Connections and Critique: Feminist Pedagogy and Science Teacher Education

Abstract

In this article, we authors and feminist science and teacher educators share assignments we developed and used in our undergraduate and graduate teacher education classes. We designed these varied assignments to help students feel comfortable with science, to begin to understand and critique the many ways science has been narrowly and powerfully shaped and has marginalized significant groups of individuals, and to begin to deconstruct scientific knowledge and construct alternative views of science and science education that are gender and culture sensitive. We also challenged them to use what they were learning to develop pedagogical strategies that would be inviting to their own students. The focus of the article is our students' reactions to these assignments and how these reactions - both inviting and resisting - informed us about their notions of science, of teaching, of themselves as learners, and of the social context in which they would teach. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.