Teaching Resources | Talking G/WS Teaching

While all aspects of the G/WS Africa initiative contributed to the broad programme goal of strengthening gender and women's studies, teaching was also addressed specifically through a strategy designed to work on improving intellectual content and delivery. The emphasis on teaching reflected our understanding of the importance of developing future capacity in African institutions. As with other aspects of the project, a participatory action research methodology was utilised. This was put into practise through a carefully facilitated dialogic process, namely the initiating of sustained conversations between African lecturers working in the field of G/WS. To this end a more specialised group of experienced teachers was convened as the ‘curriculum working group' (CWG'), but later renamed the ‘teaching resources group' (TRG). The change in nomenclature reflected the manner in which the TRG developed a deeper understanding of ‘curriculum' and redefined what it meant to ‘strengthen' teaching. Two things made this process particularly interesting. First it identified the challenges of developing teaching in an emergent, trans-disciplinary area of scholarship, that was often poorly understood by the mainstream academic community. Secondly, like the majority of African academics, the lecturers and students were working in contexts that often lacked traditional teaching resources (published books and journals, professional associations and regular discipline-based conferences) but the situation was more pronounced given the relatively recent emergence of gender studies, as compared to traditional disciplines, most of which can be traced back to 19th and 20th century European origins.

Perhaps these particular conditions explain why in the course of the TRG's dialogue (which took place through a combination of meetings and online exchanges), it very soon became apparent that ‘teaching' needed to be conceptualised in ways that went far beyond the more conventional understandings. Conventional understandings have tended to work with an idea of curriculum as in course outlines and contents. [1]

These conversations involved several kinds of talking and required a higher-than-usual degree of reflexivity. In the working meetings of the TRG, it meant generating experiential discussions and reflections among academic staff with substantial practical experience of teaching in the field of G/WS in African institutions, and taking this knowledge base as the starting point for a process of sharing, analysing ongoing practices, tools and skills. The knowledge and experience pooled in these meetings was synthesised and developed in the ensuing months, ultimately resulting in the design of the teaching resource that is presented here, in the Teaching Resource pages of the G/WSAfrica website.

These pages seek to reflect the ethos developed within the TRG in two major ways.

First, it is regarded as a resource explicitly designed to support transformation – both within the classroom, and beyond it. For this to be possible, the teachers themselves had to undergo some changes, mainly in their understanding of why, who and what they teach, and the pedagogies they deploy to pursue their teaching objectives. Between meetings it meant regular dialoguing on the dedicated list-serve set up for the purpose. Online conversations also continued between sub-groups working on specified areas of teaching, of which there were 6 groups of 2-3 persons tasked with working on sexuality, identity and culture, law, politics, policy, and in the last stages a 7th pairs was established to compile resources on feminist theory and practice.

Secondly, it is presented and disseminated as a working tool to be actively used, engaged with and - we hope - developed and changed by teachers to suit the local intellectual challenges of their particular contexts. This means that it is definitely not a finished product that can be downloaded and delivered to students as a ready-made recipe for any course. Where particular course outlines are included, these are merely offered as examples of what can be done. In disseminating this collectively developed teaching resource, the TRG hopes to encourage other teachers to pursue similar processes and strategies to enhance the teaching and learning work they are engaged in, and to engage critically with all that is presented here.

One of the TRG's important conclusions is that there can be no ‘ideal curriculum', because the dynamism and diversity of our ongoing transformation processes require the continuous improvisation and ingenuity that in fact already characterises African G/WS teaching in ways that have not hitherto surfaced or reflected upon. In order to address particular national, institutional and classroom cultures and contexts, teachers and learners using this ‘resource' are required to actively engage with it, to use it to negotiate their own processes as best they can within differently constraining environments, and to work to fill their teaching with their own realities and perspectives.

