Since last September, I have been
studying for a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice at UoB; a teaching
qualification for HE which will also allow me to apply for accreditation by the
Higher Education Academy (HEA). I have been meaning to write some blog posts
about it but I have found studying part-time on top of working full-time,
keeping up with my writing, continuing to make and maintain friendships in
Bedford, and dealing with everything else that life entails quite demanding! I have
completed the first unit and found out this week that, subject to ratification
at the exam board in July, I have passed it (hooray!) and this week was also
the first session for the second and final unit.
We talked about “Big Thinkers” –
people who have influenced the way we think about and carry out our practice in
teaching – and some of the course staff shared theirs. I couldn’t help notice
that they were all men – Lacan, Heidegger et al. – and, whilst these figures
were undeniably significant, I couldn’t help but wonder about which women we
could come up with. I suspect it’s because of my ignorance of theorists, but I
could only think of one – Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary was in many ways the “mother
of feminism” – her text A Vindication of
the Rights of Women, published in 1792, is, as far as I’m aware, the first
text arguing for sexual equality, and in it her argument was that women needed
to gain equality with men for a happy society, and that the way to achieve this
was to educate girls. Education is a
hugely powerful thing operating in a context that goes way, way beyond the
classroom. Even now, recent events – the shooting of Malala, the abduction of
hundreds of girls from a school in Nigeria – demonstrate the power of education
and how it is feared by those in this world who wish to continue to oppress
women. As a teacher I am part of something much bigger than helping students
find journal articles for their coursework.
I’ve been thinking about this over
the past few days, and also the fact that I can’t think of any other female “Big
Thinkers “ in education right now, and I’ve decided I want to explore more
about educational theory, and in particular feminist educational theory. There’s
quite a bit of literature out there on it, and a new book about feministpedagogy in info lit teaching has been on my radar for a while, so I’m going to
make the time to learn more, and maybe make this my kind of focus for the
remainder of my course.
Oh, and Mary? Well she sadly died
shortly after giving birth to her second daughter, another Mary, but her
husband William Godwin shared her beliefs, and the girls were educated and
exposed to writers and philosophers of the time from an early age. Young Mary went
on to, at 19 years of age, pretty much invent science fiction…
