Shape-shifting: Stories of Teaching for Social Change in Nursing

<p><b>Because little is known about why and how nurse educators teach for social change, this research breaks new ground. A review of the general literature on teaching for social change revealed that few educators have attempted to analyse and understand it in relation to personal narrative inquiry. However, critical feminist educators provide a useful framework for theorising about teaching for change that addresses issues of hegemony, agency, praxis, individual voice, difference, justice and equity.</b></p> <p>Six women Pakeha/Tauiwi nurse educators from throughout New Zealand volunteered to participate in this research and share their lived experiences of teaching for social change. In-depth conversations over two years unfolded new and rich material about how and why these six women continue to teach the evaded subjects, like mental health, women’s health, community development and cultural safety. All teach in counter-hegemonic ways, opening students’ eyes to the unseen and unspoken.</p> <p>Among the significant things to emerge during the research was the metaphorical construct of shape-shifting as an active process in teaching for social change. It revealed the connectedness and integrity between life as lived and the moral imperative that motivates the participants to teach for difference. Shape-shifting was also reflected in other key findings of the study. As change agents, the participants have had significant shape-shifting experiences in their lives; they live and work as shape-shifters within complex social and political structures and processes to achieve social justice; and, they deal with areas of health practice where clients are socially and politically displaced.</p> <p>The research also generated new methods for gathering life-stories and new processes for analysis and interpretation of life-stories. It is hoped that this research will open pathways for other nurse educators to become shape-shifters teaching for social change.</p>

Shape-shifting: Stories of Teaching for Social Change in Nursing

<p><b>Because little is known about why and how nurse educators teach for social change, this research breaks new ground. A review of the general literature on teaching for social change revealed that few educators have attempted to analyse and understand it in relation to personal narrative inquiry. However, critical feminist educators provide a useful framework for theorising about teaching for change that addresses issues of hegemony, agency, praxis, individual voice, difference, justice and equity.</b></p> <p>Six women Pakeha/Tauiwi nurse educators from throughout New Zealand volunteered to participate in this research and share their lived experiences of teaching for social change. In-depth conversations over two years unfolded new and rich material about how and why these six women continue to teach the evaded subjects, like mental health, women’s health, community development and cultural safety. All teach in counter-hegemonic ways, opening students’ eyes to the unseen and unspoken.</p> <p>Among the significant things to emerge during the research was the metaphorical construct of shape-shifting as an active process in teaching for social change. It revealed the connectedness and integrity between life as lived and the moral imperative that motivates the participants to teach for difference. Shape-shifting was also reflected in other key findings of the study. As change agents, the participants have had significant shape-shifting experiences in their lives; they live and work as shape-shifters within complex social and political structures and processes to achieve social justice; and, they deal with areas of health practice where clients are socially and politically displaced.</p> <p>The research also generated new methods for gathering life-stories and new processes for analysis and interpretation of life-stories. It is hoped that this research will open pathways for other nurse educators to become shape-shifters teaching for social change.</p>

Feminism will be trans-inclusive or it will not be: Why do two cis-hetero woman educators support transfeminism?

As two cis-hetero woman feminist educators, we provide an educator’s perspective on trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourses. We begin by discussing the heterosexual matrix and the gender violence that it produces in schools as well as other socializing institutions. The socially constructed sexual binary constrains identity production to adhere to the heteronormative, at the same time excluding those who transgress this normativity. We continue by reviewing how schools are particularly significant spaces for these early social interactions, but the social discourses enacted in educational contexts mirror those of broader society. We then critically analyse some of the increasingly belligerent popular discourses promoted by TERF groups since the 1970s, appropriating feminist discourses to produce arguments that contradict basic premises of feminism. We trace possibilities for a collaborative response by reinforcing alliances between transfeminism and other feminist movements. Finally, as teacher-educators, we highlight among these a critical (queer) pedagogy that incorporates trans* experience as part of a broader feminist educational agenda: to contribute to the creation of a more equitable society based on critical reflections on the gender normative. Such a pedagogy not only rejects trans-exclusionary discourses that serve to reinforce hierarchies and promote violence, but embraces trans* experience as a productive educational resource for understanding human diversity. Human experience that challenges the sexual binary can help educators to critically question the heteronormative and to broaden our understandings; in the words of Eric Rofes, drawing upon ‘status queer’ to ‘rethink our efforts and our role in either maintaining or radically transforming the status quo’.

When Gender Training Backlashes: Participants’ Resistance and the Fragility of Commonsensical Feminism

Feminist educators often encounter different forms of resistance from both male and female participants. This article uses a neo-Gramscian theoretical perspective to discuss the importance of considering this resistance when analyzing the relationship between pedagogical design and outcomes. The study draws on survey data and participant observation from a case study of a workshop designed to raise awareness of gender issues. The results from a before-and-after survey show that the workshop had the opposite effect to the one intended in terms of changes in the participants’ perceptions of gender. Having a “failed case” as the center of attention, the article sheds light on the fragility of mainstream discourse on gender equality and the dilemmas of engaging in a struggle over common sense.

Gender (im)Material: Teaching Bodies and Gender Education

THE purpose of this paper is to insist on the sexed and gendered teaching body as ‘material’ to curriculum for gender education and gender equity in classrooms. It is not simply that the body of the teacher refuses to be excised, despite educational traditions of appealing to the mind as ‘above’ and transcending the body. It is that the sexed and gendered body of the teacher, male as well as female, must be the focus of more than censure if gender education projects are to be effective in generating useful pedagogical tools. In the paper, I give two reasons why the curriculum kit has been so visible and the teaching body so invisible. The first is the propensity of funding institutions to see a tangible ‘project’ such as a kit as the appropriate outcome of curriculum initiatives. The second is the ambivalence of many feminist educators about issues of bodily desire and pleasure in the context of a patriarchal society and culture.