53). In general, it seems that often Kirsch puts too much weight on the ethical responsibility to the world of research; to me, the most important thing when conducting ethnographic or ethnographically influenced research is that the participants in the study are comfortable. Thus, I like the idea of treating them as equals and offering to let them review your writing about them on a regular basis. To me, if someone specifically asks data to remain confidential, it is even dicey to explain why that data is left confidential–as Kirsch suggest we do to have a complete portrait of the research.

In short, I can get on board with a lot of what Kirsch has to offer–I was just surprised at the way she suggested certain scenarios be handled.

Published in: Uncategorized on November 14, 2010 at7:53 pm Comments (0)

Responding to Sheridan’s “Making Ethnography Our Own”

My response this week goes hand in hand with the questions I have for Mary Sheridan. As I’ve mentioned before, this is the first official methodologies course I’ve taken, but I did have peripheral knowledge of what an ethnography was coming into the course (I’m happy to say I knew of triangulation—even if I wasn’t even sure what it was). Reading through the scholarship on ethnographies—and ethnographic methods—I can see how students would get caught up in the fervor and excitement of this particular epistemology. Until Sheridan’s text, there really hasn’t been much that deals with the negatives of ethnographies—most of the reports have been glowing. In last week’s reading, we read about how Cushman assimilated so well with her “subjects” that she was invited to BBQs. How cool, right? My main question, though, is what happens when the researcher genuinely does not get along with the people involved in the ethnography; or conversely, what happens if the people involved in the ethnography resent, dislike, or feel uncomfortable with the researcher?

So, to tie this a bit more in to Sheridan’s actual piece, she writes about how her study looked at “how literate activities at GirlZone did, and did not, provide a space for girls to work out some of their anxieties and imagine possibilities for a greater range of options than girls generally see available to them in the media” (7). I was curious about how GirlZone would react to hearing about the deficiencies of their program; while I’m sure they welcome constructive criticism—and it sounds like Sheridan had an excellent working relationship with them—I couldn’t help but imagine that if tensions existed, or Sheridan struggled to assimilate herself (i.e. remain an obvious outsider) that these constructive criticisms would be scoffed at or go unrecognized. She later writes about how information she received in the ethnography “would not have been forthcoming if I had not had long-term engagement, in a variety of roles, which allowed to earn participants’ trust” (8). My immediate reaction was this is great that the info. was forthcoming, but what happens when that trust isn’t earned? I can’t imagine that every ethnography goes as planned—it is, presumably, messy. What are some ways one can resolve tensions? Sheridan seems like she will address some of these things later in the article when she discusses how her “desire for reciprocity brought unanticipated conflicts, something every ethnographer will need to face during the course of their study” (9); however, she plunges forward with the article, offering little information about these conflicts or how these conflicts were/were not resolved.

Thus, my questions for Mary Sheridan are…

  1. You mention some unanticipated conflicts in your ethnography with Girl Zone. I was wondering if you could speak to this a little. How did you attempt to resolve these conflicts? Did you feel these conflicts compromised or enhanced your study?
  2. You write about how much it helped to gain insider status—that is, you earned participants’ trust. I’m sure that ethnographers sometimes struggle with this. Can you speak to how ethnographies can be influenced by tensions between the researcher and the participant? Should they be overtly addressed in the write-up? Do you feel tensions compromise the integrity of an ethnography, or even a study using ethnographical principles?
Published in: Uncategorized on November 9, 2010 at1:37 pm Comments (2)

lurking

My one sentence question/lead in: I think McKee and Porter bring to the forefront some important ethical dilemmas in online research involving human subjects.

I read Em’s blog post last week, and I wanted to start by saying I agree with a lot of what she said–and I’m hoping to hear more of her thoughts this week. But for the purposes of this discussion board post, I’m going to focus on the kind of research/ethical dilemma that Cubbison found herself; that is, she was struggling whether or not to quote participants in online discussions. Cubbison says ( via the McKee and Porter article) that “viewing any texts on the internet as public ‘bothers me because it’s acting as though communication were public even though it’s not on the part of the participants'” (158). It struck me that Cubbison took a feminist approach (or rather, used feminist principles) to help guide her ultimate decision to not quote these participants (even though they were published, as I understand, for everyone to see on the web) and rather found “‘websites where members of the group had gone on to publish particular viewpoints and cited it that way […]'” (158-159).

