Review of Garber

Joni Hough

February 1, 2013

ARTE 6923

Review of Garber, E (2003).  Teaching about gender issues in the art education classroom:  Myra Sadker day.  Studies in Art Education 45(1), 56-72.

            Elizabeth Garber’s article, “Teaching about Gender Issues in the Art Education Classroom:  Myra Sadker Day,” is about a combined undergraduate and graduate art education course that Garber taught using feminist pedagogy and feminist issues.  Garber points out several areas in which women have made progress toward educational equality.  However, overall equality has not been reached especially in the areas of science and math and for African American and Latina women.  Teachers are also still treating male and female students with different standards.  Because this article is ten years old and most of Garber’s statistics are even older, I would like to know how these statistics have changed since this article was written.  My assumption is that the statistics still hold true, but I would like to see if any more progress has been made in these areas over the last decade.

Garber analyzed the course discussions and projects using four themes from feminine pedagogy:  mastery, authority, voice, and positionality.  In a traditional classroom, mastery means the understanding to course content on the teacher’s terms with hierarchical grading systems.  Using feminist pedagogy, mastery is individual and is sought on the learners own terms and through collaborative learning with a focus on interpretations and connections instead of predetermined conclusions.  In the TAB/Choice-based classroom a more feminist approach is used because students determine their own projects.

Authority includes expertise in the course content and the power to determine course content, methodologies used, and grading systems.  In the feminist classroom this power is shared with the students.  This can be done in a variety of ways such as using a democratic process as proposed by Pennisi (2013), where as a class students democratically determine projects, or in a TAB/Choice-based classroom, where each student determines their own path of learning.  While the authority can be shared, a certain amount must remain with the teacher as certain state standards must be covered, and because the teacher has more expertise in the subject.  In the TAB/Choice-based classroom this is done through the teacher’s introductory demonstration, by selecting what materials are available to students, and through grading.

Voice involves students thinking and speaking for themselves.  This is often absent from traditional classrooms but in Garber’s class this included students’ discussions of course material that led to students connecting the course content to their personal experiences and the experiences of other students as those are shared with the class.  In the TAB/Choice-based classroom, discussions are included though class critiques and students are able to express themselves visually through their artworks.  In my own teaching, this could be increased by including more discussions during the introductory demonstration time at the beginning of each class.

Positionality comes from connecting mastery, authority, and voice to the position of the student.  Students’ identities are made up of a variety of aspects, such as gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, ability, and age, which are dynamic factors, that more than anything else influences the learning experience. In the feminist classroom the construction of knowledge is shaped by the people within the class as each person brings his or her own experiences to the table.  Bey and Washington (2013) also point out the importance of identity to student learning and suggest teachers, “retrofit curricular experiences in order to assist students in using the classroom to make meaning of their lives and the world” (p. 125).

In Garber’s class, students were introduced to gender issues through research and discussions, then students developed projects that were grouped as either information projects or activist interventions.  Most students gravitated toward projects that involved educating others about women in art or gender issues, however their projects failed to utilize teaching strategies from feminist pedagogy.  The projects also illustrated students’ interest in learning about female artists rather than issues, inquiry, theory, or self-reflection, reflecting the lack of general knowledge about women artists resulting from traditional art history courses.

In class discussions, Garber modeled feminist pedagogy by asking open-ended questions, having students pose questions, and having students take turns leading discussions. She also tried to not dominate discussions or imply that her knowledge was the only “correct answer.”  This was disturbing to some students who would have preferred a course where material on female artists and feminist pedagogy was presented in a lecture format. 

Preservice teachers have difficulty letting go of the notion of the teacher as the authority and students as recipients of knowledge.  It can be difficult to deviate from the model of teaching one has experienced for approximately 16 years of traditional patriarchal teaching methods.  Garber found this to be the case with her students, though several tried a hybrid of lecture and discussion with their projects. 

Researchers have found that female teachers are often not accepted as authority figures.  Using feminist pedagogy and sharing authority with students may reaffirm this prejudice and feminist teachers may not be taken seriously.  Also, as art teachers, we are already lower in the hierarchy than the teachers of tested subjects, such as math and language arts.  This does not mean that using feminist pedagogy cannot work, but feminist teachers will have to challenge the traditional patriarchal pedagogy.

In Garber’s course, the women connected their experiences to the readings and shared experiences.  In fact, the women took over as authorities, sometimes silencing the men in the class, which is the opposite of what typically happens in American classrooms.  Most of the men, despite the readings, felt that “gender” issues were a concern for women and teachers and not something they needed to develop a voice about.  As teachers, it is of vital importance that neither male nor female students feel left out in our classrooms and gender issues affect men just as they do women.

In her class, Garber also found that students were more comfortable discussing gender alone, rather than with race, sexuality, or class.  With their projects, students worked with gender and race, but class and sexuality were not represented.  Issues of class and sexuality are not easily seen, often allowing many to assume there is a sameness that does not actually exist.  Also, there is a climate of conservatism in public schools, which makes discussing these issues difficult.  Personally, I was uncomfortable discussing homosexuality with my middle school students for fear I would get complaints from conservative parents.

 Garber’s students determined that a feminist classroom must have both feminist content and feminist pedagogy.  Although the students did not master feminist pedagogy in a traditional sense, they did master it according to feminist pedagogy, which will lead them (and me) to be more gender sensitive teachers.

References

Bey, S & Washington G. E (2013).  Queering curriculum:  Truth of dare, secret nude sketches,

and closeted video recordings.  Studies in Art Education, 54(2), 116-126.

Pennisi, A. C (2013).  Negotiating to engagement:  Creating an art curriculum with eighth-

graders.  Studies in Art Education, 54(2), 127-140.