Overview of the Strengthening Teaching Work
The participatory methodology included a range of activities that have contributed to strengthening teaching in African contexts, and these can broadly be separated into 3 components:

Component One: Mapping and reviewing the field
This aspect of the work involved the following activities, the outputs of which are already available on this site:

•  bibliographic review essays and annotation (see Lewis 2002 and Lewis 2003)
•  profiling the institutional resources and capacity of sites (see Boswell 2002, Directory 2003, Map 2004)
•  profiling the teaching areas (see Boswell 2002)
•  profiling the existing use ICT's by academic staff (click for web statistics)

Component Two: Talking G/WS - the TRG (Talking G/WS Teaching)

The pooling, reflecting on and activating of knowledge (the TRG meetings, the list-serve discussions, applying the insights in the field and working towards core resources for wider use among G/WS scholars in Africa)

-moving from broad bibliographies into deeper and more selective engagement with specialised areas (see Teaching Resources: Teaching About Sexuality and Teaching About the Law)
-broadening the definition of curriculum beyond reading lists and course outlines into deeper understandings of activist pedagogy and transformation's teaching content and resources - see background papers:

The Emergence of Feminist Thought in African Intellectual Arenas and
African Feminist Pedagogies

Component Three: Continuing the TRG work online
This involved continuing the work initiated in the TRG meetings, where small groups engaged in curriculum drafting exercises. The TRG list-serve was established for the purpose of online group work and consultations. This, and the more specialised work of key individuals, enabled the completion of the Teaching Resource pages included here.

Talking Teaching G/WS

The strengthening of teaching was approached through a number of working meetings and email communications that took place within the TRG. These are synthesised here as a series of four areas of dialogue, through which the TRG developed its ideas, and which ultimately enabled the production of the teaching resources shared on these pages.

The Four Dialogues:

•  Talking about pedagogy
•  Teaching about Sexuality, Culture and Identity
•  Teaching about Feminist Theory and Activism: Politics, Law and Policy
•  Using ICTs to strengthen G/WS in African contexts

Dialogue 1. Talking about Pedagogy

A dialogue over pedagogy began when the 14 TRG members first met and we realised that it was possibly the first time that a group of teachers working in African universities had ever come together to discuss the challenges of teaching and strengthening gender studies, not to mention to confront the social transformation agenda implicit in the emergence of the field on this continent in the post-colonial era. This Conversation was later developed into an essay:

Feminist Thought in African Contexts

The discussion of pedagogy began with a process of sharing individual experiences of learning and teaching. Through this the group deepened their knowledge of one another as teachers and thinkers, and began to delineate the commonalities and differences in their personal histories as women whose career paths have led them into teaching in the field of gender and women's studies.

It emerged that the TRG group shared a level of gender consciousness that had been forged through a variety of personal, profession and political encounters with gender inequality, and many direct experiences of women's marginalisation and oppression. They regarded experiences of feminist activism and the degree of resistance that such actions had often provoked as having contributed to their intellectual development.

This dialogue on pedagogy then further explored the processes through which learning and teaching occur in disparate African environments.

What do we teach?
Where do we teach?
Who do we teach?
How do we teach?

This conversation generated a number of observations and ideas about teaching and learning processes:

It was recognised that teachers enter the space of authority in the classroom, with an accumulated experience of being taught, which, in turn, influences their understanding of teaching and learning. It is therefore useful to reflect on those experiences and consider the multiple ways in which learning actually takes place – both within and beyond the formal classrooms and lecture halls.

The group concluded that learning takes place in formal and informal spaces and is not always a linear process, but often follows much more iterative and convoluted routes, with forward and backward slippages. People learn not so much by passive absorption of facts as by thinking through various possibilities and making choices, and by reflecting on their own and other people's experience. We do not just learn what we are taught, but also learn through various forms of interaction, including rebellion and resistance towards what one is expected or directed to learn in the classroom. The importance of the learning that occurs through other socialising institutions such as the family, community, media and cultural institutions also became apparent. While it was considered to be important for teachers to own their authority as teachers, this was best done within the context of mutually respectful relationships rather than authoritarian ones. Effective teachers facilitate learning by responding well to challenges, by displaying patience, and good listening skills. The Intellectual integrity and consistency of teachers are also conducive to learning. The most engaging teachers were found to have various ways of making teaching interesting, such as using humour, personal experiences, positive models and real life examples. Teachers who are considered (or consider themselves) to be contributing to transformation tend to make connections between what they are teaching and ongoing processes of social activism.

