Examining Feminist Pedagogy from the Perspective of Transformative Learning: Do Race and Gender Matter in Feminist Classrooms?

Abstract

Although feminist pedagogy has been widely used as a teaching approach in classrooms in higher education to
enhance diversity, issues of race and gender are often areas of contestations for non-White faculty. The purpose
of this study was to explore how non-White professors, a Black woman tenured full professor and a gay Asian
male pre-tenured professor, co-created a feminist classroom and how they negotiated power in that classroom
environment. The research questions that guided this study were: 1) what does a feminist classroom look like in
higher education; 2) how does the intersection of race and gender influence feminist pedagogy; and 3) what
strategies do adult educators and practitioners use to deal with disoriented dilemmas? This research progressed
into a longitudinal study, focusing on how the faculty members’ praxes grew from critical classroom incidents
that the professors believed directly related the negative reactions from students to their positionalities as a Black
woman and an Asian man. Three themes emerged from the data: a) Confrontation, b) Resistance, and c)
Hostility. Each of these themes are defined and presented through direct quotes from our teaching logs and
students’ reflections. Discussion and implications for practice are also provided regarding how race and gender
matter in feminist classrooms. The concluding section describes how the two faculty members implemented
reflective practices in higher education to create feminist classrooms.