Repositioning Feminism & Education: Perspectives on Educating for Social Change

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This book presents testimony of feminisms in process. The accounts are filled with tensions, not least an uneasiness with feminism itself, and the question of what exactly it means to be a feminist in education in the contemporary world. It is their respect for their own differences and the honesty with which they write that makes this such a rich text. From the Foreword by Kathleen Weiler Educators committed to social change face the common dilemma of how to take up the work of transformation without reinscribing systems of domination. The struggle with the concept of imposition is central to the emergence of many educators' identities and provides a site for exploring the complex relationship between power, knowledge, and teacher identity. This book chronicles the collaborative efforts of five diverse women educators (Native American, European, Jewish American, rural, midwestern, working class) to grapple with the tensions of taking up a political position while honoring the cultural, social, and historical context of others. Their dialogue across feminist, critical, and postmodern theories and practices explores the process of fusing theory with political work in the world. What emerges is the continual repositioning and disruption of taken for granted meanings as central to enhancing emancipatory education.

Reviews

"These entwined essays deal insightfully and honestly with questions of commitment, power, difference, trust, authority, and friendship. The approach is novel, and the topics are fundamental."- Cheris Kramarae Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"This book represents an example of the potential power imbedded in scholarship freed from the unimaginative and ritualistic stodginess of conventional research protocols. It clearly demonstrates the way in which this emerging scholarship can be both personal and intellectual; practical and conceptual. Although much of the book is situated within a feminist context, it should not be thought of as a volume just for women educators. I recommend it for preservice and inservice teachers, graduate students in education, sociology, and women studies, school administrators, and academic researchers."- Jesse Goodman Associate Professor Indiana University
"Writing and researching from varied cultural and social identities and contexts, the authors pointedly remind us of the necessity of attending to difference even as we attempt to forge collaborative forms of inquiry."-Janet L. Miller, Professor National College of Education National-Louis University

Author Bio

JANICE JIPSON is Associate Professor of Education at Carroll College where she teaches in the Graduate Studies Program. She is the coauthor of Collaboration and Critique: Readings in Literature, Curriculum and Teacher Culture (forthcoming) and Daredevil Research: Breaking the Boundaries of Educational Inquiry (1995). PETRA MUNRO is Assistant Professor of Education at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Rereading Women's True Profession: Life History Narratives