By Barbara Shaddix

Chapter 10 in The Rhetoric of Participation, titled “Participation as Reflective Practice: Digital Composing and Feminist Pedagogy,” begins with the idea that “knowledge making [is] situated and relational,” a central tenet of feminist pedagogy. Jason Palmeri and Abby Dubisar, the authors of this chapter, choose to position their argument in terms of the relationship they had with Gen Critel; Palmeri, in particular, seems to have known her well.

To put this framework into perspective, I think it is important to point out that here, “feminism” does not mean “woman good/man bad.” Instead, the working definition of “feminism” for the purposes of this blog post (and how I approach the concept more generally as a lived experience) is “disrupting the narrative as a means of undoing oppression” — or as Michelle Obama puts it, “good trouble.”

My initial interest in this chapter was sparked by the idea of viewing participation through a feminist pedagogical lens, which seeks to unseat the idea of the traditional academy. Carolyn Shrewsbury writes the following in her 1987 article “What is Feminist Pedagogy?:”

“Feminist pedagogy is engaged teaching/learning—engaged with self in a continuing reflective process; engaged actively with the material being studied; engaged with others in a struggle to get beyond our sexism and racism and classism and homophobia and other destructive hatreds and to work together to enhance our knowledge; engaged with the community, with traditional organizations, and with movements for social change” (6).

Insofar as “participation” is concerned, putting feminist pedagogy into practice means, as Palmeri and Dubisar point out, that the teacher must “remain conscious that sexist, racist, ableist, and heteronormative power dynamics are often replicated… both within the classroom” and elsewhere. Indeed, my own experience has borne this out, both as a student and as a teacher. Pull me aside to ask me about misogynistic moments I’ve experienced in the classroom, and I’ll bend your ear about the geography professor who quizzed me (and all the female-identified students) about cooking during our class presentations (he then praised my presentation as “the best ever” and then sought out a male student’s presentation to save as an exemplar for future students 😡), or the time my speech professor wanted me to be the Explainer Hijabi 🧕 as the lone visible Muslim in the class (I refused — but what if I’d been younger and less self-assured?). Even the more subtle power plays at work in my own classroom, where demonstratively bright and capable young women are far less likely to respond than their male colleagues, serves to underscore Palmeri and Dubisar’s assertation that “more research needs to be done to more fully understand the power dynamics at play in  our classrooms.”

All of this leads me to consider the work I do within my own classroom. Palmeri and Dubisar remind the reader that “the teacher is still problematically positioned as the authority who defines what participation is and how it should be demonstrated.” Shrewsbury, in her turn, believes that “[e]mpowering pedagogy does not dissolve the authority or the power of the instructor. It does more from power as domination to power as creative energy” (9). Erasing the traditional power structure of teacher/student may not be possible or even entirely desirable, as the function of the teacher as a leader and as instructor remain vital for student success. However, what if we, as Gen Critel asks, “asked students to tell us how they will participate? What if we asked them what they need from us?” (120). Palmeri and Dubisar argue that “[i]f we seek to cocreate equitable models of participation with students who learn in diverse ways, we must necessarily move past the model of participation as an individual assessment of individual action… In other words, to participate is not simply to share one’s own ideas; to participate equitably is to work to enable the participation of others.”

This is my first semester of teaching, and as I told my students at the beginning of the semester, I’m learning from them as much as they’re learning from me. To actively shake up the dust from the tried-and-(maybe?)-true method of lecture and groupwork that I’ve been employing, I’ll need to consider strategies of student feedback in order to improve the power dynamics within my own class. In her thesis, Gen Critel wonders “about the ways in which [she is] precisely what students expect—white, middle class, in [her] 30s–and the invisible privilege [she] receive[s] from them for those identity markers” (166). Likewise, as my own students are young enough to be my children, I cannot help but wonder how this positions me as an authority even should I seek to subvert student expectations about the power dynamics of the classroom. It’s easy enough to think about change, but as Gru reminds us above, putting it into practice is where the road starts getting rocky.