I appreciated this section of the article/chapter, because it presents some very real ethical issues. Though I am not a lurker on such serious discussion board forums or support groups as the ones outlined in the chapter, I do follow–as a fan–several comic book discussions. Since I have (and do) study fandom, I have been put in the ethical quandary of quoting someone’s discussion board post (usually under the inauspicious moniker of skeletorcrew or something of the like) for academic inquiry. And, I’m happy to say, I went the route that McKee and Porter outline: “Another option is to secure consent to study and quote online postings” (159). This is exactly what I have done. But these are important ethical issues to consider, I think. Often, blogs, discussion boards, and other kind of open forums are thought to be “fair game” for citing because it is, technically, a public text. But this article reminds us there are some ethical issues to be thinking of. I do think that six points that McKee and Porter suggest researchers think about (found on 155-156) give an excellent starting point to start this sort of discussion. Like Em, I’m not sure I agree with their assessment of all the case studies they use, but I do agree with their over-arching idea and methodology.

Published in: Uncategorized on November 1, 2010 at6:30 pm Comments (1)

(Informal) Synthesis

The two Blair pieces we read–McKee & Blair and Blair, Dietel-McLaughlin & Graupner Hurley–are most definitely in conversation together. One looks at literacy acquisition/sponsorship among older adults (with a specific focus on community based technology literacy programs) and the other looks at literacy acquisition/sponsorship among junior high females (through the Digital Mirror Camp). That is not to say that the Selfe & Hawisher piece, which examines interview practices in the context of digital literacy narratives, and the McKee and Porter piece (which tackles ethical quandaries in online research) do not fit in. In some ways, Blair, Dietel-McLaughlin & Graupner Hurley enact the advice Selfe & Hawisher provide in “Exceeding the Bounds of the Interview: Feminism, Mediation, Narrative, and Conversations about Digital Literacy”; that is, their digital mirror camp required participants to create a digital archive of their experiences (see Selfe & Hawisher 14 for the advice I refer to; 151-156 in the Digital Mirror piece). Though the authors of “Looking into the Digital Mirror” couch their archive in more pragmatic terms–to publicize the camp–their homepage, “information for parents,”  and “camp highlights” sections all serve as a kind of digital narrative for the camp participants. It is interesting that the follow-up work in the Blair and McKee piece is done via the traditional interview (or email) as opposed to creating some kind of digital, audio, or video archive. I think this is a product of them not realizing their work in the community would lead to publication/research. In a way, this is a shame, because I think that some sort of video or audio commentary–capturing the essence of the follow-up interviews done with participants of the community classes–could be really useful and telling.

Regardless, I liked these pieces because of the emphasis on literacy sponsorship–it doesn’t solely focus on literacy acquisition. Don’t get me wrong–I dig tales of literacy acquisition. But examining the role literacy sponsors play seems to be overlooked. Both Blair pieces emphasize the role family played as literacy sponsors. There is the small blurb in the Digital Mirror Camp about the father who, so impressed with the work his daughter produced in four days, not only planned on getting a computer but also planned on sending his other children to the camp (157). This is exciting stuff for sure; I also like the emphasis on how the community can serve as a literacy sponsor. I’d kind of like to see more research done in this field, because there is some interesting stuff going on; when discussing digital literacy, technology, etc. and applying this to pedagogy–or just operating under the assumption that all of our students should have what Selber would call functional literacy–is a grave mistake. We sometimes fail to recognize the role outside factors play in our literacy acquisition–financial status, what kind of community we grow up in, etc. Not every community has a library with computers, for example, and if a person grows up in a family that can’t afford a computer, we probably do this student a disservice by assuming s/he knows the basics of computer tech.

Anyhow, this has taken on a bit of a ramble–but hopefully the points are lucid enough.

Published in: Uncategorized on October 25, 2010 at9:47 pm Comments (1)

Practice Review McKee and Porter

In “Rhetorica Online: Feminist Research Practices in Cyberspace” Heidi A. McKee and James E. Porter take a close look at how feminist research principles may help inform ethical quandaries inherently embedded in online studies. To that end, they first examine whether informed consent is needed when referring to online publications such as blogs or forums; secondly, they look at what sort of approaches are appropriate for online interactions between the researcher and participant. They argue that certain feminist research tenets, such as concern, care and respect for participants, can inform these important ethical dilemmas.

