FEMINIST TOOLKIT FOR HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS
A Project
Presented to the faculty of Graduate and Professional Studies in Education
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
Education
(Behavioral Science Gender Equity Studies)
by
Eve Ford
SPRING 2017
© 2017
Eve Ford
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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FEMINIST TOOLKIT FOR HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS
A Project
by
Eve Ford
Approved by:
______, Committee Chair Margarita Berta-Ávila, Ed.D.
Date
iii
Student: Eve Ford
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the project.
, Graduate Coordinator Albert Lozano, Ph.D. Date
Graduate and Professional Studies in Education
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Abstract
of
FEMINIST TOOLKIT FOR HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS
Historically, the American educational public school system is a bureaucratic institution in which maintenance of the status quo and the teachings of social norms are priorities (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Freire & Shor, 1987; Giroux, 1989). In other words, students learn that they must conform passively to the rules of the social order (known as the hidden curriculum) in order to succeed in school and by extension, in life. Teachers and principals have control and authority over students both socially and academically and therefore, “students soon learn that ignoring the hidden curriculum is a sure way to failure in school, both socially and academically”
(Massialas, 1989, p. 121). Because we live in a patriarchy, a society in which men hold the economic and political power and women are excluded from sharing that power equally, and because public schools operate within the same sexist structure, girls in public schools experience gender division, oppression and marginalization, not only because of the pressures of the hidden curriculum but also from the materials from which teachers are required to teach and students are required to learn. In
American history textbooks and curriculum, women have been assigned inferior status and therefore are not equally represented (de Saxe, 2012; Frederickson, 2004;
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Shrewsbury, 1997). This is just one of the myriad of ways in which the formal curriculum works in tandem with the hidden curriculum to support gender discrimination and oppression in the public schools. In order to mitigate the obstacles blocking gender equity inherent in the current school systems, lesson plan units that underscore gender equity are essential.
It is vital to integrate women’s experiences into high school history curriculum because seeing oneself reflected in what one is learning, positively contributes to one’s self-identity, especially as adolescent girls move into adulthood. Young women, in order to form healthy self-concept, need to feel that they are “part of something larger than their own lives and that they are emotionally connected to a whole” (Pipher,
1994, p. 285). This paper and project will use feminist theory and feminist pedagogy through which to evaluate gender equity in education. Using a feminist analysis lens is important for two reasons. First, teacher training programs across the nation offer less than one hour of gender equity training for those seeking their teaching credential
(Carinci, 2007). Second, even teachers who consider themselves non sexist and believe that they do not discriminate through gender based preferential treatment in the classroom, have been shown to regularly, albeit unconsciously, give boys more attention than girls in class (Richarson, 2015; Sadker & Sadker, 1995). The review of relevant literature includes an exploration of scholarly articles on sexist oppression in education and the effects of gender bias in high school history classes. The project, a series of lessons geared toward teaching students about gender oppression both in vi
society and in their textbook, is an attempt to correct the imbalances of gender representation in the public school system.
______, Committee Chair Margarita Berta-Ávila, Ed.D.
______Date
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page List of Tables...... x
List of Figures ...... xi
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION...... 1
Statement of the Problem ...... 1
Significance of the Problem ...... 4
Statement of Purpose...... 8
Theoretical Framework ...... 9
Definitions of Terms ...... 12
Review of Relevant Literature ...... 13
Methodology ...... 14
Assumptions...... 16
Limitations ...... 17
Organization of the Project ...... 17
2. LITERATURE REVIEW...... 18
Introduction ...... 18
Gender Equity in Society ...... 19
Gender Equity as Social Justice ...... 20
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Gender Equity in Education ...... 23
The Closing of the Gendered Achievement Gap in Education ...... 26
Gender Inequity in the Classroom and the Hidden Curriculum...... 27
Gender Inequity in History Textbooks...... 34
Feminist Pedagogy in the Classroom...... 36
Feminist Pedagogy in a High School History Class ...... 41
Conclusion...... 42
3. METHODOLOGY...... 44
Introduction and Overview...... 44
Part I: Why Feminist Perspective in High School History...... 46
Part II: Gender Analysis of an 11th Grade High School History
Textbook. Textbook Analysis ...... 47
Part III: Lesson Plans. Lessons 1-4 ...... 51
Conclusion...... 71
4. CONCLUSION ...... 72
Impact, Values and Effectiveness ...... 74
Limitations ...... 76
Recommendations ...... 77
Closing ...... 79
Appendix. Lesson Plans and Handouts ...... 80
References ...... 131 ix
LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
1. History Textbook Data...... 49
2. Jigsaw Configuration...... 69
3. Forming Groups in a Jigsaw Exercise...... 70
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Figures Page
1. Think, Pair, Share...... 61
2. TopHat...... 65
xi 1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or
her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being
indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a
system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What
you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the
choices of this particular culture (Lessing, 1962, p. xxiii-xxiv).
Statement of the Problem
By the middle of the 19th century, when the industrial revolution was at its peak and the immigrant population was on the rise in large, urban areas, interest in compulsory public education for six to 16 year-olds, known as the common schools, was gaining political momentum and public support (Katz, 1976). But the problem was that common schools were neither public nor democratic in anything other than a cursory or symbolic way. They were, instead, a functional market representation of the colonizing forces of a middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male hierarchy imbued with the specific capitalist economic system it promoted (Eisenstein, 1996).
The allure of creating schools for public education of the masses was seen, in large part, as a solution to the scourge of immigrants coming to America who were fleeing political and social economic strife in their country of origin. As Katz (1976) explains, “As the strains of social diversity and the dangers of urban chaos become more widely felt, new receptivity to a widespread system of publicly supported,
2 publicly controlled common schools emerge” (p. 15). In addition, the growing interest in child protection labor laws for 100 year in the Eastern part of the country, beginning in the 1830s and becoming finalized as a federal law in 1938 in the form of the Fair
Labor Standards Act, made it clear that children were no longer thought of simply as a source of financial gain for the state. Therefore, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law. As a result, not only was there a need for the states to regulate and track the whereabouts of its under-age population, but there was also a need to consider how and what the state wants those children to learn.
Historically, the American educational public school system is a bureaucratic institution in which maintenance of the status quo and the teachings of social norms are priorities (Freire & Shor, 1987; Giroux, 1989). The social norms taught in the public school system are part of the hidden curriculum. The hidden curriculum of schools includes the underlying messages that are not overtly taught in the prescribed curricular subject matters and are perpetuated by the dominant culture (McLaren,
2009). For example, even though the public school’s official teachings were reading, writing, and arithmetic, one of the things that the students were learning was that teachers, and thus adults, had the knowledge and the children had to learn only what the teachers wanted them to learn.
One lesson the students learned is that there are societal rules that must be followed in order to succeed in life. If these structures of comportment and rule following are not obeyed, then the students will fail both in the class and in life, even
3 if they were to get good grades. In other words, through this hidden curriculum, our educational system perpetuates the structures and beliefs of the dominant ideology.
As McLaren (2009) explains, the dominant ideology,
Refers to patterns of beliefs and values shared by the majority of individuals.
(For example) The majority of Americans share the belief that...men are
generally more capable of holding positions of authority than women, or that
women should be more passive and housebound. The ideology of patriarchy
also is necessary to keep the nature of the economy safe and secured within the
prevailing hegemony. We have been “fed” these dominant ideologies for
decades through mass media, the schools and family socialization (p. 71).
The ramifications of the hidden curriculum in schools, which reflect (are an extension of) the dominant ideology are numerous. For example, one of the more important skills students learn through the hidden curriculum in school is who is in the positions of power and who is not (Massialas, 1989). Teachers and principals have control and authority over students both socially and academically. “Students soon learn that ignoring the hidden curriculum is a sure way to failure in school, both socially and academically” (p. 121). In other words, students learn that they must conform passively to the rules of the social order in order to succeed in school and by extension, in life.
There is a second tier to this phenomenon of who has authority and power when discussing hidden curriculums in school settings. Because we live in a patriarchy, a society in which men hold the economic and political power and women
4 are excluded from sharing that power equally, and because public schools operate within the same patriarchal structure, girls in public schools will experience gender division and gender oppression not only from the hidden curriculum which is perpetuated by authority but also from their fellow male classmates.
Two of the many established social norms inculcated in schools are gender division and gender oppression (Weiler, 2001). As a result, public school education creates an abiding culture that prizes and values men’s contributions more highly than women’s contributions in our society. The following project will explore and identify the history of gender inequity in public schools and the resulting effects on young women, the current issues within the academic, community in regards to this topic and the best approach(es) for the most feminist pedagogically sound perspective when creating new curriculum focused on a more gender balanced approach to high school social studies.
Significance of the Problem
Girls come of age in a misogynistic culture in which men have most political and economic power. Girls read a history of Western Civilization that is essentially a record of men’s lives (Pipher, 1994).
In American history textbooks and curriculum, women have been assigned inferior status and therefore are not equally represented (de Saxe, 2012; Frederickson,
2004; Shrewsbury, 1997). This is just one of the myriad of ways in which the formal curriculum works in tandem with the hidden curriculum to support gender discrimination and oppression in the public schools. In an experiment conducted by
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Myra and David Sadker (1995), a history class of high school seniors was given five minutes to write down 20 famous U. S. women from the past or the present. They could not be sports stars or entertainers and if they were first ladies, they had to be famous in their own right. As they traveled to high school history classes around the country, they discovered that both girls and boys could only name an average of four women (Sadker & Sadker, 1995). The experiment illustrated the exclusion of women’s contribution in history. The absence and marginalization of women and women’s accomplishments and contributions in social studies curriculum, denies the existence of half of the population. Marginalization, which is to treat a person or a group as insignificant or peripheral, affects young women’s sense of efficacy and self- actualization and supports the perpetuation of the status quo and the hidden curriculum. The status quo/hidden curriculum in this case is that which upholds the oppression associated with the structures of capitalist patriarchy. Oppression is defined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. Young women need to see and hear that the lives of women matter throughout the course of history.
Marginalization of women’s experiences in high school history curricula perpetuates the discriminatory and sexist belief that women’s contributions are not as important as men’s contributions. As Sadker and Sadker (1995) stated, “Until educational sexism is eradicated, more than half our children will be shortchanged and their gifts lost to society” (p. 1). It is imperative here to recognize and reflect upon and the use and assumptions of the meaning of the word women as an all-encompassing category. As noted above, we live in a society ruled within a patriarchal structure. Therefore, the
6 male experience is more valued than those of women. But there is an additional layer of exclusion that has long been a point of contention in the feminist community.
When a researcher used the word “woman,” or “female student,” there was an assumption that that category included women of color but in reality it meant white women even though “white” was explicitly stated. By extension, in most of the feminist educational literature, there seems to be an assumption that the term, “young women,” as used by Sadker and Sadker in the quote above for example, is supposed to represent all girls/women. This is based on a presumptuous and false (and racist) belief that women of colors’ experiences are the same as the experiences of white women. It is no longer tenable or appropriate to write a research project from this white privileged and presumptive perspective. White women/girls and women/girls of color have some similarities because of their shared gendered experiences living under patriarchal rule however because we live in a racist society, women/girls of color experiences are markedly different given the double markers of sexism and racism.
Therefore, the distinction must be recognized and respected. Most importantly, a researcher must not write as if the category “young women,” is an accurate stand in for all women and girls. It is not, especially given the historically inaccurate use of the category “women,” to mean that experiences of white women are an accurate and measurable stand in for all women, even if they are women of color, since “white” as a category is considered superior in our ethnocentric, patriarchal culture (hooks, 1994).
The researcher therefore must determine what “women” means when the word/category “women” is utilized throughout this research project. For the purposes
7 of this project, the term “white women” and “women of color,” in place of the word,
“women.”
Another reason it is vital to integrate women’s experiences into high school history curriculum is that seeing oneself reflected in what one is learning, positively contributes to one’s self-identity, especially as adolescent girls move into adulthood.
This is why you have to discuss the distinction because for women of color if they only see white women… then what is the difference? Young women, in order to form healthy self-concept, need to feel that they are “part of something larger than their own lives and that they are emotionally connected to a whole” (Pipher, 1994, p. 285).
Additionally, Orenstein (1995) states that, “without a strong sense of self, girls will enter adulthood at a deficit: they will be less able to fulfill their potential, less willing to take on challenges, less willing to defy tradition in their career choices, which means sacrificing economic equity” (p. xxviii). This is important because if white women and women of color want to wield more political, social and economic power, they must be able to see themselves as an equally valued part of the culture- even if the culture as a whole continues to attempt to oppress them. The absence of women and women of color in social studies curriculum tacitly and overtly supports the white, patriarchal values.
Most history classrooms are bedecked with male role models, male heroes and books by and about men-classrooms in which woman’s roles in history are merely an afterthought, if she shows up at all (Orenstein, 1995). When white women and women of color’s issues and history are explored it is most often in the context of how it fits
8 into the lives of men’s issues as opposed to standing on their own (Schmidt, 2012).
Why is this a problem today? What is at stake for young women and young men when they are taught, both through the hidden curriculum and the common core social studies standards, that men are more important and more valued than women? What are the current best practices for developing a more gender balanced 11th grade
American history curriculum? How can a young woman develop a strong sense of self if the institution in which she is forced to spend the majority of her time from ages six to 18, has devised ways to render her invisible both through the transmission of societal norms and values in the hidden curriculum and through the more overt absences of women’s contributions in the official curriculum of the state?
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this study is to both investigate and rectify the presence of gender inequality as represented in Chapter 5 of The American Experience: one of the many official textbook for 11th grade United States history curriculum. The researcher will review the current and past literature in order to identify the key elements that contribute to gender oppression and unequal gender representation in high school history textbook. The researcher will review current scholarly literature on the affects of gender and cultural bias in the classroom. The researcher will analyze the latest edition of the 11th grade history textbook, The American Experience. The tool with which to analyze the text is a gender analysis worksheet that takes a step by step approach to developing and supporting a new lens through which to view how and why textbooks still do not properly represent white women and women of color from a
9 fair social science perspective. What are the current best practices for developing a more gender balanced 11th grade American history curriculum? How might the creation of critical theory-based and social justice-based supplement material shed light on patriarchal oppression and thus help to empower young women in education and beyond?
Theoretical Framework
Many educators, sociologists and philosophers have studied public education from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Often times, in addition to critiquing the current educational systems, these writers and thinkers propose and practice innovative approaches to reach students who are bored, disenfranchised, apathetic and disinterested regarding the subject matter that they are told they have to learn/know.
Those on the front lines of this pursuit/goal who want change and thus improve current teaching practices, include Freire (1993), hooks (1994, 2000), McLaren
(2009), Weiler (2001) and Duncan-Andrade (2006).
