Differently Academic?: Developing Lifelong Learning for Women in Higher Education

183 Pages·2004·0.9 MB·English

by  Sue Jackson (auth.)

DIFFERENTLY ACADEMIC?
Lifelong Learning Book Series
VOLUME3
Series Editors
David N. Aspin, Em, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia
Judith D. Chapman, Centre of Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University,
Melbourne, Australia
Editorial Board
William L. Boyd, Department of Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, PA, USA
Karen Evans, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Malcolm Skilbeck, Drysdale, Victoria, Australia
Yukiko Sawano, Department for Lifelong LearningPolicies,National Institute for
Educational Policy Research (NIER), Tokyo, Japan
Kaoru Okamoto, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology,
Government of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
Denis W. Ralph, Flinders University, Adelaide,Australia
Aims & Scope
“Lifelong Learning” has become a central theme in education and community
development. Both international and national agencies, governments and
educational institutions have adopted the idea of lifelong learning as their major
theme for address and attention over the next ten years. They realize that it is only
by getting people committed to the idea of education both life-wide and lifelong
that the goals of economic advancement, social emancipation and personal growth
will be attained.
TheLifelong Learning Book Seriesaims to keep scholars and professionals
informed about and abreast of current developments and to advance research and
scholarship in the domain of Lifelong Learning. It further aims to provide
learning and teaching materials, serve as a forum for scholarly and professional
debate and offer a rich fund of resources for researchers, policy-makers, scholars,
professionals and practitioners in the field.
The volumes in this international Series are multi-disciplinary in orientation,
polymathic in origin, range and reach, and variegated in range and complexity.
They are written by researchers, professionals and practitioners working widely
across the international arena in lifelong learning and are orientated towards
policy improvement and educational betterment throughout the life cycle.
Differently Academic?
Developing Lifelong Learning for
Women in Higher Education
by
SUE JACKSON
Birkbeck, University of London, U.K.
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-6714-2 ISBN 978-1-4020-2732-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-2732-1
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
©2004Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
With love and with thanks:
to my most significant others:
Robert, Elizabeth and Jonathan Jackson
who have unfailingly rejoiced with me in my achievements
and encouraged me through my moments of doubt
and to my parents and my parents-in-law,
Edna and Lew Grant, and Rae and Nat Jackson
who have shown continuing interest and pride in all I do
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction Of spinsters and mistresses xi
Editorial by Series Editors xix
Chapter 1 Setting the scene 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Women’s studies and lifelong learning 2
1.3 Lifelong learning in the academy 7
1.4 Lifelong learning in Britain 12
1.5 Conclusion 16
Chapter 2 Back to the future? 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Henry Giroux and critical pedagogy 19
2.3 Paulo Freire and liberatory pedagogy 23
2.4 Basil Bernstein and educational rights 27
2.5 Conclusion 34
Chapter 3 Women and social class 37
3.1 Introduction 37
3.2 The women 38
3.3 In a class of their own? 39
3.4 Gender, class and identity 44
3.5 (Working-class) women’s ways of knowing? 46
3.6 Restraints and silences 52
3.7 Conclusion 54
Chapter 4 Differently academic? 55
4.1 Introduction 55
4.2 Considering women’s studies 56
4.3 Subject matters 58
4.4 Being ‘academic’ 60
4.5 How ‘academic’ is women’s studies? 61
4.6 Different writing? 63
4.7 The journals 65
4.8 The essays 70
4.9 Differently academic? 74
4.10 Conclusion 79
Chapter 5 Researching and teaching in the academy 81
5.1 Introduction 81
5.2 Researching women 82
5.3 Teaching women 90
5.4 Conclusion 100
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Chapter 6 Language and discourse in the academy 101
6.1 Introduction 101
6.2 Michel Foucault andpower/knowledge 103
6.3 Jacques Lacan: language as the root of culture 107
6.4 ‘French feminists’: Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva 109
and Helene Cixous
6.5 Searching for our mothers’ gardens 113
6.6 From silence to speech 115
6.7 Dreaming of a common language 117
6.8 Speaking in different voices 120
6.9 Conclusion 125
Chapter 7 Re-turning ‘the academic’ to women’s lifelong 127
learning
7.1 Introduction 127
7.2 Challenging meanings 129
7.3 Finding new knowledges 132
7.4 Moving on 135
7.5 The future of higher education? 138
7.6 Conclusions and recommendations 144
Bibliography 149
Index 159
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Whilst writing a book feels like a solitary process, it never is, and there are many
people who have journeyed with me both through the writing of this book and its
earlier incarnations.
I wish to thank my sister, Anne Mallach, and my sisters through friendship,
Mandy Mackie, Maren Freudenberg and Mitzi Cutler, whose never failing
encouragement has seen me through many moments of doubt and self-criticism. I
also want to thank the many feminist writers on whose words I have drawn, and who
have charted their own border crossings and inspired me to make my own. This
