Feminist Pedagogy & Self-Authorship

Preliminary Implications for Graduate Instruction in College Student Affairs Masters Programs
Anthony Sclafani HI ED 546, Summer 2013

Key Components to My Inquiry

This

inquiry specifically and intentionally focuses on graduate students. Assumptions and statements referring to students should be understood exclusively in this context. This inquiry is exploratory and not meant to describe or address any phenomena in totality. This inquiry is situated in my personal experiences as a higher education/student affairs scholar-practitioner. I am not a neutral party.

What Do I Want to Investigate?

To

what extent, if any, do feminist pedagogical practices advance epistemological reflection towards selfauthorship among student affairs graduate students?

Why Feminist Pedagogy?

Personal/Professional educational philosophy;

Education as the practice of liberation (hooks, 1994);

Conceptual understandings of helping professions graduate education as a transformative process. The dynamic relationships between the personal and the political (Awkward, 1995).

What is Self-Authorship?
Corel

component of Baxter Magoldas Model of Epistemological Reflection (1992)

Longitudinal

study of initial cohort of college students, who are now in their late 30s/early 40s.

Nuanced

and reflective understanding of the world vis--vis ones positionality. Selfguided and internalized foci frame ones interactions with the world.

Self-Authorship & Metacognition

Self-authorship

is a mode of meaningmaking; it is an epistemological state (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005; Baxter Magolda, 2009). Metacognition addresses how one comes to know what one knows (i.e., knowledge about ones personal body of knowledge) (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010).

Mixed Methods Approach

Major Strength
Qualitative

Notable Limitation
Not

& quantitative data sources; more robust analyses

generalizable. Rather, exploratory

Assessing for Self-Authorship

How does one determine epistemological development?

Several quantitative instruments were developed over the past 20+ years. Focus group and/or individual interviews to capture student experiences, perceptions, and meaning making.

In a more robust approach, I would pursue deeper mixed methodologies, particularly regarding qualitative data.

Immediate Inquiry Methodology

Semi-structured

interviews with 5 instructors who have taught a masters level college student development theory class. Semi-structured interviews allow for the interviewer/interviewee dichotomy to function more as a conversation that has some clearly-defined purposes.

Questions
Previously,

you stated that you employed feminist pedagogical practices as a course instructor for [course name]; what role, if any, do you feel this pedagogical paradigm plays in the educational endeavor? of the major theories covered in your course is Marcia B. Baxter Magoldas Model of Epistemological Reflection; from this theory, we gain an understanding of striving towards self-authorship. Do you feel there are any connections between your teaching pedagogy, and your graduate students own epistemological development?

One

Questions Continued
Your

course is the foundational theory course for student affairs educators. As a helping profession, we value self-work, introspection, and lifelong learning. To what extent, if any, do you feel your feminist pedagogical approach contributes to your students mastery of developmental theory?
Follow-up:

To what extent, if any, do you feel your feminist pedagogical approach contributes to your students abilities to situation their own developmental journeys within the critical study of student development?

Faculty Participants
1 2 3 4 5

Female / African American / Lesbian tenured professor at Midwest, regionally-serving rural public university Female / Jewish American tenured full professor, program chair, Southern regionallyserving public university Male / Caucasian / Heterosexual / Ally full professor and program chair, Midwest Land Grant co-flagship university Female / Caucasian tenure-track professor at Southwest 2nd tier State System university, regionally serving urban HSI Gay Male visiting assistant professor and research fellow, Northeastern Land Grant flagship university

* Participants self-selected salient identities vis--vis their teaching role and its relation to the inquiry.

Preliminary Findings
Communities

of meaning/communities of learning (Moya, 2002) Positionality and intersectionality and its relation to student/professor dynamics. Professor as learner. Student as teacher. Anecdotal and qualitative support for hypothesis that feminist pedagogical practices have positive effects on epistemological development among students.

Focus on Pedagogy
Focus

group/interview conversations are semi-structured around the pedagogy and its associated techniques.

Next Steps
From

the 5 professors, I will gather quantitative data using a preexisting assessment instrument. Basic pre-test/post-test format, with the intervention being the duration of the class.
Assessment

instrument tailored to account for variables that affect learning OTHER than pedagogical paradigm.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

For

apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other (Friere, 1970/1993, p. 72).