There exists a place within the feminist movement (albeit too small) in which lies the acknowledgement and disapproval of the historically deep seated racism and hetero-normative bias within feminism itself. As Weiler (1989) states, “by now, it is commonplace to distinguish varieties of feminism. Recent feminist theory has tended to cut across disciplines and to incorporate a number of different approaches, including the more general movement of postmodernism” (p. 11). For example, the postmodernist feminists of color such as Lorde, hooks, Moraga, and Anzaldua declare that the ‘coherent’ identity “woman” conceals race, class and sexual preference and
10 that the word woman really has no such singular identity and thereby needs to be constantly reevaluated and recreated. In other words, there is no such thing as one definition for the word feminist or feminist theory.
Sadker and Silber (2007) prefer the more accurate term ‘feminisms,’ when attempting to creating definitions within feminist theory and feminist practice. From the mid 1980s to the present day, as we approach the third decade of the 21st century, feminism and feminist theorists demand to be inclusive and is therefore more complex in scope yet more accurately representative of a broader range of traditionally marginalized people.
One important aspect that arose from feminist theory is what Weiler (1989) refers to as the construction of subjectivities. Within this categorization is the belief in the social construction of gender. By insisting on the, “artificial nature of historically defined aspects of gender, feminist theorists point to the instability and contradictions in gender systems and the possibilities for individual manipulation of and resistance to them” (Weiler, 1989, p. 13). Within this context, the project proposed here is demonstrating and teaching the awareness of the social construction of gender in a high school history classroom and its attendant limitations for those of all genders. It presents an opportunity to disrupt traditional power structures by exposing the hidden curriculum of sexism and gender oppression.
In the context of female empowerment in the classroom, and related to
Weiler’s problem with feminist theory in the past, Catherine MacKinnon (1989), defines it as such “Feminism seeks to empower women on our own terms. To value
11 what women have always done, as well as to allow us to do everything else. In this way, our demand for access becomes a demand for change” (p. 22). She declares that gender as a social construct is a system of social hierarchy, based on an “imposed inequality of power” (Sadker & Silber, 2007). and that as feminists we have an obligation to “end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” (hooks, 2000).
This paper and project will use feminist theory and feminist pedagogy through which to evaluate gender equity in education. Using a feminist analysis lens is important for three main reasons. First, teacher training programs across the nation offer less than one hour of gender equity training for those seeking their teaching credential (Carinci, 2007). Second, even teachers who consider themselves non sexist and believe that they do not discriminate through gender based preferential treatment in the classroom, have been shown to regularly, albeit unconsciously, give boys more attention than girls in class (Richardson, 2015; Sadker & Sadker, 1995). Finally,
American history textbooks, upon which much of my project lesson plans are based, are long on the illusion of equal gender representation and short on the actuality of equal representation (Chick, 2006; Sadker & Sadker, 1995; Tetreault, 1986). Given the above examples of how equal gender representation runs at a deficit in education, using a feminist lens through which to see how educators might improve the current, sexist state of education is imperative.
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Definitions of Terms
Critical Pedagogy
A process intended to be cyclical where students are encouraged to become social agents, developing their capacity to confront real-life problems that face them and their community (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008).
Feminist Pedagogy
A teaching methodology that engages students in a critical examination of the knowledge claims and methodologies of historians regarding male and female representation (Coughlin, 2007).
Feminist Critical Pedagogy
Concerned with questions of power, equity, and authority in the classroom, but it adds gender as a critical factor in the equation (Shrewsbury, 1997).
Problem-posing Education
The type of education that allows people to develop their power to critically perceive the way they exist in the world. It affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming (Freire, 1993).
In the following paper, from the review of relevant literature, to the methods sections and finally, the lesson plans, the reader is invited to explore the current feminist perspectives on education, see in detail how a textbook is analyzed for gender balance and marginalization, and discover how a traditional textbook might be a catalyst for transformation to a more non traditional perspective on history.
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Review of Relevant Literature
The purpose of the proposed literature review is to discover, analyze and coalesce the most recent and relevant academic literature that focuses on the problems and possible solutions to unequal gender representation in American high school classrooms.
The first part of the literature review will explore and expose the way in which both the hidden curriculum in education and the official, state sanctioned curriculum functions to perpetuate the patriarchal culture. The state sanctioned curriculum refers mainly the 11th grade history textbook that will be analyzed. The hidden curriculum is generally understood as the process by which daily exposure to school expectations and routines transmits norms and values of the dominant society to students (García &
De Lissavoy, 2013). This will include an exploration of scholarly articles on sexist oppression in education and the effects of gender bias in high school history classes.
Much has been written in the past 10 to 20 years regarding the lack of equal representation of women in public school education in general and in American high school history classes in particular (Coughlin, 2007; Schmidt, 2012). The perpetuation of a patriarchal focus in high school history classes creates an atmosphere of sexist oppression and ostracism for the female half of the population. The visible curriculum that excludes and/or marginalizes women, working in tandem with the hidden curriculum of schools can, influence negative unconscious beliefs that are reinforced over time. (Rios, Stewart, & Winter, 2010).
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While there seems to be an increased attempt to include more women, highlight female achievement and to critically examine “history making” (Giroux,
1989; Seltzer-Kelly, 2009) there is still a need for more direct action regarding the representation of women.
The second part of the literature review will highlight educational feminist theory and best practices. When lessons that examine and challenge the social norms and attendant patriarchal oppression of women are integrated into curriculum, young women’s self-efficacy increase (Weisgram & Bigler, 2007). Ultimately, the goal of this project is to create supplementary material for an 11th grade American history class that gives students the opportunity to analyze and decide for themselves what constitutes a fair and balanced curriculum. Young female learners today need to be empowered to claim an education that helps them, “recognize (their) abilities to act to create a more humane social order... and to be able to engage in significant learning”
(Shrewsbury, 1997, p. 166). I remember your lit having three sections. Is section one still the same as you state it here and how it actually is in your lit?
Methodology
“As girls study Western civilization, they become increasingly aware that history is the history of men. History is His Story, the story of MANkind” (Pipher,
1994, p. 40).
The supplemental lesson plans created will be comprised of a 7-10 day unit in which students will be exposed to new learning methodologies that foster critical thought and expose students, in a critically evaluative way, to what is presently
15 included in traditional, state approved textbooks. The hope is that these methods will give the students the tools that they need to evaluate and analyze their history textbook and become more reflective of their own place in American history from a more critical feminist perspective instead of from the more traditional “banking method” of learning in which the teacher and the textbook are the sources of all the knowledge that then gets deposited into the minds of the students (Freire, 1993; Giroux, 1989).
From a critical pedagogical perspective, it is the teacher’s responsibility and obligation to focus on questions of democracy, justice and equality not only when creating curriculum for the students but also when disseminating the created curriculum
(Kincheloe, 2008).
The students will be given analytical tools that will support their evaluation and analysis the textbook. They will be looking for gender and ethnic bias. The main area of focus will be visual and textual presentations. They will be instructed to ask questions (and provide the answers) about form and content that will begin the development of their, “problem-posing” (Freire, 1993) positioning in which they will begin to critically examine some ways in which the dominant educational system tries to shape their thinking. As an introduction to a new way of thinking critically, the teacher will encourage the students not only to understand the words and pictures on the page, but also understand, “the unstated dominant ideologies hidden between the sentences as well” (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 16). One way to create awareness about the message of the unstated dominant ideologies (or the hidden curriculum) is by shedding light on what is missing in the history textbooks. By exposing students to histories
16 that are not represented as important (by the fact of omission) and allowing students to come to their own conclusions about why certain people and events are omitted and other people and events are included, is the beginning of understanding inequality, patriarchy and oppression of women. This unveiling creates an atmosphere in the classroom in which students can begin to see and understanding the societal power structures that affect student’s lives in modern times. Beginning to think critically about how history is presented and who/what is considered important in history is integral to developing a more empowering stance regarding how one’s sees one’s place in the world.
Assumptions
The assumptions for the proposed project is that the students are 11th grade honors history class and therefore they are taking the course for honors credit. Honors credit means that each grade received gets a grade bump to the next highest ranking.
For example, a B grade for an honors history course receives an A on a student’s transcript. Students do not receive college credit for an honors class; however, it can be assumed that since it is an 11th grade honors level history course, differentiated lesson plans will not be necessary. Differentiated lesson plans are plans that have to be created because some students in the class have special academic considerations.
Other assumptions include a willingness on the part of the teacher to temporarily abandon his/her set lesson plans that might seem more conventionally aligned with the traditional set curriculum and common core standards in service of more lofty goals such as developing a deeply critical view of current history textbooks and the way in
17 which conventional and established notions of history are both sanctioned and disseminated.
Limitations
One limitation of this project is that there will not be the opportunity to pilot the project within the time frame of the completion of the master’s thesis. Another limitation of the project is that lack of time that there would be to realistically complete the unit. A teacher’s time is limited and the pressures to teach to testing is high, that depth is usually overlooked in favor of breadth on any given topic. Even though the supplementary material that this researcher will create will focus on depth of the subject matter instead of its breadth, she knows the reality of everyday time limitations of classroom learning in an 11th grade high school history class.
Organization of the Project
The project is organized into four chapters, appendices, and references. The introduction describes the importance of the study. The next chapter provides the relevant literature on gender equity in education. Chapter 3 describes the methods used to shape the analysis of the high school social studies textbook, possible supplementary material and the procedures for creating the lesson plans. The final chapter contains the conclusions drawn from the presentation of the lesson plan and future recommendations of the researcher. Finally, the Appendices contain the curriculum.
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Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
I am grounded in a radical politic that is based on the belief that politics of
domination as manifest in imperialist, capitalist, racist and sexist oppression
must be challenged and changed so that a new social order can emerge.
(hooks, 1986, p. 126)
Introduction
This literature review presents scholarly literature on gender equity as an issue of social justice and the state of gender equity in our educational systems both past and present. It includes an examination of academic research that shows the perpetuation of unfair gender practices within our educational system when under the control of a white, sexist culture/power structure and the theoretical and practical approaches to creating more equitable learning environments. The literature review is divided into three parts. The first part of the literature review will ground gender equity as a social justice issue in our society at large. The second part focuses specifically on gender equity in education, with an examination of gender bias in high school textbooks and high school social studies classrooms. The second part of the literature review builds on the first part by identifying the issues of gender equity as a social justice issue that, when remedied, benefits both men and women. The third part builds on the information in the second section by reviewing theories and practices of feminist pedagogical scholars regarding best practices in a feminist classroom. While
19 there seems to be an increased attempt to include more women, and highlight female achievement and to critically examine “history making” (Giroux, 1989; Seltzer-Kelly,
2009) there is still a need for more direct action regarding both the treatment and representation of women in educational settings.
Gender Equity in Society
During the second wave feminist movement (1960-1985), inequality and sexist oppression in family and personal relations was framed as a political and social issue.
The second wave women’s movement changed the way women talked, and the way women thought about themselves. Gender equity issues such as closing the wage gap between men and women, legalizing abortion and domestic violence were framed as social injustices (not just personal misfortunes) that needed to be examined and changed. However, by the time Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) became president of the
United States and the neoliberal movement, whose agenda was focused on free market capitalism and trickle down economics, began to take hold, the focus on gender equity was actively suppressed.
The term gender equity refers to the process of allocating resources, programs, and decision making fairly to both males and females without any discrimination on the basis of sex…and addressing any imbalances in the benefits available to males and females (Blumberg, 2009). At the core of the struggle for gender equity in our society in general and our educational system in particular, is an issue of social justice and basic fairness (Baker & Lynch, 2005; Love, Owens, & Smothers, 2003; Sadker &
Zittleman, 2009). According to the 2014 statistics from the Census Bureau (2014), a
20 full time working women made just 79% of what her male counterpart made in wages.
The gender wage gap is even larger compared to wages of women of color. Treating women unequally based on preconceived, socially cultivated stereotypes leads to women feeling invalidated and not as important as their male counterparts
(MacKinnon, 1989; Steffen & Eagly, 1984). In other words, sexism is sustained by our society; it is perpetuated by the individuals who oppress and by women who are taught to behave in ways that make them act in accordance with the status quo (hooks,
1986). This is an expected but hardly welcome outcome of living in a sexist, capitalistic society in which women’s accomplishments, women’s wages and women’s work is consistently devalued and undersold. If women are to ever achieve parity and justice, thus making a feminist movement unnecessary and obsolete, we must unlearn these lessons of oppression (Ayers, Quinn, & Stovall. 2009). In American society, oppression exists in a variety of forms. It is important (necessary) to acknowledge that these oppressions intersect one another. They cannot and do not stand alone.
Classism, racism and sexism affect those who live in poverty, who are ethnic minorities, or women, or a combination thereof. The following section will show that the eradication of sexism in our society is a social justice issue.
Gender Equity as Social Justice
John Rawls (2001) defines social justice as fairness for all people, in which society’s citizens are free and equal, and that society tries to realize that idea in its main institutions. Thus, whether something is just or unjust depends on whether it promotes or hinders equality of access to civil liberties, human rights, opportunities
21 for healthy and fulfilling lives, as well as whether it allocates a fair share of benefits to the least advantaged members of society. Dating back to the origins of our nation, women in the United States have experienced and continue to experience discrimination (gender bias) through a variety of institutionally and socially sanctioned intersectional oppressions such as racism, classism and sexism in the form of: lower wages, domestic abuse, violence and lack of educational opportunities, to name a few.
In addition, the need for a cheap (or free) labor force in a capitalist system that depends of socioeconomic class divisions is at the root of women’s oppression in our society. If women are discriminated against and unequally represented from a very early age, then they can be more easily tracked into lower wage jobs with less security and subsequently, not be a threat to high waged jobs that are traditionally reserved for men. For example, MacKinnon (1989) states that early United States certain court cases (see Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, I984, 1984; Meyer v. Missouri
State Highway Commission, 567 F. 2d 804 ,8th Cir. I977, for example) attempted to fight for women’s fairer wages within a capitalist system but in fact did the opposite and only, “contributed to keeping women marginal and second-class workers by keeping some women from competing with men at the male standard of exploitation”
(p. 165). The court rulings benefited male workers at the expense of female workers.
Additionally, imbalances still exist among men and women in both the work force and in representation in political office (Sanders, 2002). Women fare far worse than men in a variety of categories. As of 2002, women represented only 18% of the U.S.
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Senate and 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives and according to a recent study,
“women fill just 11% of the seats on the boards of directors of Fortune 500 companies, and 14% of the companies having no female board members at all” (Sanders, 2002, p.
26).
The United States has a history of economic, social and political injustice that negatively affects the majority of its citizens. This history includes but is not limited to, colonialism, slavery and institutionalized sexism. Racism, capitalism and sexism intersect both historically and presently to create an environment that is in direct opposition to the democratic ideals that American history in high schools purport.
Many people in our nation have suffered and continue to suffer because of these past and present government sanctioned and dehumanizing policies (hooks, 1994, 2004).
When social systems are oppressive and unjust, white women and women of color are blocked from accessing the same opportunities as their male counterparts. This is an expected but hardly welcome outcome of living a world in which women’s accomplishments, women’s wages and women’s work is consistently devalued and undersold. In the United States, white women continue to earn .80 to the dollar that men earn in this country and women of color fair much worse -- even with men who have the same education and experience level (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). Of course there are many complex reasons why the wage gap is in place even though gains for women have been made in variety of areas but it very probable that the earnings gap still exists because women’s true accomplishments have been ignored
23 historically and careers and jobs that are stereotypically female are undervalued (Fry,
2003).
