Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

Gender-sensitive didactics can be put into action step by step at the followinglevels:1. Dealing with gender – access and framework conditions2. Content3. Teaching material4. Methods – gender-sensitive learning scenariosIn the process, one can fall back on the available general didactic tools. Whenthe focus is on learners – as individuals – and their needs, gender cannot beignored in any case.Dealing with gender – access and framework conditionsIn order to encourage gender sensitivity in students, it is helpful to arrangeframe work conditions that are gender-fair and to impart access and approachesthat enable a critical reflection of reality. This allows for reflection and an analysisof commonly accepted standards, standardizing mechanisms and exclusionmechanisms. Such reflection stimulates critical thinking, challenges (alleged)knowledge and truths, and permits the scrutiny of truths that are normallyconsidered universally valid. Such a framework and conditions ensure a spacewhere everyone – especially minorities – can have one’s say.Furthermore, if one’s own identity is challenged, the ensuing reflectionover one’s position within society and within one’s social milieu reveals howdeeply entrenched one is in the predominant power dynamic. This, in turn,permits us to reflect on our own ideas of clichés and internalized standards,categories of boundaries and discriminations. It also permits us to recognizehow we participate – as part of the complex power dynamic – in makingourselves gendered individuals. As a consequence, one’s own positions andconceptions of the norm can be reassessed.If in discussions the teacher is able to show his/her multilevel, contradictoryidentities, it will be possible for students to recognize their owninternalized stereotypes and thus alternative self-concepts can be encouraged.132