Herein, Leland Spencer provides a review of four book selections while reflecting on paradoxes regularly faced by feminist teachers (and scholars, activists, and thinkers). The books include: (1) Bradley, Harriet. "Gender." Cambridge: Polity, 2012. Print; (2) Murphy, Michael J., and Elizabeth N. Ribarsky, eds. "Activities for…

This paper explores promiscuous black feminism by juxtaposing black feminism, Foucualt's poststructuralism, and my grandmother. The tensions created by these juxtapositions illuminate the ways black feminism and poststructuralism are resources and challenges to each other, and how both offer understandings of the relations at play that shape…

Recent feminist philosophers of science have argued that feminist values can contribute to rational decisions about which scientific theories to accept. On this view, increasing the number of feminist scientists is important for ensuring rational and objective theory acceptance. The Underdetermination Thesis has played a key role in arguments for…

This paper examines the relation between situated cognition theory in science education, and feminist standpoint theory in philosophy of science. It shows that situated cognition is an idea borrowed from a long since discredited philosophy of science. It argues that feminist standpoint theory ought not be indulged as it is a failed challenge to…

History has a habit of ignoring women. Thirty years ago one thought that re-emerging women's movement would never be dumped in the same way previous feminist generations were consigned to the dustbin of history. It took feminist activists and scholars; women trade unionists and health workers; feminist writers, publishers and artists; and the…

Janet Chafetz dismisses Audre Lorde's dictum that you cannot dismantle the master's house using the master's tools. Instead, she argues compellingly that feminists draw from the same tool kit from which all social scientists draw and not from feminist theory and feminist methodology. It is perhaps an indication of how far we have come that four…

In a recent paper, members from the London Feminist Salon Collective reflected on the vexed problem of agency in poststructuralist theory and asked, "as feminist educational researchers, where do we go from here?" The issue remains pressing as agency, both individual and collective, is at the heart of the feminist, and indeed, all radical…

The purpose of this study was to examine gender dynamics in educational leadership doctoral cohorts and explore the propensity for educational leadership programs to unintentionally perpetuate inequity through continued silence and unawareness of issues related to gender. The study includes narratives from two women cohort members and two…

This essay attempts to demonstrate how transgender theories can inspire pedagogical methods that complement feminist compositionist pedagogical approaches to understanding the narration of gender as a social construct. By examining sample student writing generated by a prompt inspired by transgender theories, the author's analysis suggests how…

In this essay, Morwenna Griffiths considers the effect of feminization on the practices of education. She outlines a feminist theory of practice that draws critically on theories of embodiment, diversity, and structures of power to show that any practice is properly seen as fluid, leaky, and viscous. Examining different and competing…

Feminist ideas and practices permeate the consciousness, relationships, and politics of women and men across continents. Certainly, they are central to work in the scientific study of family structures and processes. It is exciting to engage in discussion and debate with other feminist scholars about the relative contributions of feminist theories…

While working in a one-year position at Grinnell College, I was assigned to teach two sections of Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies (GWS). Although I had never taught in the discipline before, I decided that my course would need a social-justice component in order to ensure that students would understand GWS as both an academic discipline…

In this paper, I analyze the theorization of adolescent femininity within three popular cultural texts about girls and schooling written by women and published in the United States during the 1990s. The books, referred to as "Ophelia narratives," include Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan's (1992) "Meeting at the Crossroads," Mary Pipher's (1994)…

Since traditional epistemology has not been able to present a generality but rather has represented a male perspective as if it is general, neutral, and inclusive of women, then there is the possibility of offering a feminist epistemology. Thus, the critique of the tradition has to come first, to create a space where feminists can begin to…

This paper asserts that whether the issue is teen pregnancy, sexual harassment in schools, or the underutilization of women's leadership in schools, little funding goes to research or programs putting women at the center of these issues. At first glance, the deliberations of school boards, deans, judges, lawmakers, and professional associations…