Educational institutions are a microcosm of our greater society. Gender inequity in education is embedded in all areas of American K-12 education (American
Association of University Women [AAUW], 1995; Sadker & Zittleman; 2009). In other words, K-12 schools are a place where sexism and gender oppression and marginalization of women is present and therefore gender equity in education is needed to create a more just and equitable society.
Gender Equity in Education
Historically, girls and young women were considered second class citizens and their rights to an education equal to boys and young men was seen as unnecessary and expendable (Katz, 1976). This is important because the beliefs about the inferiority/lack of appreciation of the roles of White women and women of color are so deeply entrenched in our societal beliefs that they become that much harder to overcome.
From the beginning of public school educational reform in the United States, educating young girls was not seen as important and generally reflected the social schemas of the democratic capitalism emerging in the 19th century industrialization in densely population urban areas. This dominant ideology of the times was more concerned about keeping young men off the streets and teaching them how to read and write in order to elevate their status and to insure that young men did not devolve into a life of crime and poverty. Thus, “the school system became a miniature version of
24 the social order” (Katz, 1976, p. 401). Nowhere in the literature on history of the public school system is there statements about the importance of educating females.
Women were an afterthought, if thought of at all. The advent of public education in this country on a nation wide scale was borne more from a need to control the masses of young men in the major cities than of an ideal of educating those masses. Schools were never meant to be a place for equal opportunity or “equal access under the law.”
In fact, in educational institutions, sexist discrimination was so much the norm that it wasn’t until the passage of Title IX, the law passed in 1972 that gender bias in schools was acknowledged. The law required that girls have equal educational access so that,
“no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal Financial Assistance” (United States
Department of Labor Statistics, 1972).
Gender inequity exists and extends to our educational institutions because we live in a patriarchal (sexist) system that keeps women in an inferior position relative to men. bell hooks (1994, 2004) claims that our White supremacist, capitalist patriarchy works as an interconnected system that oppresses anyone who is not White, male or rich. In her claim of White supremacist and capitalist, these adjectives modify the noun patriarchy. hooks (2004) defines patriarchy as,
a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating,
superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and
endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain
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that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.
(p. 18)
In our nation’s schools, having textbooks and state sanctioned curriculum that focuses on what is valued in a White capitalist patriarchy and that does not feature women as prominently as their male counterparts, leads to female students feeling invalidated and not as important as male students (Orenstein, 1995; Pipher, 1994;
Sadker & Zittleman, 2007).
Emile Durkheim (1897/1951) asserted that true social justice in education cannot be reached unless society changes first because our educational system is a reflection of society at large. He concluded that education “can be reformed only if society itself is reformed. Education is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latter…it does not create it” (Durkheim, 1897/1951, pp.
372-373). Emile Durkheim rejected the idea that education could be the force to transform society and resolve social ills. However, Freire (1993) believed that social justice is possible in education and must reach into the schools in order to transform society. According to Freire (1993), injustices are found within the the educational system that reflect societal power relations. These oppressive pedagogical practices lead to the dehumanization of both teacher and pupil.
Freire (1993) refers to social justice and its opposite, social injustice, as humanization and dehumanization, respectively. Humanization means to fight against institutional and educational policies that do not treat people fairly and to do what one can to correct the injustices- to recognize that every human has a right to be treated
26 with fairness, dignity and civility. Therefore, education is part of our society and the educational system influences the perspective and empowerment, or the lack thereof of its students (Freire, 1993; Giroux, 1989). The recognition and elimination of gender oppression in American schools must be a priority if justice in society is to be achieved. (Freire, 1993; hooks, 1994; Kumar, 2006). Gender oppression and bias that exist in our sexist culture at large, extends into our classrooms. Students in the
American educational system spend many hours of the day in school. Therefore, the influence that teachers and the institutions in which they serve has the potential to create an environment that is equitable, humane, and just. And, while it is impossible to “achieve equity overnight, or even over a decade, the key is to be persistent” (Fry,
2003, p. 11).
The Closing of the Gendered Achievement Gap in Education
A recent phenomenon in the fight for gender equity in education is a backlash in the form of trying to demonstrate that girls’ academic achievement is on par or in some cases, surpassing those of their male counter parts. For example, according to the latest statistics from NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2008) girls are just below boys regarding test scores for math with 13 year old females scoring at 279 and 13 year old males scoring at 284 (NAEP, 2008). However, in reading scores, female students rank higher than boys with a reading score of 264 while 13-year-old boys rank at 256. However, this data is misleading when looking at education through the lens of feminist pedagogy. If the achievement gap has become so small between males and females, then the question becomes what exactly is the
27 unequal education that both girls and boys are receiving and what can teachers do about it?
In other words, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) statistics that show the achievement gap as nearly closed create a false sense of equality, giving the impression that gender equality in education has been reached and therefore there is no reason to spend time and resources on changing curriculum, textbooks, standards or teacher education programs. For example, females outnumber boys in enrollment in Advanced Placement (AP) science and are equal in enrollment in geometry classes
(U.S. Department of Education, 2008).
The impact of gender inequity in American schools is greater and more troubling than test scores and achievement gaps. Achievement gap statistics do not measure how students are treated in the classroom and to what extent girls are marginalized in the curriculum. In other words, a young woman can still get high grades but still feel alienated from what is taught through a teacher’s pedagogical choices, and the hidden curriculum (Carinci, 2007).
Gender Inequity in the Classroom and the Hidden Curriculum
The hidden curriculum in education and the official, state sanctioned curriculum function to perpetuate sexism and gender inequality in our patriarchal culture. The state sanctioned curriculum refers mainly to the 11th grade history textbook that will be analyzed. The hidden curriculum is understood as the process by which daily exposure to school expectations and routines transmits norms and values of the dominant society to students (García & De Lissavoy, 2013). In the early part of
28 the 20th century, John Dewey (1938) coined the term “collateral learning.” Collateral learning meant all of the “lessons” that students learned that were not part of the formal, standardized school curriculum. Dewey’s definition of the informal learning that occurred in school referred to a certain quality of learning that was ultimately meant to encourage the desire for life long learning in a student. However, over time, collateral learning became what is known today as “the hidden curriculum.” The hidden curriculum is defined slightly differently by a variety of scholars in the educational field depending on their political and theoretical perspective. In its broadest term, hidden curriculum refers to all the lessons that students are taught in schools that are not part of the formal, overt curriculum and textbooks (Freire, 1993;
Giroux, 1989; McLaren, 2009; Orenstein, 1995; Rios, Stewart, &Winter, 2010).
Many scholars in the last 30 years have written about the negative effects of the hidden curriculum -- a series of unstated rules and guidelines that help support and reinforce gendered expectations, gender bias and gender stereotyping in our society
(see Giroux, 1989; hooks, 2000; Massialas, 1989; and Schmidt, 2012). Because students spend the majority of their time with their teachers, what teachers say and teacher’s body language and how teachers act with and respond to students, in large part, makes up what is referred to as the hidden curriculum and can be considered,
“more powerful than any textbook” (Love, Owens, & Smothers, 2003, p. 134).
After 35 years of observation and documentation of gender bias and oppression
(American Association of University Women, 1995; Richardson, 2015; Sadker &
Sadker, 1995) in classrooms across the country, several conclusions regarding the
29 effects of the hidden curriculum have been revealed. The gender biases that were observed were not necessarily overt and oftentimes teachers were not even aware of how what they were doing or saying amounted to sex-typing their students and perpetuating the patriarchal status quo. However, one of the more observable traits that contribute to unequal treatment of female students in the classroom is that male students receive several more instruction minutes of teacher/student interaction when doing individual work. For example, in a year long study conducted by Scott
Richardson’s team for Gendered Lessons: Patriarchy, Sex-typing and Schools (2015), in a 4th grade math class, boys received approximately twice as much time per interaction than girls when the students are doing individual work. Of the 28 interactions that were observed, boys received 18 of those interactions compared to only 10 for the girls. The average time per interaction was 32 seconds for each boy compared to only 17 seconds per interaction for each girl (Richarson, 2015, p. 205).
Boys receiving almost twice as much attention than girls while working independently is an example of the gender bias embedded in the hidden curriculum.
In addition, boys receive more of a teacher’s time than girls and White students receive more attention than students of color and therefore, “the role of the hidden curricula continues to implicitly affirm gender, racial and class hierarchies in
American society” (Rios, Stewart, & Winter, 2010, p. 329).
Before gender equity can be achieved, gender discriminatory and exclusionary practices of our social and educational institutions need to be named (see Freire, 1993; hooks, 2000; Giroux, 1989) and acknowledged. Eradication of gender inequity
30 practices in our educational institutions will only occur if educators themselves are willing to reeducate themselves regarding their own unequal treatment and sex-typing behaviors of their students. Sex typing means when teachers reinforce “girl” and
“boy” expectations (Richardson, 2015). Sex-typing in American classrooms happens consistently and even with the most well-meaning teachers who are committed to ending gender bias and gender oppression in education. Sex-typing, according to
Scott Richardson (2015) is, “the act of stereotyping what an individual’s preferences, like/dislikes, interests, abilities, and so on, are according to how the individual is
(assumed) sexed within the traditional male/female binary” (p. 23).
People, as well as things, are given a gendered “assignment” thus making it very challenging for students to explore fully their interests and potentials. It is in large part through this “sex-typing” that females have a reputation for being bad at math and science and males are supposedly inherently bad at talking about their feelings (Richardson, 2015). Additionally, sex typing and gender bias in a classroom is the most important indicator/predictor of what course of studies female students will pursue post high school.
Gender, as a construct is imposed on society in general and imposed on students in schools as a reflection of that society. These gender constructions and imbalances are grounded in years of learned behaviors and gender stereotypes,
“beginning with the pink and blue receiving blankets that are still used in hospitals today” (Sanders, 2002, p. 26). From a very early age, these (gendered) expectations work to limit kids’ potentials to be fully human and this gendering process, “does
31 nothing but uphold and seriously defend this system of deep inequality” (Richardson,
2015, p. 3).
These types of assumptions based on gendered “assignments” happen regardless of whether or not students do equally well with grades or on standardized tests. Sex-typing/stereotyping based on gender negatively affects self-esteem, especially in girls (Orenstein, 1995; Pipher, 1994) and self-esteem has been shown to be lowest in preadolescent and adolescent girls. Part of the (sex) gender stereotyping to which Richardson refers and of which Orenstein (1995) and Pipher (1994) chronicle in their books on adolescent girls is the belief that because (white) girls are more cooperative and more compliant, they do not need their teacher’s attention as much as boys do. It is these assumptions that lead to teachers giving boys more attention in class and therefore girls are not given the attention that they need and deserve. In
Richardson’s (2015) year long study measuring the amount of instructional minutes in which teachers paid attention to boys and girls, the results showed that boys received far more attention from a teacher than girls. For example, In a 3rd grade Language
Arts class, the average time spent giving attention to boys: 68 interactions lasting
1,916 sec. total = 28.66 sec. average/interaction. For girls: 37 interactions lasting 560 sec. total = 15.14 sec. average/interaction. As a result, boys received almost twice the teacher’s attention than the girls. In a 5th grade math class, the same disparity was observed: Boys: 28 interactions lasting 759 sec. total = 27.11 sec. average/interaction.
Girls: 18 interactions lasting 263 sec. total = 14.61 sec. average/interaction (see
Appendix B). This data is significant because teachers hold a lot of power in the
32 classroom and when a student receives more attention from a teacher, whether that attention is for positive behavior or negative behavior, that student will consider himself important. Most teachers focus disproportionate attention of students who are disclipline challenges, who are mostly often males, and frequently males work to garner teachers’ attention, while females wait their turn, which does not always come
(Sadker & Sadker, 1995).
In part, gender equity in education is the elimination of gender role stereotyping and gender bias “from the educational process, thus providing the opportunity and environment to validate and empower individuals as they make appropriate career and life choices.” (Hilke & Conway, 1994).
In 1990, the Association of American University Women (AAUW) created a nationwide study which set out to prove that schools systemically/systematically under-served girls when it comes to receiving an education in the K-12 schools. For example, the study showed that even though on a self-esteem index, girls start only a little bit lower in self-esteem than boys in elementary school (60% of girls stating they are happy the way they are versus 69% of boys saying the same thing), girls self esteem drops off dramatically by middle school and high school, falling to 29% of girls saying that they are happy the way they are compared to boys 46% (p. 11). The study documents/lists a variety of ways in which teachers favor boys and this favoritism exacerbates girls’ diminished self esteem:
• “Teachers initiate more communication with males than with females
in the classroom, strengthening boys' sense of importance.
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• Teachers ask boys more complex, abstract, and open-ended questions,
providing better opportunities for active learning.
• In class projects and assignments, teachers are more likely to give
detailed instructions to boys and more likely to take over and finish the
task for girls, depriving them of active learning.
• Boys are praised more often than girls for the intellectual con-tent and
quality of their work, while girls are praised more of-ten for neatness
and form.
• When teachers criticize boys, they often tell them that their failings are
due to lack of effort. Girls are not given this message, suggesting that
effort would not improve their results” (pp. 19-20).
In other words, female students receive both overt and covert messages that their contributions, academic abilities and emotional needs are not as important or valuable as those of their male counterparts (Love, Owens, & Smothers, 2003). While researchers can point to improvements in our educational systems towards gender equity that have been made over the years, these improvements have been incremental and slow (Fredrickson, 2004; Fry, 2003; Sadker & Zittleman, 2009) and “gender inequity is firmly entrenched in America’s schools” (Fry, 2003, p. 11), as evidenced by how students are treated differently by their teacher based on students’ gender in the classroom. As documented extensively by Sadker and Sadker (1980’s- 2000’s), not only do females and males have unequal experiences in how they are treated in a classroom, but also they are unequally represented in textbooks and curriculums, with
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White men and men of color’s esperiences dominating the pages in the form of text, photos, maps and timelines.
Gender Inequity in History Textbooks
There are studies conducted over the past 30 years regarding the lack of equal representation of women in public school education in general and in American high school history classes in particular and its impact on girls’ self esteem (Coughlin,
2007; Schmidt, 2012). Sexism and gender oppression in schools create an atmosphere of sexist oppression and perpetuates an illusion that the only historical record that matters is that which is created by men.
From the very beginnings of formal education in this country, White women and women of color women have been and continue to be underrepresented in textbooks and state sanctioned curriculum (Chick, 2006; Tetreault; 1986). For approximately 14 years of a young person’s life, education is compulsory in the
United States. Additionally, textbooks and curriculum that is male centric and the socialization of girls in traditional feminine roles contribute to low self-esteem in female students (Digiovanni, 2005). Gender bias, sex-typing and gender oppression in classrooms, coupled with the marginalization of White women and Women of color in textbook across the curriculum severely inhibits gender equity in education. One place where the marginalization of women is most stark is in the high school social studies textbooks.