includes the unknown reviewers who have commented on and helped me to develop
earlier versions of some of this work, and those who have reviewed this book.
Maggie Humm and Michael Locke were central and influential in their
comments, help and advice with an earlier version of the book, and Tom Schuller in
his careful reading and thoughtful comments on the final draft. Thanks to Lew
Grant and Liz Jackson for their technical help and support; to Cassie Wilder and
Danny and Lewis Mitcham for their interest and encouragement; and of course to
my publishers, Kluwer Academic Publishers, and especially to Tamara Welschot.
And heartfelt thanks to those without whom this book really wouldn’t have been
possible: the women who have worked with me on this book: the women’s studies
lecturers and the students: Amanda, Eileen, Janice, Joan, Kate, Lin, Rosie, Sally,
Sarah, Sharon, Susie, Toni, Winnie and Zoë.
Finally, I acknowledge with thanks the publishers who have allowed me to use
work initially developed as journal articles or book chapters:-
Ashgate Publishing, for “Transcending boundaries: women, research and
teaching in higher education” in Howie G and Tauchert A (eds) (2002), Gender,
teaching and research in higher education
Bridgewater State College, for “‘A hybrid in all sorts of ways’: teaching
women’s studies in the academy”, in Journal of International Women’s Studies
James Nicholas Publishers, for “Citizens of the Classroom: appropriating
Bernstein for women in higher education”, Education and Society: 20:1
Pergamon Press, for “Networking women: a history of ideas, issues and
developments in women’s studies in Britain” Women’s Studies International Forum,
23:1
Sage Publications, for “In a class of their own: women’s studies and working-
class students”, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 5
Staffordshire University, for “Widening Participation for women in lifelong
learning and citizenship, Journal of widening participation and lifelong learning, 4:1
Sussex Academic Press, for “Ivory Towers and Guardians of the Word:
Language and Discourse in the Academy” in Brewer, M (ed) (2002) Exclusions in
feminist thought: challenging the boundaries of womanhood; and
Taylor and Francis (http://www.tandf.co.uk), for:
“Crossing borders and changing pedagogies: from Giroux and Freire to feminist
theories of education, Gender and Education, 9:4
ix
x
“Differently academic? Constructions of ‘academic’ in higher education”, Higher
education, research and development 19:3
“Learning and teaching in higher education: the use of personal experience in
theoretical and analytical approaches”, Journal of Further and Higher Education,
23:3
“To be or not to be: the place of women’s studies in the lives of its students”,
Journal of Gender Studies, 9:2
INTRODUCTION
OF SPINSTERS AND MISTRESSES
For much of my adult life, I have been trying to locate myself in an academy which
has often felt alien and isolating to me. I joined the academy in 1980, as a mature
student tentatively reaching out towards my first degree via a distance learning
correspondence course with the Open University. It was here that I first met
women’s studies – more in a virtual classroom than a real one. I went on, however,
to embark on a masters degree in women’s studies (as much a contradiction in terms
for me then as now) this time in a real women’s studies classroom, where I searched
the classroom, myself, and the academy for some sense of location and to engage
with my developing feminist identity. On finishing my masters, and via teacher
training, my journeying took me back into the virtual classroom of distance learning
women’s studies, this time as a tutor, as well as into actual classrooms, where I
began teaching a variety of classes involving gender, women’s issues, and feminism.
By the early 1990s my career started to become more firmly located in the
academy, although outside of women’s studies, where I found it increasingly
difficult to deal with the marginalisation of bringing my feminist politics into the
academic classroom. Trying to fit myself into my work within more ‘traditional’
academic teaching, I was finding it ever more isolating to engage with feminist ideas
in the university classroom. I started to ask myself whether - despite our now
apparently more than equal numbers and a host of equal opportunity policies -
universities fail women by expecting us to fit into a male academic mode. Despite
claims by universities about their engagement in and with widening participation, I
will argue in this book that women’s learning is narrowed within academic
institutions, with the academy taking little account of the wide and varied lifelong
learning experiences that women bring with them. I will show that women’s studies
and feminist pedagogies have key roles to play in the lifelong learning agenda,
embedding it into the academic context, and re-turning the academy towards
women.
There can be no learning revolution for women without focussing on the realities
of our lives, and on the lifelong learning with which we engage. Learning is a
biographical process, and throughout the book I have aimed to ground my
theoretical analyses in women’s lived experiences, rather than in the more accepted
academic practice of universalising male understandings of the world, and I have
written of women as ‘us’. This is not to say that I have instead universalised
women’s experiences, nor indeed that I universalise men. There are of course
crucial differences between people: differences of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality,
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