Published in: Uncategorized on at9:16 pm Comments (4)

Practice Review

Kathleen J. Ryan’s “Making Pathways: Inventing Textual Research Methods in Feminist Rhetorical Studies” focuses on how feminist pragmatic rhetoric can be a means to practicing textual research; specifically, she looks to offer a “pathway for practicing feminist textual research as a means of individual scholarly invention, and more broadly, disciplinary invention” (91).

In “Rhetorics of Possibility: Challenging the Textual Bias of Rhetoric through the Theory of the Flesh,” Bernadette M. Calafell uses theories of the flesh and performance as a way for women of color in the academy to acquire empowerment and agency in an unforgiving environment. To that end, she provides her own experiences to demonstrate how these theories can be put into practice.

“Researching Literacy as  Lived Experience,” by Joanne Addison, positions composition as a human science; from this perspective, then, feminist rhetoric “challenges the empirical evidence placed before us and used to further the inequality of women and other subjugated groups of people” (138). From there, the author describes how feminist standpoint theory can lead to accurate accounts of experiential literacy.

Gesa E. Kirsh and Jacqueline J. Royster’s “Feminist Rhetorical Practices: In Search of Excellence” looks to not only locate major shifts in feminist rhetorical practice, but also further feminist rhetorical inquiry by using three modes of engagement: critical imagination, strategic contemplation, and social circulation. Through reflection and theory, the authors look to identify future paths of rhetorical feminist thought and practice.

The first three of these essays examine different feminist rhetorical methodologies; one focuses on textual research, one on empowering marginalized individuals in the academy, and one on determining experiential literacy. All three of these essays make use of personal narrative, so readers can see the challenges that these authors went through when engaging in their various methodologies. This remains consistent with some of the major principals of feminist theory, particularly the tenets that Kirsh offers (reprinted by Schell, 9). All four texts, including Kirsh and Royster, look to move feminist rhetorical thought forward; they move beyond recovery and look to show how feminist rhetorical thought can enhance scholarly endeavors.

Published in: Uncategorized on October 18, 2010 at7:09 pm Comments (9)

Rawson

Though all three pieces I read for this week (I chose the Dolmage & Lewiecki-Wilson, Rawson, and Crawford chapters) were engaging and interesting, I’m going to focus primarily on Rawson’s “Queering Feminist Canonization.” And in the true spirit of blogging, I’m going to attempt to work through some problems and questions I had reading through her piece.

I was interested in the subject matter–canonization–before I even read the piece. In one of my courses during my MA program, one of my instructors told us to write down the five books we thought every college graduate should read (or have read)–in effect, telling us to create our canon. After making our list, we compared lists and discovered that not one text appeared on everyone’s list. If memory serves correctly, the work that was on most people’s list was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This simple activity was effective–it showed us the arbitrariness of canonization. Since then, I’ve been intrigued by this notion of a canon. The word pops up in almost every field, but I, like Rawson, find the arbitrariness in such a term.

It seems, though, that Rawson is attempting to mash together two separate arguments that would best be served in two articles, or one longer piece. Her conclusion, that “Our methodologies have enabled some types of work to flourish–scholarship on women’s rhetorics–while other types remain unexplored, such as scholarship on transgender rhetors and rhetorics”(52) is one I agree with. But how she reaches this conclusion is a bit fuzzy to me. She initially tells us her interest is in avoiding “exclusionary pitfalls, which threaten any well-intentioned feminist project” (41)–again, I can totally get on board with this. Perhaps what bothers me is that she doesn’t convince me that there is an established canon of feminist methodology literature; she spends a paragraph discussing how it seems apparent to her that there is a canon–and then goes about “queering” the canon. To go back to my first thought–that this is two pieces crammed into one–it seems that she would be better served by first really demonstrating that there is a feminist canon that exists, as it seems likely to me that she is on to something here, despite her lack of convincing evidence. She certainly talks about why a canon is problematic–and what we can do about it–which is great. But I wonder if feminist scholars really do have a “canon.” As I stated earlier, I think she is on to something, but I’d like more evidence. And also, I’d like to know if Rawson herself thinks that there are some pieces of feminist work that everyone should know and/or read.  

I hope this blog response doesn’t make it seem like I don’t appreciate and/or agree with Rawson. But after starting her piece, I assumed one thing was going to happen, and was mildly disappointed to see two major arguments slapped together to form one, short argument.

Published in: Uncategorized on October 5, 2010 at9:09 am Comments (2)