As Digiovanni (2005) states, “by over-emphasizing the role of males, the curriculum cultivates the message that women are not as important or as worthy as
35 men” (p. 124). The exclusion and marginalization of women in the visible curriculum, which refers to textbooks and other materials used in the classroom that support sexist practices, “influence (negative) unconscious self-schemas that are reinforced over time” (Rios, Stewart, & Winter, 2010).
In 2005, a study of gender balance in elementary school, middle school and high school American history textbooks was conducted (Chick, 2005). All three textbooks were from a different textbook publisher. Textbooks from the second grade, eighth grade and 11th grade were included in the study. A content analysis was performed for each textbook. The index of each text was used for data collection purposes and in the main text each male and female was only counted once (p. 286).
The number of males and females in each text was calculated. The results of the gender count in all three textbooks show gender imbalances in favor of men. Even though the number of females increased from each grade level: 58 females in second grade text, 103 females in the middle school text and 113 in the high school text (p.
287), the number of males in each textbook increased too. In fact, the biggest ratio increase across the grades is in the 11th grade textbook in which the number of males to females is 726:113. In addition, in all three textbooks, there were significantly more illustrations of males than of females. In the elementary, middle school and high school history text, the ratio of male to female illustrations was 89:31, 185:53, and
185:46 respectively. The implications of these statistics are clear: men’s lives and men’s accomplishments in politics and in historical settings are believed to be more important than women and their lives and accomplishments. In a classroom setting, in
36 a textbook that is approved by state mandate that contains an overwhelming majority of text, indexes and illustrations that feature men and marginalize white women and women and men of color are making a clear statement, that “this continual presence of males as the authors of great literature; leaders of world politics and commerce; great scientists, inventors, and mathematicians serves to reinforce the idea that boys are
“capable of great things” while simultaneously reinforcing the impression that women
(and people of color) have done nothing of much worth and that girls are not capable of doing much of great worth” (Digiovanni, 2005, p. 125).
Feminist Pedagogy in the Classroom
The process of education can serve two purposes, to maintain the status quo or to continually push for collective liberation (Bennet & Bryson, 2003, p. 132).
For as many teachers who commit themselves to feminist teaching strategies, one will find almost as many approaches to such a practice. There are a variety of methods that would qualify as feminist best practices, many of which have been adopted as just “best practices” without a specific focus on gender in the classroom and gender in curriculum and textbooks. For example, there is research on sex-typing and on sex-role stereotyping, however, “little has been done to bring theories of teaching and learning together with a heightened consciousness of gender” (Culley &
Portuges, 2013, p. 3). So, although it is safe to say that there is not one right way to teach in a “feminist” manner, there is a certain well of information from which most feminist pedagogical practices spring.
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In feminist teaching and analyzing classroom texts through a feminist lens, there needs to be a focus on how to foster an environment that empowers students to become critical thinkers within the context of both how their teachers teach and what their teachers present to them both in their textbooks and the curriculum and daily lesson plans (Fry, 2003). As Cook-Sather (2006) explains,
When students have opportunities to construct their learning and themselves
and have the opportunity to develop a metacognitive awareness of their
learning both in order to not only engage with adults but to share their
experiences and insights with the adults with whom they work about their
learning experiences and needs, they construct themselves anew—they
translate themselves into new versions of those selves. (p. 361)
Much of feminist critical pedagogy and best practices for feminist teaching has its roots in critical pedagogy, founded by Paolo Freire (1993). Freire (1993) states,
The problem-solving educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the
reflection of the students. The students – no longer docile listeners – are now
critical co-investigators in dialogue with their teacher. The teacher presents
the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier
considerations as the students express their own. (p. 80)
Practicing critical reading and thinking skills that question the dominant cultural and political perspective, benefits all people- those who are marginalized and those who are more overtly represented in textbooks and school curriculum. One way to insure the practice of critical thinking skills and to broaden students’ understanding
38 is to insure that students talk and create with one another in the classroom. In a feminist classroom, collaboration and dialogue amongst students must be consistently fostered” (Chick & Hassel, 2009; Duncan & Stasio, 2001).
A feminist classroom is an environment where students work together to design group activities that demonstrate an awareness of race, class, and gender dynamics that permeate the larger society. Yet, according to Chick (2005) and Maher and Tetreault (2001) the change that needs to happen on a large scale, in the form of gender equitable textbooks and state sanctioned curriculum has been painstakingly slow and insufficient.
Given that change on an educational and institutional level is slow, and given that the creation of textbooks are corporate/business driven and based on the needs of state standardized testing and not on the social and equitable needs of the people for whom the materials are created, the driving question becomes, “how do we create opportunities for students to understand how and why the social studies education they receive does not better represent an accurate and equitable mirror of their lives and the lives of their ancestors?” One answer is to create opportunities for critical thinking in which students analyze their textbooks and state sanctioned curriculum as a way to both see that there are multiple perspectives on any given school subject and to then to have students generate meaningful questions regarding what is missing in textbooks and why is it important to notice an imbalance in the first place. With this pedagogical approach, students have the opportunity to develop their own learning schemas that will encourage and empower them even within a seemingly restrictive
39 educational setting that doesn’t necessarily reward critical or independent thinking.
One way to follow the non-traditional, feminist approach through teaching is to support students to become resistant readers.
Becoming a “resistant reader” (Alvermann & Commeyras, 1996) is one such way to defy the gender bias and oppression in high school history textbooks.
According to Alvermann & Commeyras (1996), learning how to look for subtexts in history textbooks and thus explore the ways in which women are marginalized within those texts “helps students deal with age-old myths surrounding the dominance of men in relation to women” (p. 46). It is important to engage students in critical discussions of what they have read in their assigned history texts. Reading critically gives students the opportunity to question their position in relation to the history that they are being told is the “important” history to learn. Once students are allowed to practice critical and resistant reading of texts, they are empowered to discern and decide where they may or may not fit into the historical canon. When their location, or lack thereof, is exposed, students are given the opportunity to critically think about their education. Critically thinking about one’s education is feminist and empowering.
In other words, a feminist pedagogy in the classroom creates a receptive classroom and learning experience for all students- especially women and society’s potentially marginalized students (Bennet & Bryson, 2003).
The core of feminist pedagogy is where “the learning process is as important as the content and may alter the primary daily agenda of the teacher for incorporation of the learner’s voice or perspective” (Bennet & Bryson, 2003, p. 133). In other words,
40 feminist pedagogy by design is to be flexible and responsive to student’s needs and realities. Even though it has already been stated that there are as many approaches to feminist pedagogy as there are feminist teachers, the following is a description of three basic tenets of a well rounded, feminist classroom when taking into consideration both the content and form of everyday classroom life from a feminist perspective.
Gathered from a variety of readings, the following is a summation of the core tenets associated with feminist best practices in the classroom:
1. Empowerment. Power is a crucial part of creating a creative learning
community. In a feminist pedagogy, however, power is defined not as
domination, but as “energy, capacity and potential.” Power is the glue that
holds the community. Rather than limiting power (as in an understanding of
power as domination), in a feminist classroom “the goal is to increase the
power of all actors.” A sense of power is crucial to students’ development and
learning.
2. Community. The feminist classroom cultivates a sense of mutuality,
connection and care in which decision making ... can take place by the
consensus process as well as by formalized decision rules. Students share a
sense of responsibility for the learning of others, not just their own.
3. Leadership. Developing leadership is an important part of the liberatory goals
of a feminist classroom. Students gain leadership skills through responsible
participation in developing aspects of the course. The feminist teacher serves
as role model and helps members of the class develop a community, a sense of
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shared purpose, a set of skills for accomplishing that purpose, and the
leadership skills so that teacher and students may jointly proceed on those
tasks (Fry, 2003; Shrewsbury, 1997; Tetretault & Maher, 2001).
Feminist Pedagogy in a High School History Class
As a feminist teacher in a history classroom, a teacher has a responsibility to raise consciousness about gender injustice, sexism and social change. It is vital to privilege student voices and to foster collaboration, cooperation and community. In addition, feminist pedagogical practices aim to transform teacher-student relations in regards to authority and student empowerment and it demands the ethics of care
(Duncan & Stasio, 2001). Ultimately, a feminist teacher has a responsibility to introduce to students a new way of seeing and critically analyzing both the teaching methods and materials chosen for classroom study.
As an introduction to a new way of thinking critically, the teacher’s job is to encourage the students not only to understand the words and pictures on the page, but also understand, “the unstated dominant ideologies hidden between the sentences as well” (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 16). One way to create awareness about the message of the unstated dominant ideologies (or the hidden curriculum) is by shedding light on what is missing in the history textbooks. By exposing students to histories that are not represented as important (by the fact of omission) and allowing students to come to their own conclusions about why certain people and events are omitted and other people and events are included, is the beginning of understanding inequality, patriarchy and oppression of women. This unveiling creates an atmosphere in the
42 classroom in which students can begin to see and understanding the societal power structures that affect student’s lives in modern times. Beginning to think critically about how history is presented and who/what is considered important in history is integral to developing a more empowering stance regarding how one’s sees one’s place in the world,
In essence, gender bias in schoolbooks is “hidden in plain sight.” Their
stereotypes of males and females are camouflaged by the taken-for-granted
system of gender stratification and roles and this constrains girls and boys’
visions of who they are and what they can become. (Blumberg, 2009, p. 346)
Conclusion
Within classrooms, cultivating humanity and celebrating diversity require attention both to individual and to collective development. A teaching approach that includes non sexist practices is a viable pathway toward that end. Individually, students are most engaged and successful when academic knowledge and skills are situated within their lived experiences and frames of reference and thus are more easily relatable to their own everyday lives. Feminist pedagogy, when practiced consciously and diligently, demands and thereby achieves a transformative and ultimately more humanitarian approach to the practice of teaching.
From the beginning of formalized public education in the United States, educational philosophers and theorists have questioned the efficacy of one of the greatest social experiments in a democratic country: educating the masses. Not only have academics questioned how best to educate the masses, but also, a select few have
43 attempted to influence how and what information is diseminated. An even smaller cadre of academics have taken up the task of questioning the sexist (and racist) practices in public school education. Sexism, researched and observed in teaching practices, textbook content and the hidden curriculum, runs rampant in our public schools. Although two such philosophers/educational theorists, Emile Durkheim and bell hooks lived more than 100 years apart and were different genders, they both espoused the same belief: the educational system is merely a reflection of the greater social order and therefore the social order (the politics of domination) must be challenged and changed. Educational policies imitate societal structures. Therefore, as long as we live in a sexist society, our educational system, writ large, will remain be replete with sexist practices and materials.
However, there is hope. According to most feminist theorists and educators, teachers and students need to be engaged with feminist practices in the classroom and remain vigilant regarding what they see and hear that may signal sexism and the marginalization of women’s experiences in the classroom and the way to do this is to create a safe space in the classroom wherein students feel safe to speak up and name sexist practices and the teachers needs to be willing and able to show students how and why certain practices are in fact sexist. By doing so, teachers give students the opportunity throughout a school year to develop the metacognitive awareness of their own learning and thus become feminist, critical coinvestigators in their own learning and therefore construct themselves anew.
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Chapter 3
METHODOLOGY
As girls study Western civilization, they become increasingly aware that
history is the history of men. History is His Story, the story of MANkind
(Pipher, 1994, p. 40).
Introduction and Overview
One of the most effective ways to empower students and to encourage critical thinking/questioning of dominant institutions such as the monolithic state and federal educational system is to create a classroom environment of respect for individual thought and dissenting opinions. When planning for a year of teaching, textbooks and educational supplemental materials available to teachers can be useful and even necessary. Conversely, when an educator is seeking a more liberating (hooks, 1994), nontraditional educational experience for her students, these same materials can seem anachronistic. In order to be an engaged (hooks, 1994), feminist educator, it is vital to evaluate and analyze the teaching materials in order to make the most informed and egalitarian choices for what is best in her classroom, both materially and for setting the tone of the classroom environment. It is these choices that shape her own values as an educator and crystallize how she will create a more egalitarian space in her classroom and within her area of educational expertise.
Throughout Chapters 3 and 4, I will use the female pronoun ‘she’ when referring to the teachers. This is a deliberate choice. As of 2012, 76% of teachers are
45 female (http://nces.ed.gov). Of course, it is possible that a male teacher can be both a feminist and a teacher who wants to foster a feminist environment and carry the responsibility/goal of creating a classroom that is free of gender bias and gender oppression. I am choosing to use the female ‘she’ as a way to counter balance the way in which the pronoun ‘he’ is used historically to represent both genders even though the use of ‘he’ is exclusionary.
Most social studies classes have a required history textbook. If a teacher is dedicated to creating an environment of inclusivity and gender equality, and if she is determined to have her pedagogical approach be consistently represented through a feminist lens, she must have a (deep) understanding of the material with which she is required to work. Additionally, if she chooses to utilize a unit plan which is not part of the state’s mandated texts, how will she decide not only what to use but how to use it? In the following chapter, from a feminist pedagogical perspective, I will both guide and demonstrate how an educator might effectively determine the usefulness
(effectiveness) of a required textbook and curriculum chosen from a teacher’s online source.
This chapter’s purpose has three distinct parts. First, I will present the origins through which I came to believe there is a need for a more feminist pedagogical based integrated approach to high school social studies classes. Second, using the key components of a gender-focused analysis tool (see Appendix, Handout A), I will examine a part of the American history textbook chapter to explore/expose the focus on white men and the marginalization of white women and women of color. The
46 analysis will reveal the need for supplemental material in order to create a more gender-balanced approach to high school history lesson materials. Third, I will write an overview of how I developed a critical feminist lesson plan unit that could be adapted for any high school history course.
Part I: Why Feminist Perspective in High School History
The unit plan was created for a specific student demographic. My boy/girl twins are high school juniors at a Project Based Learning charter school. Even though their history and English teachers are young and female, the history and
English courses are still very traditionally taught and textbook-focused. I was inspired to write the proposed project for students who are in an 11th grade honors history class and therefore taking the course for honors credit. Honors credit means that each grade received gets a grade bump to the next highest ranking. For example, a B grade for an honors history course receives an A on a student’s transcript. Students do not receive college credit for an honors class. Other assumptions include a willingness on the part of the teacher to temporarily abandon his/her set lesson plans that might seem more conventionally aligned with the traditional set curriculum and common core standards in service of students developing a deeply critical view of current history textbooks and the way in which conventional and established notions of history are both sanctioned and disseminated. In doing so, the hope is that all students will feel more included in the educational process.
As I mentioned, I have 17 year-old boy/girl twins. As juniors they were required to take an American History course this year. As a feminist educator, I am
47 curious not only about what my kids’ textbooks are attempting to teach but also, what kinds of perspectives their teachers bring to their subject matter. In other words, I am primed to discover the possible gender bias and gender oppression in my kids’ classes.
