Feminism and the Classroom Teacher (PDF)

on the sociology of the school curriculum did not make the ‘malestream’ nature of that curriculum problematic. When analysing the everyday work of the teacher as a controller of knowledge from a feminist perspective this demands that we question both the basis and content of school knowledge(s). Stanley and Wise (1993) use the phrase ‘situated knowledge’ to locate knowledge within a social and cultural context. The feminist critique of knowledge and of what counts as knowledge (Caine et al. 1988) stresses the social location and production of knowledge. Put simply, teachers’ control over knowledge should be accompanied by questions about whose knowledge is being given priority and coverage. Some knowledge claims are seen as superordinate in relation to others (Bourdieu 1993). The case can be made that what is seen as the knowledge is that which is defined by men, who are defining male experience as universal on the basis of all-male samples (Stanley and Wise 1993). Paechter (1998:64) relates this argument to what she describes as the ‘hegemony of reason and rational thought’.

She argues that the knowledge taught in schools is reason, or decontextualized knowledge. She suggests that it is decontextualized knowledge that is valued in the school and that takes precedent over knowledge situated in everyday practices. In comparison, alternatives to reason and decontextualized knowledge-contextualized knowledge, emotion, non-rationality-are conceptualized in negative frames. Hence power is caught up and controlled by the control and transmission of certain (masculinized, hegemonic) forms of knowledge. The legitimation and reproduction of school knowledge is inscribed in the voices and actions of teachers (especially white, middle-class males) argues Giroux (1988). However, we would wish to add to that the argument that the teacher’s control over ‘classroom’ knowledge has always been questionable, as teachers are, more often than not, working within state regulatory education systems, and with existing, prescribed texts.

Teachers’ control over knowledge (and indeed how it is to be delivered) has, for example, come into question as a result of the introduction of a national or core curriculum in England and Wales. Teacher unions in particular have been extremely vocal in protesting against such moves, which they have perceived as reducing the autonomy (and power) of teachers to decide the curriculum and how to ensure its delivery.