One thing that I consistently noticed throughout the three years of my kids’ high school experience, is my daughter’s growing sense of frustration and disinterest in
American and World History. It is not difficult to understand why. The focus of these courses is disproportionally heavy on war and presidents. A male centered approach to history is nothing new in our patriarchal society and by extension, the American educational system. However, it is disheartening to witness the negative affects of such a male centered curriculum so up close and personal. It is from this perspective that I decided that my master’s project would be to create a more feminist centered approach to a social studies unit of study.
Part II: Gender Analysis of an 11th Grade High School History Textbook.
Textbook Analysis
Using a gender-focused evaluative tool (see Appendix, Handout A), I will examine The American Experience, an 11th grade history textbook used in several
California school districts. The subsection that I will be analyzing is the first of a longer chapter that focuses on WWII. The subsection is chosen as a model since history during wartime tends to be male focused but the evaluative tool is useful for any text and any subject.
The evaluation tool from a gender perspective (n.d.) (Appendix, Handout A) is divided into five sections: (a) Identification Data, (b) Content and Visual Analysis, (c)
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Total Number of Characters in Content and Visuals, (d) Exercises/Projects/Activities, and (e), Overall Evaluation of the Textbook Related to Content and Visual Portrayal.
While it is not necessary to use every prompt from the analysis tool, it is still important to have access to it in full because each textbook and curriculum analysis created from a gender perspective will have different aspects with which one’s focus is needed.
I created a data table that I will use in conjunction with the evaluation tool. In order to use the tool most effectively, I recommend becoming familiar with each section. One way that the teacher can become familiar with each section is to review the topic headings and thus establish a solid idea of what information one is looking for when examining the textbook How you may best use it will depend on a few factors: the scope of your artifact, the amount of time given for the analysis and the goals you have set to achieve with the analysis project. I chose to use the tool while keeping the student in mind since I knew that I wanted the student to eventually use the same tool that I was using for analysis. Therefore, I kept it simple and straighforward with the intention of making it readable enough for an 11th grade student to understand the material and eventually be able to do a similar analysis herself.
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Table 1
History Textbook Data
A) Identification Data Month and Year of Publication: 2006 Authors: Title of textbook: Female: 1 The American Experience: Modern Male: 4 Times
Subject Matter: United States History from 1776-2003
Additional Authors and Contributors: On the inside there are ‘contributing authors of which there are 5 males and 3 females. In addition, there are 14 ‘academic consultants’ listed under the authors. Only four are women.
Content Analysis Continued: Title of Chapter- Mobilizing for War. Pages 572-578.
Main idea: The first three written pages of this chapter are told in story form. The story centers on the American president’s concern/reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The focus is on mobilizing industry and how to best prepare America for entering the war. Women are mentioned only marginally throughout the section. The call to industries was to stop the making of peace time goods and begin the manufacturing of war time goods such as bombs and war time vehicles such as trucks, jeeps and tanks. The only mention of women (one woman) in these pages is a quick reference to Eleanor Roosevelt in a side bar story regarding her observations of the president when he was informed about the Pearl Harbor attack.
B) Visual Analysis: Representation of Men and Women: Mobilizing for War.
I. There are a total of six photographs in the chapter. Five are of males and one has female soldiers. In the photograph of the female soldiers, they are standing at attention in a line as a commander walks through the line as if on inspection duty. Apart from the fact that it is the only photograph of women in the section, there are two things to point out as well. One is that even though the caption states, “women pilots,” women were not allowed to fly in the war itself. The question at the end of the explanatory captions states, “Why do you think the army refused to allow women to fly in combat?” In addition, there is a female cartoon character in the bottom right corner of the photograph. The cartoon character has breasts drawn on the uniform and she has wings on her back as though she is flying in the air as an angel. Adding the cartoon creates an atmosphere of childishness that belies the seriousness with which the
50 women in the army took their jobs in choosing to serve their nation.
II/V/VI: In addition, as stated previously, the women are standing at attention, in formation, waiting to be inspected by their commanding officer. In other words, they are standing passively, facing away from the camera. By contrast, in the one photograph of black men in the section on page 577, the men are in a huddle, with the camera angle as such so that they are looking down and to the right of the camera -- as if to a quarterback, awaiting instructions for the next play. Below, where they are focused is a man who appears to be their commanding officer. It is as though they are about to go on a mission and they are listening, waiting to be told what to do next. They have all their gear on, ready to serve for their next assignment. In other words, they are actively waiting, not passively waiting.
C) Total Number of Men in visuals and content: 17 Total Number of Women in visuals and content: 5
Concluding Observations: The“Mobilizing for War” chapter attempts to present itself as gender inclusive (by including women at all, I suppose), but it falls dramatically short of that goal. With the mention of only one woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, in a side bar story and then with the sidelined, single photograph of female pilots, complete with an accompanying cartoon character included, there is no genuine attempt to fully integrate women’s contributions to the building up of the war effort.
The content and visual analysis demonstrates that women and women’s contributions to the war effort, are marginalized and fragmented. This is important because, Sadker and Zittleman cite research stating, “that students spend as much as 80 to 95% of classroom time using textbooks and that teachers make a majority of their instructional decisions based on the textbook” (2007, p. 144).
On page 578 at the bottom, there is a “Section 1 Assessment.” There are three categories: Checking for understanding, critical thinking, and analyzing visuals. None of category includes any thing about women or women’s contribution in the mobilization effort. In a text box on the bottom right, there is an assignment entitled, Writing about History. It states, “Take on the role of a draftee who has just completed the first week of basic training. Write a letter to your parents telling them about basic training and what you hope to accomplish once the training is over.”
There is one section consisting of two small paragraphs, near the one photograph of female pilots. It explains that women did join the armed forces but it was in an auxiliary corps, not part of the regular army.
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After analyzing the textbook, it was very easy to feel discouraged about the state of affairs regarding the modern 11th grade high school history classroom. I believe that it is a feminist act to simply utilize a variety of sources when teaching students about any given subject. Creating a feminist classroom is in large part about bringing forth multiple perspectives on any given subject and allowing students to develop their own thoughts and theories regarding that subject. In other words,
“feminist pedagogy is distinct in their encouragement of individual conclusions combined with a mutual respect for disagreeing conclusions from other students, or perhaps just an understanding of all other conclusions with no personal conclusion drawn” (What is Feminist Pedagogy? n.d.).
PART III: Lesson Plans. Lessons 1-4
The results of the gender analysis of a selected chapter in The American
Experience high history textbook confirms what the academic feminist community has made clear before me: American history textbooks consistently, through a variety of methods, under report and marginalize the value of women’s historical experiences and contributions in the social studies. I saw a need and an opportunity to create lesson plans that might shed light on the invisibility of women in history textbooks and in doing so help female and male students discover for themselves the sexist structures in our society and educational structures that keep all genders oppressed and uninformed.
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In my literature review section, chapter two of this project, I began with an overview of gender equity in society then narrowed the view to gender equity in education then further narrowed the perspective to gender equity in high school history textbooks. The lesson plan unit takes on a similar structure. The structure of the lesson plan unit over all is split: lessons one through four focus on a more general feminist perspective by introducing the notions of status quo, sexism, stereotyping and marginalization of women and women’s accomplishments in our patriarchal society; lessons five through seven focus specifically on these same concepts as they apply directly to The American Experience and its contents.
Most days, the unit plan will begin with a journal prompt. The journal prompt will ask the students to either reflect on something that was done in class in the days before, or will have students access and address previous knowledge and personal experience regarding the themes of patriarchy and sexist oppression. Daily writing through a feminist critical lens empowers students to take control of their own learning/education by expressing and cataloguing their thoughts regarding what they are asked to study. Much of feminist pedagogy, especially with older high school students, is about empowering students to come to their own conclusions about their personal lives and the social and political climates within which they must live, adapt, and want to change for the better. In order to come to their own conclusions, they must be given the opportunity to learn alternative critical perspectives. In addition, a feminist teacher honors the students’ previous knowledge that is based on their life experiences.
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Even though lesson one is long (can last up to three days if taught in full), and that can seem overwhelming, it is important to visualize and present it to the class as one thematic lesson that lasts up to three days. Each part builds on the next and when taken as a whole, the teacher can be assured that the students get the full value of each component and will confidently move into the rest of the lesson.
Lesson 1: Maintaining the Status Quo
As the opening hook for the lesson plan unit, I chose a musical clip from High
School Musical entitled, “Stick with the Status Quo.” Status Quo is the first vocabulary word that will shape the lesson plan unit as a whole and represents the high school history textbook’s position from a feminist perspective. A “hook” is an opening strategy that prepares the student for the upcoming lessons in an engaging and memorable way. The best way to do this is to play into the individuals’ personal filing cabinets, their long-term memory. The hook strategy works by presenting something that the student can relate to, something that will grasp their attention. Then ideally, the student will be able to relate the hook to the new information, making it easily accessible in their filing cabinet (Technique 12, n.d.). By using the “hook” strategy, I pull on both parts of the memory process, thus grasping the students attention and giving them something to use through meaningful learning (taking new information and relating it to something they already know). Students learn best when things are meaningful and taught in a visual way.
In addition to the “hook” as a strategy, integrating media and teaching media literacy skills is an effective way of engaging students in any subject matter. Media
54 literacy is the teaching of critical thinking skills when watching/experiencing all types of media. Added to the “hook” effect, it is an entry point for teens to think and talk about social issues. Beginning with and incorporating popular culture references not only creates a more student centered perspective because of the modern pervasiveness of media in teenagers everyday lives, but also introduces the process of engaging one’s critical eye when analyzing content which is tantamount to feminist critical thought. The skills used in analyzing the music video can be transferred more readily to written texts that might be more challenging to analyze.
In an entertaining and effective way, the video “Stick with the Status” demonstrates how everyone is pressured to maintain the status quo and shows how sexism and stereotyping hurts all genders, not just women. When working with high school students, it is important to be sensitive to how teenagers developmentally are getting better at noticing and commenting on their own status within society’s structural social and cultural barriers; the teacher does not want to give the impression that she “knows” how the students are or are not “oppressed.” In a feminist classroom, it is vital to expose students to potential new concepts and information to students, such as the video in this lesson, then ask the students how they perceive and process that information, letting them come to their own conclusions.
Once the students have the opportunity to dialogue and shape their thoughts and feelings around the concept of ‘maintaining the status quo,’ they will have the opportunity to spend time on their own putting their ideas down on paper by creating a list of costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo. The exercise will need some
55 critical thinking scaffolding in that the “benefits” of the status quo are not immediately visible because no one, especially teenagers, want to be told what they are allowed or not allowed to do. Encourage the students to think bigger here -- how keeping people in stereotyped positions might be “good” for an orderly society from the perspective of administrators of a school or the govenment. After creating a list of costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo of the dominant culture, the students will do a
“think, pair, share” exercise. “Think, pair, share” is a teaching technique that is essential in a feminist classroom (see last section in Chapter 2 for more information).
It will be used throughout the unit. It gives students the opportunity to spend time with their own thoughts (in this case, by writing the list of costs and benefits), the chance to then share their independent thoughts and then work collaboratively to present their shared thoughts with the class. “Think, pair, share,” is integral to a feminist classroom because it supports students not only as independent learners who have a lot of background knowledge based on their own experiences and intellect, but also as people who have valuable information to share with others. Whatever the students come up with as answers, the teacher will get train herself throughout the unit plan to ask questions that begin with why and how. These are referred to as open- ended questions and in feminist critical pedagogy, they are an essential component of eliciting critical thought. In doing so as often as possible, the teacher will encourage the students to go deeper into questioning dominant institutionalized patriarchal structures and will train herself to not inject her own opinion into the mix of the class discussions. A vital part of a feminist classroom intellectual environment is to nurture
56 student’s intellectual development. Because of a teacher’s power in a classroom, she can unduly influence students’ thinking if she spends too much time and that in turn will undermine her educational mission.
Lesson 2 Part 1
Written historical records, in the form of state adopted textbooks that high school students are required to learn and believe as true, are powerful tools for guiding and shaping young people’s views. To counter and question the historical traditional, a feminist educator has an obligation to give students the background knowledge needed to begin to question the dominant paradigm from a non-traditional perspective.
Thus, weaving in the word mapping and running vocabulary lists is important to do at the outset (after the hook). In other words, in order to increase critical thinking skills, students have to have the vocabulary with which to critique what they are reading.
With the “hook”, the unit begins with a “light” way of introducing the first critical word, status quo. By this point in the lesson, students will have watched the video, dialogued with a desk mate about their journal prompts, and had the opportunity to hear other students’ thoughts about the pressures and the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo. Now, it is time to move forward, and introduce the vocabulary list and word mapping.
The vocabulary list and the word mapping of each word are both the centerpiece and building blocks of the unit. Word mapping gives students the opportunity to go deeper into word meaning and etymology thereby creating the context for feminist critical thinking regarding the teaching of American history and
57 its impact/influence on maintaining the status quo. The introduction of word mapping and what it is used for throughout the unit has secondary purpose: scaffolding.
Scaffolding is a technique used to support students as they learn new skills. As they build up those new skills, the teacher slowly takes away the step-by-step process built into each lesson. As the students show progress and proficiency, the teacher takes down the scaffolding as needed, with the goal being that with enough practice the students will soon be able to do the activity on their own. There are a variety of ways for teachers to create the necessary scaffolding for students as the foundations for learning new materials appear.
A think aloud demonstration is an effective scaffolding teaching strategy that gives students the opportunity to learn through both visual and auditory learning styles. The teacher will use a think aloud demonstration and take students step by step through the word mapping technique. Students will observe (ideally with the use of a document camera) and listen while the teacher thinks aloud as she goes through the word map step by step. It is important to “think aloud” all the details that the teacher wants the students to think about and focus on. The teacher can invite the students to answer for her as she “pretends” not to know something, too. I get a big laugh when I allow my thoughts to go off track too (and this helps insure that the students are following) so in the middle I will start to think aloud, “Oh man, did I leave the straightening iron on this morning?” “I can’t wait to watch the new Gilmore Girls that they finally made for Netflix!” or “I really hope my husband makes dinner tonight for all of us...” And then I will get back to the exercise with “OK, I have to get this dumb
58 word mapping finished so I can get a good grade and get into college!” OK, you get the idea.
The popcorn exercise, in which one student shares a thought or a fact and then those students will chose the next student to share is a good choice for this next exercise. The students know to only choose other students who voluntarily raise their hand. After a few minutes of students sharing what they learned from their analysis, the teacher will ask them to continue the popcorn sharing by stating what other students already shared. This is an important technique to remember to come back to and utilize often for a few reasons. One, it encourages students to use their active listening skills since they know they might be called upon to restate what someone else has said. Two, it helps students develop empathetic listening skills which is tantamount to nurturing a true feminist classroom environment in which each person’s perspective and opinion is respected even if someone disagrees. Having to repeat back what someone else has said gives students the practice in listening without judgment. This is an activity, in part, to introduce the concept of marginalization that will be the first word that the students will analyze and add to the running vocabulary list for the unit plan. This exercise represents what might be considered rote and/or traditional learning and it needs to be acknowledged that even in the best, most advanced feminist classroom environment, sometimes this is going to be necessary and even encouraged. There are only so many ways that new vocabulary words can be taught/learned. Hopefully, because the words that are introduced in the unit plan are contextualized and therefore the students will be invited to use them as they
59 continue to learn new concepts, this will enhance the learning process and make it less mechanical.
In order to build a more thorough understanding of patriarchal structures from a feminist perspective, students need appropriate vocabulary through which to most articulately express what they are thinking and learning.
Once the think aloud exercise in complete, each student will receive a word map. The teacher will give the students a couple of minutes to look over the documents and ask any clarifying questions. Here, it might be a good idea to give the students the choice of whether to work together or individually, at least for the first word, “status quo.” Most of the word mapping will be completed as homework.
Creating choice in the classroom gives the students the opportunity to take genuine control and responsibility over their own learning process.
Lesson 2 Part 2: Powerpoint on Gender Inequality in United States/Perception
Reviser
A visual presentation in the form of a Powerpoint on gender inequality facts/statistics in America engages the students visually and builds upon their previous knowledge, not only from their life experiences but also from what they have learned thus far in the lesson plan unit. I have included one Powerpoint presentation that I found informative, updated and accurate for the 2000s. This section is more direct teaching which might be considered too traditional for a classroom purporting feminist views; however, sometimes traditional forms of teaching in the form of mini lectures, note taking and straightforward memorization and regurgitation of facts must be
60 integrated into the classroom structures. Students need facts and figures to be able to make cogent arguments to engage in informed, intelligent discussions. Even though I am providing the entire Powerpoint of 56 slides, I have previewed and focused on six slides: #s 5, 6, 12, 12, 18, and 33. These six slides provide ample opportunities for discussion. The slides present facts and figures about gender equality. Students should take notes on each slide. For scaffolding regarding note taking, the teacher can display the follow up handout called the “perception reviser” in which students will be dialoguing about their previously perceived notions about gender inequality and compare their thoughts/beliefs with the facts. Each one of the perceptions on the handout should match one slide. For example, I will chose six slides: numbers
5,6,12,18, 26 and 33. The teacher can have six “perception reviser” handouts for each slide. Before showing each slide, the teacher can ask the students to fill out their perception of the subject of that slide. Then the teacher will show the slide, talk about the facts that the slide is presenting while the students take notes. After each slide and each “perception reviser” first part is filled out, then the students can go back to each handout correlated with each slide and fill out the second part of the handout that asks the students to identify the facts for that specific slide.
Students will engage with other students about their perceptions regarding the
Powerpoint presentation on gender inequality using the “think, pair, share.”
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Figure 1. Think, Pair, Share.
As illustrated above, Think, pair, share is a collaborative learning strategy in which students think about a subject on their own, then pair with another student, then they share their finding with one another. Students share their thoughts aloud about any given subject as a way of synthesizing newly formed ideas from any given assignment. This quick exercise works on a variety of levels: it gives less talkative students an opportunity to share ideas, it increases the energy of the classroom with everyone talking at once in small groups, and it creates an opportunity for students to learn from one another. Possible prompts for the teacher to ask students to encourage further thought: How did you learn to believe/understand your perceptions of gender inequality? How do people learn about equality in this country?
Lesson 3: What Does a Feminist Look Like?
I chose this lesson in order to move toward the demystification and dismantling of what it means to be a feminist and supporter of gender equality and
62 social justice in America. No small task, especially with high school students. But what a wonderful opportunity to open up students’ minds to the importance of issues that affects and oppresses us all.
One thing that seems to be true about juniors in high school is they have some interesting, funny and sometimes scary preconceived ideas about what they think they know and it is no exception when it comes to students’ beliefs about feminism and feminists. Therefore, I thought it was critical to help students come to their own conclusions and correct definitions before they decide where they stand on the issues of social justice and gender equality. Dismantling the stereotypes of feminism and feminists is challenging but doable and absolutely necessary.
“Anatomy of a feminist,” directly challenges students’ preconceived notions about feminism and feminist but in a low stakes, no pressure way. When a teacher is challenging ideas that teenagers might have about a subject, it is important to do so in a non-confrontational way. First, having students work in pairs reduces the risk of embarrassment and thus helps to create a safe environment. Second, a student’s ideas and beliefs about what a feminist might “look” like can be both “checked” by the partner and called into question in a gentle and yet challenging way. Third, students can negotiate with one another on beliefs and ideas and come up with descriptors that are derived through consensus, thus creating a collaborative and supportive environment, which in turn is a feminist one. By the time the pairs get to the second part in which they are asked to revise their initial findings of what the “anatomy of a feminist looks like,” they will feel comfortable enough to do so. In addition, this
63 lesson helps set the stage for the following lesson. Lesson 3 purposely focuses on the individual as a stereotype and might seemingly pit males against females in an imagined “feminist world.” Lesson 4 broadens the scope and demonstrates how stereotyping and se negatively affects everyone, regarding of where one identifies on the gender spectrum.
Lesson 4: Gender Stereotyping Versus Institutionalized Discrimination
At this point in the unit, the students have been dialoguing, writing and learning both in groups and on their own. By this time, they have some new experience with the vocabulary and the thought processes that are part of understanding this social justice canon, as it pertains specifically to feminism and the need for gender equality. At this point in the program, the assumption is that the students are well trained and mature enough to both see the world around them from others’ perspectives and be able to complete a lesson that requires the students to move about the room according to specific directions. Lesson 4 is at the center of the program and integrates a variety of feminist and progressive teaching methods.
Because of the way our social systems are set up: capitalistic, patriarchal, racist, and sexist, it seems inevitable that there are people who are either ‘above’ or
‘below’ one’s socioeconomic and ethnic positioning in our culture. Therefore, no matter what the background of a student, there is an opportunity to experience, in a simulated way, what it might or might not feel like to have ‘privileged status.’ Lesson
4 attempts to have students understand through movement and thought, what it might
64 be like to be a different person, a person of more or less privilege in the community.
As a teenager, this is a powerful way to experience ‘difference.’
The ‘gender continuum’ activity is an extended “into” activity. An effective into activity for this age group, is experiential in nature and takes as its starting point an activity in which students have to move toward the center of the room while in character, as they hear about certain scenarios that their character experiences. Below is a circular visual aid that demonstrates the circular affect of experiential learning.
The chart, from a website called TopHat, (tophat.com), reflects each stage that the students will experience when the teacher moves the students through numbers 3-6 on page 17 of the lesson plans. The abstract piece is the paper itself with the character on it. Parts one and two, active experimentation and concrete experience are folded in together as the students are asked to stand at the back of the room, listen to the prompts and move forward accordingly as they attempt to “walk in another’s shoes.”
It is active learning in which students are “able to pivot from concrete experience to a deeper understanding of subject matter.”
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Figure 2. TopHat.
Lesson 5: History is Written by the \Vvictors (Walter Benjamin)
This is the first lesson that delves directly into the analysis and critique of the textbook and the beginnings of questioning who in our society writes history and for what purpose. Up to this point in the unit, the students have had experience with individual focus on the new concepts introduced and dialoguing with one or two other classmates. It is now time for full engagement with a larger group. In a larger group, students will have the opportunity to both be heard by and listen to, a variety of students’ opinions. In feminist pedagogy, full critical engagement with others is an important part of the learning process. Students will take turns questioning one another. The intention in the “questioning circles” is to encourage the students to begin to think outside the confines of what they have been taught in the more traditional ways of thinking when it comes to the social studies curriculum in both
66 middle school and high school. The teacher wants the students to recognize that there are multiple perspectives in social studies and “how history is written” depends on who is doing the writing, and not just purely “objective,” factual information. For example, the majority of the perspectives that are introduced in history textbooks are about politics and war- two areas that are populated by men. Since we live in a patriarchal culture, these perspectives will dominate. They do not dominate because they are ‘objectively’ more important than other historical occurrences. It is this last point that is the most salient for an accurate (methodological) encapsulation of the lesson.
The hope is that some students will attempt to argue/debate this concept and the teacher (and other students, ideally) will provide evidence for students to contemplate and thus begin to examine their own perspective- not necessarily to change their belief system but at least to be open to questioning why they may believe what they believe about history up to this point in their education. The main point of questioning and creating safe space for critical thinking is to foster and make room for new ideas- not to try to convince students that their way is wrong and the teacher’s way (or other students’ way) is correct. It is worth noting here because any teacher who ventures into using these lesson plans will most likely have a strong opinion about feminist teaching and feminist perspectives on history which basically presupposes that social studies is the study of HIStory and that tokenism of white women and women of color is de facto in all textbooks.
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Lesson 6a : Visual Analysis of the Front Cover of the High School History
Textbook. Part 1
In today’s lesson, the teacher will introduce a new skill: visual analysis.
Visual analyses support the development of media literacy and feminist cultural criticism, both of which are key components of a modern feminist classroom in general, and part of my unit plan lessons in particular. Even in a feminist class environment where social constructivist learning is emphasized, sometimes, when introducing new information or asking students to complete a task they have yet to encounter, direct teaching is necessary. Direct teaching is when the teacher stands up in front of her students and teaches directly to the students as a way of introducing an unfamiliar skill (this is part of scaffolding as well). For instance, the traditional, teach-by-lecture dominated classroom is an extreme example of direct teaching.
Visual analysis is important to include in the lesson plans for two main reasons. First, visual representation in textbooks is one of the proven ways, through data analysis, in which students and teachers are “fooled” into believing that the textbooks are gender balanced (see Chick, 2005; Shrewsbury, 1997; Tetreault, 1986). Sometimes it is productive and instructive to have students complete a task without giving them too much information initially about the how and the why of that task. It is a valuable, authentic assessment tool for the teacher regarding what the students have absorbed so far regarding the lesson plans. Authentic assessment is a more non-traditional way of determining what a student is learning and how a student is progressing throughout a lesson unit (Authentic Assessment, n.d.). Up to this point in the lessons, it can be
68 expected that students are clued into a feminist perspective in so far as being able to see and determine whether or not women and people of color are included or excluded
(marginalized) in a text. What a teacher would be looking for at this point (especially after the initial visual analysis), is a student’s ability to determine.
Lesson 6b: Practical Application of What Students Learned
The teacher will lead a brief discussion about whether the students think the textbook will be equally representative of gender and ethnicity based on the cover.
After a few minutes of observations and writing down observations, it is up to the teacher to create a dynamic class dialogue in which the teacher challenges the students’ assumptions no matter what those assumptions may be. However, the assumptions will most likely be along the lines of thinking that there would probably be a lot of information in the textbook overall featuring women and people of color based on the initial visual analysis because on the cover of The American Experience white men, white women, women of color and men of color are represented in surprisingly equal proportions.
Next, the teacher will distribute an excerpt from the Sadker book on marginalization and fragmentation. The excerpt is a few pages long.
The teacher will have students read an assigned excerpt with a given small group, using a Jigsaw activity. The Jigsaw activity is a teaching strategy in which students are required to read one part of a longer text and then share their thoughts within their assigned group to make sure that they understand the assigned reading.
Once that is complete, one student from each group then joins one person from each of
69 the other groups so when in the new group, every section of the reading is represented by one person from each of the original groups.
Below, the tables are visual representations of the two stages of the Jigsaw configuration.
Each reading excerpt is broken into six groups. Each group has three to five students depending on class size: Each number represents one student.
Table 2
Jigsaw Configuration
Reading Excerpt 1 Reading Excerpt 2 Reading Excerpt 3
A, B, C, D, E A, B, C, D, E A, B, C, D, E
Reading Excerpt 4 Reading Excerpt 5 Reading Excerpt 6
A, B, C, D, E A, B, C, D, E A, B, C, D, E
Once students have completed the first assignment, teacher should give them time to practice with their group (those who have read the same assignment) explaining their excerpt so that they can get feedback as to the accuracy and understandability. This technique gives students a chance to lower their potential nervousness when presenting new material to others.
The next table represents a new group that is formed in which each new group member represents a different excerpt from the article.
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Table 3
Forming Groups in a Jigsaw Exercise
A’s B’s C’s D’s E’s F’s
Once the students are in their second groups, with each student representing a unique excerpt from the article, then each student will share, in order, (1, 2, 3, etc) their findings and opinions regarding the assigned reading. Teacher will give students a certain amount of time for each share. When last share is complete, the students, in their newly formed jigsaw group, will then apply what they have learned about fragmentation and marginalization in the context of gender bias in textbooks and apply it to their original visual analysis of the front cover of their history textbook in order to expand and deepen their original analysis. Some questions for the teacher to ask: How does your opinion change regarding who and what events might be explored in the textbook based on what you learned about marginalization/fragmentation? What are the consequences of leaving people and events out of history books?
This will be the last lesson that the teacher will introduce before proceeding to the centerpiece of the unit plan that is the analysis of the textbook using the gender analysis tool for critical evaluation of their textbook from a feminist pedagogical perspective. By the time lesson 6b is complete, the students will have mapped four new vocabulary words, visually analyzed the cover of their history textbook, critically evaluated who and what events are included and not included in their history books and what the impact is in a patriarchal society.
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Conclusion
For every social studies educator in pursuit of teaching high school history from a more feminist and less sexist and racist perspective, there are undoubtedly the same amount of opportunities to do so effectively. In other words, there is no “right way” to teach history from a non-traditional, feminist perspective.
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Chapter 4
CONCLUSION
“Sexism is human problem, not a women’s issue”
(McCormick, 1994, p. 46).
Regardless of any gains made to create more progressive and inclusive textbooks and curriculum in public school education, American history textbooks and curriculum are still focused overwhelmingly on the White Anglo Saxon Protestant male’s political and economic accomplishments. Thus, White women and women and men of color are categorically denied their rightful place in American history in general and American history textbooks more specifically. Adopting a feminist pedagogical approach when creating compatible curriculum for an American high school history classroom is necessary because it emphasizes the importance of women’s voices and experiences. In addition, feminist pedagogy highlights the ways in which traditional textbooks and curriculum undermine the epistemological power of a feminist viewpoint.
For high school history teachers committed to creating a feminist, gender balanced and inclusive curriculum that encourages students to see history from a non- traditional perspective, the obstacles and frustrations are many. Forces such as the hidden curriculum, the common core standards, class time limitations and lack of classroom resources all conspire to make it challenging to create and implement
73 creative, non-sexist and intellectually challenging curriculum within a traditional classroom setting.
Living in a sexist culture (patriarchy), a society in which men hold the economic, educational and political power and women are excluded from sharing that power equally, creates a sexist educational environment in which White women and women of color are consistently marginalized. As a result, American history textbooks, information, and reflections about women and women’s accomplishments are scant. Therefore, from a feminist pedagogical perspective, “textbooks need to be scrutinized carefully, and those that fail to educate children meaningfully about
America’s diversity and its history of oppression should not be bought or used”
(Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991, p. 101).
Feminist pedagogy calls for a thorough analysis of both teaching practices and educational material in order to evaluate and create decisions in the classroom that support the interests of challenging patriarchal assumptions (Weiler, 2001). Most teachers do not have time for the work that it takes to take on such an in depth study.
The hope of this researcher is that the work represented in the project, especially the methods section in conjunction with the lesson plans in the Appendix, will support an educator’s objective of not only creating a more gender inclusive curriculum, but also establishing a precedent in the classroom in which students become the designated keepers of the feminist flame and thereby continue to name, question and extinguish sexist fires wherever they may burn.
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Impact, Values and Effectiveness
To change American history textbooks wherein they both reflect the true gender and ethnic diversity of this country and tell the real and important histories of many groups of people, not just the histories of White males is impossibility. The fact that progress to this end is slow shows that there the bottom line for the powers that be is to maintain the status quo. This project is an attempt to give students and teachers the opportunity to learn about gender discrimination in history and history textbooks and to question and determine for themselves the efficacy of maintaining the status quo of a sexist and racist society that is supposed to stand for democratic ideals and actions. Textbooks are both revered and misunderstood by the general public. On the one hand, the contents of history textbooks more often than not go unexamined for sexism and ethnic bias in the service of teaching students how to be unquestioningly patriotic citizens. Also, there is something so strangely and inexplicably powerful about the written word, especially in the form of a textbook. The content therein is somehow the undisputed truth and that the “truth” only has room for one narrow perspective. Case in point, the name of the textbook from this project is The American
Experience. The word “THE,” instead of “AN,” or “ONE,” sends a clear message right from the start: there is only one way to tell the story of American history.
The curriculum created for this project attempts to give students and teachers the tools necessary to recognize sexism, gender discrimination and marginalization in both society at large and in the dissemination of information of our nation’s history in
75 high school American history classes. As feminist educators, part of our role is to commit to freeing us and our students from the vicious cycle of sexism and sexist pedagogy in the classroom. Equality and diversity are part of the values upon which this nation was built. All students, males and females of all groups, “need to see themselves, as well as others who are different from them, reflected in the school curriculum. Those who do not, often feel detached from school, and doubt their self worth... students must develop positive self-concepts to grow to their full potential and to develop positive feelings and attitudes toward others“ (McCormick, 1994, p. 49).
The following summarizes the lessons from the project that made a gender analysis of the American history textbook possible.
Lessons 1-3 focus on students’ personal exposure to sexism and sex stereotyping. Key vocabulary is introduced that will help them decipher and name the sexism and marginalization that they are exposed to in their history textbooks. In addition, these lessons and the lessons throughout the unit, incorporate journal writings that help students make a personal connection between what they may see and experience in their own lives, to the materials they are required to read. The lessons incorporate feminist pedagogical elements such as group work, journal writing and creative ways for students to mine the materials for sexism and sex stereotyping.
Lesson 4 creates a bridge between that the personal and political/historical by underscoring both the difference and the connection between students’ personal experiences with sexism and gender discrimination and the broader context of institutional sexist practices. The remaining lessons of the unit build on the students’
76 newfound knowledge of marginalization, sexism, discrimination and patriarchal structures by examining the content in their history books. The students’ have the opportunity to analyze the textbook from a feminist perspective. The students’ are given the skills that will empower them to recognize, name and acknowledge the singular perspective of their history textbook. The hope is that by taking the time to adopt and use these lessons according to each teacher’s needs, abilities and time constraints, s/he will feel empowered by the material presented and thus continue to teach American history with a feminist pedagogical approach throughout the school year. Even though the hope is that the project will be tried and tested by a high school history teacher, it is important to realize that there will be imperfections with the project and the teacher needs to be aware of what some of those imperfections are.
Limitations
The limitations of the project are many. Teachers, even the most dedicated feminist identified ones, face enormous daily pressures that undoubtedly keep them closed off from having the interest in trying something so radically new such as a feminist analysis of a standard textbook- especially if it might take away instructional minutes, increase their work load, and not necessarily support an increase in student test scores. But perhaps the biggest limitation is that there was not time to pilot the lesson plans with an 11th grade history class, and therefore, no way to make practical corrections and adjustments based on what happened in real time. Piloting the program would have allowed for direct feedback from students and the teacher. The feedback from students and teachers would have made it possible to create
77 modifications to each part of the unit thus increasing the chances of its success. It would have enabled me to add lessons if there were “holes” in the program and take away parts that were seen to be unnecessary or redundant. Without piloting the program in its entirety, it is challenging to know what changes need to be made to make it better.
Another limitation of the project is not creating more lessons that would have directly introduced to the students the elements of feminist pedagogy. In capable hands, an able teacher will be able to do this but what I mean is that there are many elements that teachers use in high school classrooms that are taken directly from critical and feminist pedagogy. They are incorporated into my lessons and many teachers use these techniques in their own lesson plans without realizing the historical influence of feminism on their way of teaching. In order for feminist pedagogy to become a recognized and viable educational modality, teachers need to know the places from which their teaching methods derive. It seems the ultimate irony that a teacher may use these lesson plans and have a great influence on her students
(hopefully), yet not realize and therefore not be able to share with her students that many of the lessons that they are taught in school today are historically from a feminist perspective.
Recommendations
The strongest recommendation that can be made regarding how best to implement this project in the future is for the teacher to take her time and get to know the lessons very well before trying to implement them. As a teacher who had adopted
78 many curricula to fit my own classroom needs, I know how difficult it is to take someone else’s work and make it one’s own. But it is the only way to create success in the classroom. If one decides to take on this project, the recommendation is to change the lessons as much as needed. It might be best to use the lesson plans as a template upon which the teacher etches her own ideas, taking out what might not seem to work.
In other words, make no assumptions about order or necessity until deemed important by the teacher herself. In other words, in the first part of this conclusion, I spoke about the automatic import we give the written word- assuming that if it is in print, it is true and unchangeable. For example, even though the project is written without student input, student input into lesson plans is a vital part of feminist pedagogy. If possible, a teacher using these lesson plans would be well served to take the time to let the students influence the direction of the plans if done so in a responsible way.
Another recommendation for the project is for the students and teacher to work together to insure that throughout the year the new techniques learned in the lesson plans are used for analyzing any and all material brought into the class. Therefore, along with this recommendation, it is good idea to use these plans as close to the beginning of the year as possible. That way, both students and teacher can take advantage of their newfound feminist perspective on all things in American History.
In addition, it would be ideal to turn a current limitation into a final recommendation- have the teacher reveal the basic tenets of feminist pedagogy. An
79 important tenet of feminist pedagogy is to involve students in the decision-making regarding how and what to learn in the classroom. Get the students involved; have them reflect and analyze what is being asked of them in any given lesson. This type of reflections creates deeper understanding and fosters students’ ownership in their learning.
Closing
Sexism is a problem that negatively affects people of all genders. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to support any teacher who wants to teach from a feminist pedagogical perspective. I want American history teachers to have a feminist and positive influence on their students by introducing this unique and long overdue way of teaching in which students are challenged to think analytically and critically about the way history is traditionally taught and the way in which many peoples are marginalized and thus denied access to their own stories. If even one teacher uses this project in the future, then all my work has been worth it.
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APPENDIX
Lesson Plans and Handouts
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LESSON PLANS
Over the years, a “feminist perspective” has meant something different depending on who is doing the writing and who is doing the reading. In addition to sex and gender, race and class informs how one views the feminist cause and therefore it is imperative for any alleged “feminist perspective” to be as inclusive as possible.
For far too long, when the researcher was a white woman (including the writer of this project), the assumptions have been that there is only one feminist perspective and it is white and middle class. The tricky part is that it was not seen as such because those in charge of the feminist narrative who were garnering all the attention were not aware of their own ethnic (white) and class bias. It was accepted as the norm from which all other perspectives were judged and defined. This damaged the feminist cause by creating an exclusionary and elitist perspective while claiming to speak for all women.
For anyone who wants to use these lesson plans, I invite you to adapt and recreate as you see fit. Even though I am personally affected by sexism and anti-
Semitism and I have made an effort to create lesson plans that are inclusionary, non elitist in terms of perspective with an awareness and sensitivity to the needs and sharp perceptions of teenagers, there is no doubt that the following lesson plans need to be viewed critically and changed accordingly to your and your students’ needs. The main purpose of the project is to create awareness of gender oppression in our sexist culture and to analyze and criticize a history textbook for gender bias. I am aware of the need for a perspective in which the intersections of ethnicity, class and gender need to be
82 taken into account and I leave it up to the educator to change these plans according to her classroom’s needs and interests.
UNIT OVERVIEW
The following lesson plans are designed for 11th grade students in the public schools who are taking American history, which is required for graduation and for entry into college. Even though the final lessons are tied to a specific American history textbook, the critical thinking and analytical tools presented and practiced can be adapted for any high school history textbook with a little extra preparation.
Any time a teacher wishes to engage students from a feminist pedagogical perspective, she must first understand who her students are, what her students care about, and how her students see their world. In other words, she must care about what impacts her students’ everyday lives, and from that knowledge make every attempt to create bridges between what is important to them and what they are required to learn.
This takes a true commitment to her students’ social-emotional and intellectual lives.
Second, she must understand the perspective from which the resources and textbooks are derived. This takes time, patience and a willingness to take a risk and a leap of faith that what she is teaching and the way she is teaching will still properly prepare students for the required tests and common core standards.
The following lessons were designed to prompt students to think more deeply and critically about gender bias and gender oppression in our culture in general and more specifically, how sexism infects what students are exposed to and required to learn in American history textbooks. The unit was created in order to redress the
83 systematic marginalization of women and women of color that is too often found in the traditional means of transmitting historical information in the public schools.
Creating a feminist pedagogical based curriculum requires the teacher to both plan thoroughly and be willing to be flexible in the event that new information and/or student led innovations make it important to change course. With that in mind, while the daily plans are developed within a specific time frame, in order to mitigate possible frustration the teacher should allow three to four extra days for expansions and interruptions that seem to be part and parcel of being engaged with high school students on a daily basis.
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Lesson Plans For 11th Grade American High School History Students
ESSENTIAL QUESTION(S) for the unit. Have them prominently displayed in the room prior to the beginning of the unit.
1) Whose history are we learning and for what purpose?
2) Who is represented in American history textbooks most prominently?
Why?
3) Who and what are missing from American history textbooks?
4) How are white women and women of color marginalized in high school
history books?
5) How might this affect both female and male students as they learn
about American history?
6) How might schools, teachers and students create a more
equitable/balanced/inclusive-learning environment?
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LESSON 1 (1x 135 minute session or 3x 45 minute sessions)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will create a word map for the word/phrase Status Quo.
Students will decipher the meaning of ‘status quo’ from the music video and compare and contrast to the experiences they have in everyday life
Students will identify both the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo
ACTIVITIES
1. Journal Writing
2. Watch/Discuss the meaning of “sticking to the status quo” in the context of
the theme in the video
3. Introduce the Vocabulary Words/Running Vocab list and Word mapping
4. Distribute/Fill out Costs/Benefits handout
5. Complete Word Map for Status Quo (finish for HW)
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. Projection Device and proper access to play the you tube video, “Sticking
with the Status Quo” from High School Musical
2. Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYZpZr3Cv7I
3. 1x Costs/Benefits handout
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5. Giant Post It notes/Tag board to begin “running vocabulary list” that will be
added to and displayed through out the unit
5. 1x Key Vocabulary Words sheet
Journal Prompt: On the Board
Have you ever felt like you couldn’t do something you wanted to do because of
your gender? What made you feel that way? Write about your experience.
OR
If you could do any one thing that is traditionally considered to be for the opposite
gender, what would you do? Why?
PROCEDURE
1. Inform students that in this lesson they will be thinking about the notion of
“maintaining the status quo” regarding gender roles and the implications of such.
2. Have students take 5-10 minutes to respond to the journal prompt. Share with
seat partner ideas from journal prompt
3. Show the youtube video of “Sticking with the Status Quo” from High School
Musical
4. Discuss as a class the ideas from the journal entries and the video regarding
“maintaining the status quo” in society and ask students to think and share about
87 some of the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo.) Be ready to provide students with some ideas about the benefits of maintaining the status quo- this is a trickier perspective through which to see)
5. Introduce the “running vocabulary” tag board with the word Status quo as first entry on the list. Explain to the students that their homework through the unit will be to complete the word maps for new vocabulary words. With each new word that they learn/extract from the lessons, the class will add the word to the tag board for all to see. Have students create their own list in their notebooks and have them write “status quo” as the first entry. Tell students that we will come back to the list and to “word mapping” tomorrow.
7. Distribute Handout 1 - a simple graphic organizer for students to use that has
COSTS on one side and BENEFITS on the other with STATUS QUO on the top.
Fill in at least five on each side of handout.
8. Students will rate the costs and benefits in order of importance according to their own opinion by putting a rank order number next to it. They will use this ranking in their next activity.
9. A) Students do Think/Pair/Share (see methods section for more detail on this) regarding their COSTS/BENEFITS handout.
B) Students will dialogue about their costs/benefits of status quo list. They are looking for what their lists have in common and how they differ. If partners agree
88 with something that the other has on her/his list, then s/he can add it to their own list.
C) Teacher will point out that the list: COSTS/BENEFITS is binary. Is there a third or even fourth category that they can/ want to come up with in addition to costs/benefits?
Explain to the students that binary means when there are only two items or
numbers from which to chose. In a closed, binary system, such as
costs/benefits or boy/girl or even teacher/student, and therefore one is limited
to only those choices. However, this closed system does not allow for nuance
or multiple perspectives.
D) Students come back together as a whole group and individuals from each group may share with whole class some of their findings/interests.
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LESSON 2/ Part 1 and 2 (1x 90 min or 2x 45 min)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will gain an understanding of the concept of gender inequality Students will explore their own beliefs about gender inequality in America
ACTIVITIES
1. Journal Writing
2. Introduce word mapping through “think aloud/demonstration exercise (see
methods section for more details)
3. Perception check
4. Perception Reviser: I always thought (see hand-out __)
5. Dialogue
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. Gender equality Power Point- #’s 5 (sex and gender) #6 (Justice), #12
(Legal rights gained, #18 (Men’s and Women’s Median Wages ’73-2004),
#26 (Women in Nat’l legislative, #33 (Domestic Division of Labor)
2. 1x ‘Perception Reviser’ handout per student
3. Big Post It notes for displaying Perception Reviser handouts in the
classroom
4. 1x Word Map handout
5. Journal Prompt on the Board:
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What does gender equality mean? What are some of the ways that genders are and are
NOT treated equally? Is gender equality important? Why or Why not?
PROCEDURE
Opening:
A. Distribute the Word map.
B. Provide an explanation of the Word map and the requirements for each new
vocabulary word. Let students know that the word maps will most likely need to
be completed at home and the word maps plus any other papers will be part of
their completed portfolio of work at the end of the unit.
C. Demonstrate the requirements for the word map through a think aloud exercise
using the document camera (see Methods section). Work through an entire word
map for a chosen word (don’t use Status Quo- chose another word that they will
not be required to map).
1. Moving on, inform students that in this lesson they are going to be thinking
about the notion of ‘gender inequality’ and what that might mean in an
American context. Remind the students that in the opening lessons, they
looked at the pressures of being a certain way regarding gender stereotyped
and how that might affect them and their peers on a personal level. Now they
will take that knowledge and apply it to a broader, and socially contextualized
perspective.
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2. Write the following two sentence stems on the board,
o In America, women and men are equal because...
o In America, women and men are UNequal because...
Ask students to spend 10 minutes thinking about both statements and writing
their responses down in their journals.
3. Ask a selection of students to share one comment related to Sentence A and
one comment related to Sentence B with a student sitting next to them. Allow
a brief period of dialogue and questioning to occur.
4. Show the Powerpoint giving latest statistics regarding gender inequality in the
United States. Have students write the salient facts in their journals- focusing
especially on facts/statistics that are new to them. (For a more detailed
explanation of how to conduct this part of the lesson, please refer to pages 31-
32 of the Methods chapter).
5. Distribute one copy of the ‘Perception Reviser’ handout to each student. Ask
students to share with a student next to them, the facts or statistics that
surprised them and to complete the sentences for each fact or statistic.
6. Once completed, instruct students to display their Perception Reviser handout
on the walls of the classroom and allow students time to walk around and look
at each other’s work.
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7. Have the students go back to the dialogue they had with another student at the
beginning of class and share one or two of the facts or statistics that they or
their peers selected and to think about the issue identified in light of the
following question: What changes could be made to address this fact of gender
inequality in America?
HOMEWORK: Complete Word-map handout for Status Quo and Gender Inequality
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LESSON 3: What does a feminist look like? (1x 90 min or 2x 45 min)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will explore and evaluate their own preconceptions about the definition, practice and perception of feminism.
Students will synthesis information from lesson one and two to create a working definition of feminism.
ACTIVITIES
1. Anatomy of a Feminist
2. Defining Feminism
3. Revisiting the Myths surrounding feminism
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. 1x Anatomy of a Feminist handout for each pair of students
2. Access to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YA13GNT8Mc.
3. Student access to the Internet
4. 1x Word map handout
5. 1x Graphic Organizer handout for respondent questions on video clip.
PROCEDURE
1. Ask students to remind you of some of the statistics from the previous class.
E.g. wage gap, statistics around violence, representation in sports, etc. You
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may wish to record the statistics (or more general recollections of inequality)
on the board or recap the Powerpoint on the facts/statistics of gender
inequality.
2. Provide each student with the Anatomy of a Feminist handout. In pairs, ask
students to fill in the left hand side ONLY of the sheet, labeling the figure on
the page with the physical, intellectual and emotional characteristics that they
think are associated with feminism. Once students have been given sufficient
time to fill in their handout, ask them to share some of the characteristics they
have identified. Focus on the following questions: Why did you identify these
particular characteristics/stereotypes? What evidence do you have to support
these characteristics/stereotypes? Next, ask students to remain in pairs and ask
them the question: ‘What is feminism?’ Give students 5 minutes to brainstorm
and write down their answers and then share their thoughts with the class.
Write student responses on the board (or have a representative from each group
post them to your class page).
Next, ask each pair to undertake 5-10 minutes of research to come up with a
formal definition of feminism. Students may wish to consider the following
questions: Why did you identify these particular characteristics/stereotypes?
What evidence do you have to support these characteristics/stereotypes?
3. Ask a small selection of pairs to share their definition with the class and write
any key points that the pairs have in common up on the board.
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4. Screen the video This Is What A Feminist Looks Like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YA13GNT8Mc. Ask students to take
notes while watching the video, recording any interesting or key points made
in the clip: What did you notice? What surprised you? Why does this type of
video even need to be made? You may wish to follow this with a brief
discussion before moving on to the next step.
5. Instruct students to complete the second half of their ‘Anatomy of a Feminist’
handout, with the specific intention of revising any stereotypes they may have
had about feminists at the beginning of the class. They should take the formal
definitions of feminism they have created and the points made in the video into
account when completing the activity. Completed handouts should be shared
with the rest of the class.
HOMEWORK: Complete a word map for Stereotyping
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LESSON 4 Gender Stereotyping Versus Institutionalized Sexism (1x 90 or 2x 45
min)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will be able to identify the difference between gender stereotyping and institutional or systemic discrimination
Students will develop a basic understanding of the concept of privilege in the context of gender inequality
ACTIVITIES
1. Group Brainstorm
2. The Gender Continuum
3. Discussion
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. 1 x set of ‘Gender Continuum’ Character Cards
2. 1 x set of ‘Gender Continuum’ Statements
3. 1 x A3 paper per group (or you may prefer students to write in their books)
4. 1 x ‘Stereotypes vs. The System’ handout per student + 1 x teacher copy
PROCEDURE
PART 1: QUICK BRAINSTORM
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1. Arrange students in small groups of 3-4 and write the question, “How does
Sexism affect boys?” up on the board. Ask students to discuss the question in
their groups and to record their thoughts and ideas in their journals. Ask a
representative from each group to provide one response to the question and
write their response up on the board.
PART 2: THE GENDER CONTINUUM
1. Inform students that they will be participating in an activity that will require
them to answer a set of questions from the point of view of a character they
will be assigned. They will not know much about each character and so must
respond to the activity guided by their assumptions. Distribute one ‘character
card’ to each student and ask him or her to keep the identity of their character
to themselves. You will have to ‘double up’ character cards as there are not
enough for each student; this will enable discussion about individual
differences in response to the ‘Gender Continuum’ Statements.
2. Arrange students in a line along the longest wall of the classroom. Ask
students to take a moment to think about their character. Explain that for each
question their character answers ‘yes’ to they will take a step forward. For
each question they answer no to, they will remain where they are.
3. If students answer ‘yes’ to one question and then ‘no’ to the next they do not
move backwards, but remain in place.
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4. Encourage students to focus on the element of their character that is relevant to
the question asked, e.g. will a character’s job or age affect their answer or is it
irrelevant in the context of the question?
5. Read out the ‘Gender Continuum’ Statements one by one and ask students to
move forwards if they think their character would answer ‘yes’ to the
statement or to remain where they are if their character would answer ‘no’.
They should answer thinking about the most likely scenario, not thinking about
how things ‘should be.’ (This is an important point and therefore worth
repeating to make sure of the accuracy of their answer).
6. Once all of the statements have been read ask students to reveal their character
to the rest of the class. Begin by focusing on the students who are right at the
‘front’ of the room and students who are right at the ‘back,’ so as to begin to
highlight the differences in privilege between the groups. Then allow each
student from front to back to reveal her or his character. Compare placement
for students who have been given the same character.
BEFORE MOVING ON TO #7, HAVE A CLASS DIALOGUE ABOUT
PRIVILEGE
7. Facilitate a discussion with the class about how each character ended up at the
front or back of the room, as well as those characters that ended up in the
middle. The focus should be on encouraging students to think about how the
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gender of their character has affected their decision to move forwards or to
remain in place.
Those ‘characters’ that have moved forwards the most frequently represent those in our community who experience the most privilege. Those who have remained in their original position most frequently represent those in our community who experience the most discrimination on the basis of their gender, and potentially on the basis of their race, religion or sexuality as well. It should become clear that although young men are subject to gender stereotyping, they are much less likely to encounter systemic gender discrimination.
PART 3: STEREOTYPES AND SYSTEMS
1. Inform students that this final part of the class is intended to help them
differentiate between the impact of gender stereotyping and systemic gender
discrimination, following on from the Gender Continuum activity.
2. Read out the definition of Systemic Sexism and Sexist Stereotypes from the
‘Stereotypes vs. The System’ handout. Ask students to think about both the
brainstorm that opened the class and the Gender Continuum activity whilst
participating in a group discussion. The following questions may be used as
prompts:
o What are some examples of gender stereotyping?
o What are some examples of systemic gender discrimination?
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o What are the differences between gender stereotyping and systemic
gender discrimination?
o Who experiences gender stereotyping?
o Who experiences systemic gender discrimination?
NOTES FOR THE CLASS DISCUSSION:
• Acknowledging the sexist stereotyped that are applied to boys, and the impact
those stereotypes have on boys’ self-esteem and their ability to step outside
‘mainstream’ ideas of masculinity.
• Acknowledging the difference between sexist stereotypes, which apply to both
girls and boys- and a system of set of practices that systematically,
discriminates against girls and women.
HOMEWORK: Complete word map on two words/phrases: Discrimination and Sexism
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LESSON 5: History is Written by the Victors (Walter Benjamin) (1x 45 min)
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students will think critically about the subject of
HIS-tory and they will determine what it means institutionally and personally and its impact on an equitable educational experience.
ACTIVITIES
1. Journal Writing
2. Group engagement//Critical thinking activity
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. Write: “HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS” (Walter Benjamin) on
the board
2. Journals
3. Desks arranged for easy transition to Group engagement activity (if time is
more limited)
4. Numbers 1-8 written on index cards
5. Question 1-8 written on the board or tag board
Journal Prompt: What does the quote, “History is written by the victors,” mean?
(You can say to the students, “Keep in mind the discussion on privilege, feminism, patriarchy and the focus of war and politics in American history textbooks.”) Give examples from history for which this quote applies.
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PROCEDURE
1. Have students take ten minutes to answer the journal prompt
2. Lead a brief discussion on the word “victor.” Ask students its literal and
figurative meaning before having students break up into groups to answer
selected questions.
3. Teacher will ask a student to add the word ‘Victor’ to the running vocabulary
list. Teacher will solicit ideas of what the word means specifically. The word
victor is only used when referring to war. Teacher will lead a discussion about
the implications of this statement. Teacher will not insert her own opinion
here but instead, she will facilitate by asking critical thinking, high order
questions in order to provoke thought and challenge assumptions. Bloom’s
taxonomy is a useful teacher resource that explains the difference between
lower order and higher order thinking (see Fig.1).
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Higher Order Thinking
Asking open ended, higher order thinking is one of the most challenging yet vital skills that a feminist teacher needs to develop. A feminist classroom must reflect the value of questioning patriarchal authority and culture. Learning the skill of provoking critical thought in one’s students is a cornerstone of feminist critical pedagogy.
Teacher will guide students through a Socratic discussion. The think-pair- share method from the previous lesson is a building block for the critical thinking that
104 is required in the Socratic method of learning. The Socratic method is a form of inquiry used most often when a small group is asked to critically think about a broad, open-ended question that the teacher/facilitator asks of the group. Teacher will put students into groups of four. The teacher can allow students to choose their groups, or at least state their preferences for who they would like to be included in their groups.
Teacher will put numbers 1-8 in a jar. Each group will choose two of the numbers.
Each number corresponds to a question that will be written down on the board:
Explain this next assignment with a little more detail:
Students are instructed to engage in dialogue using the two chosen questions.
The questions posed to each other can be as simple as, “what have you learned in your history classes that is important to you?” “Why is this important?” “What do you need to see in a history class that will help the information feel more connected to your personal experience?” “How is something interesting if it is not even close to something that you have experienced?” One group member will write down the group ideas. One member will present findings to the class. Students will turn in their writings at the end of class.
Group engagement is a term that expands on the concept of think-pair-share.
Teacher will have numbers 1-8 written a separate pieces of paper and put them in a jar or hat. Teacher will put students into 4 groups. Each group will choose two questions that correspond to the number their group chose to answer. The teacher can either write the questions on the board or on tag board.
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1) What is history?
2) Why is history important?
3) What assumptions do history teachers make about the importance of history?
4) Who is left out/marginalized? Why?
5) Where is history written?
6) Why should we care who writes our history? How does written history impact
students’ lives?
7) If you/we didn’t write the history, is it still considered our history? How?
Why? Who says?
8) Where else is history written?
HOMEWORK: Complete Word map for Patriarchy
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LESSON 6a: Visual Analysis of the Front Cover of the High School History
Textbook (1x90 min or 2x45 min)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will visually analyze the front cover of their American History textbook for gender and ethnic representation.
Students will interpret and extrapolate their findings and predict the gender and ethnic representation in the contents of the textbook.
ACTIVITIES:
1. Journal Writing
2. In pairs, students will collect data on gender and ethnic representation
based on the front cover of the American history textbook
3. Students will share their findings with the class
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. 1x Analyzing Photographs and Prints Handout
2. Journals
3. History textbook
4. 1x Counting /data collection sheet for front cover of textbook
Journal Prompt: Write about a time when you experienced or witnessed someone feeling marginalized or oppressed.
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PROCEDURE
1. Without giving students any other hints about why they are doing this ‘into’
activity, students will visually study the front cover of their textbook and make
a list of everything they notice and see on the front cover. Teacher will ask
students to take out their history textbook and look at the front cover for a
couple of minutes. Then the teacher will ask the students to make a list of
everything that they see on the cover. Important to emphasize that the students
are just to write down/describe exactly what they see without adding any
commentary or opinions. They will write down all of their findings on the left
hand column of their paper or computer. There is not a right or wrong way
with this initial exercise (except if students don’t follow directions, of course)
especially since it is a practice for increasing visual analysis skills. Students
will get better the more they practice. Teacher will lead a brief discussion,
asking students what they found on the cover. The teacher can make a
running list on the board or projection box of students’ contributions and ask
students to add to their own list, now on the right hand column, all of the visual
facts that someone else might mention that they might have missed initially.
2. Distribute the “Analyzing Photographs and Prints.” (From the library of
congress). Go over with the students the questions and prompts of “analyzing
photographs and prints” (Handout 14).
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Homework: Given your analysis of the front cover, what might you expect to find in the textbook regarding gender and ethnic representation?
Homework: Complete Word Map for MARGINALIZATION
LESSON 6b (continued)
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students predict the numbers of women and people of color represented in the textbook and then conduct further data collection from the INDEX
Students interpret their findings regarding gender representation
Students extrapolate their findings and make predictions about the textbook’s content
ACTIVITIES
1. Journal Writing
2. Data Collection
3. Student will do a quick read of excerpts of Sadker handout and complete the
Jigsaw reading/sharing activity
PREPARATION/MATERIALS
1. 1x Data collection handout
2. Journals
3. Textbooks
4. 1x selected Index pages (choose a variety to compare and contrast outcomes)
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Journal Prompt: Why is gender equality important? Do you think gender equality exists in our school? Why or why not?
PROCEDURE:
1. Tell students that they will continue to use their newly found data collection
skills to examine their textbook’s INDEX.
2. Make sure the students know that they will be using their completed data to
create a chart or bar graph their findings.
3. Distribute the data collection handout.
4. Distribute a variety of INDEX pages- one for each student, doubling up on
copies if numbers of students exceeds number of INDEX pages.
5. Based on previous categories of people and historical subjects that are affected
by gender oppression and marginalization, have students add categories to the
data collection handout if it is not complete in their view.
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MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO
COSTS BENEFITS
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