Given the legacies of continental histories of colonialism, gender equality, and Africa's positioning with the global knowledge order, the conversation also highlighted the value of helping students to be confident about themselves as Africans and as women (or as men). This was seen as attainable by ensuring adequate African content into courses, challenging western notions of life and culture, and valuing African experiences and the contributions of African women and men to the wider world.

A number of factors were also identified as inhibiting learning, among them authoritarian, abusive and or intimidating behaviour by teachers and/or other learners, sexist attitudes and discriminatory behaviour, dull and uninspiring teaching methods, and linguistic and/or cultural barriers. The imposition of an official curriculum by governments, as had been the case in apartheid South Africa and other dictatorial states was also recognised.

However, some inhibiting factors were also identified as stimulating or provoking learning, insofar as these could also provoke resistance and alternative thinking, not to mention protest actions by students in a number of African contexts, as has been observed to occur in Nigeria (student and teacher protests against World Bank loans during the 1980s) and in South Africa, (e.g. students and teachers protested against Bantu education, the Soweto Uprising of 1976). Many women are motivated to pursue studies or scholarly careers by experiences of discrimination, and their desire to advance beyond conventional expectations and the subordinate roles arrogated to them as women. This dialogue reflexively developed thinking about what an African and feminist pedagogic perspective might comprise and, was later developed into the essay on:

African Feminist Pedagogic Perspectives

Interested scholars can also refer to Feminist Africa 1: Intellectual Politics

Dialogue 2. Talking About Teaching: Sexuality, Culture and Identity

This conversation came about first because of the need to ground teaching in understandings of who we are, how we view the world and how we seek to change it as teachers of gender and women's studies. Given the centrality of sexuality and sexual cultures in the lives and identities of women, we, the subject of sexuality, took on strategic as well as intellectual importance. This began with a discussion of the recent experiences of feminist academic, Sylvia Tamale, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Jurisprudence at Makerere University . At the beginning of February 2003, Tamale supported the inclusion of sexual orientation as one of the grounds for non-discrimination in the proposed Equal Opportunities Commission legislation. Her position - that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a violation of human rights - came under fire from the Minister of Ethics and Integrity. The ensuing debate in Uganda dominated the media, and provoked homophobic attacks on Tamale, and on homosexuals in Uganda who were variously deemed to be ‘sick', ‘corrupted by Western values', ‘unnatural' and/or ‘immoral' in the eyes of the public.

Tamale's experience points to the need for African researchers to carry out more research and teaching in the field of sexuality to overcome some of the knowledge gaps that became apparent in the debate. In the course of the dialogue around teaching about sexuality, it was found that it is difficult for people to talk about a topic that is often taboo, and it was concluded that the meaning, quality and context of the silences around sexuality had to be taken seriously and be better understood.

The discussion revealed some of the obstacles to talking openly about sexuality. The fact that doing so starkly reveals the unjust and unequal power relations between men and women, which we are all socialised NOT to talk about, to the extent that doing so places teachers and learners at risk of embarrassment, ridicule, and derision. Matters of sexuality reach into the core of people sense of identity, and come imbued with religious and cultural burdens that often hinder, or at least circumscribe the extent to which the subject can be broached. The language of sexuality and desires is often non-verbal and can elude overt and explicit discussion.

A second round of this dialogue generated multiple and wide-ranging meanings of sexuality, a broad term that included:

· Heterosexual marriage, motherhood, domesticity, reproduction, fertility;
· Men's use of ideological perceptions of womanhood (cultural, religious, traditional) to control women, particularly ‘deviant' women (various forms of violence and limitations on mobility, thought, action, ways of being);
· Homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality;
· Health issues related to the family;
· Cultural practices related to sexuality;
· Sexual desire, pleasure, fun, freedom, adventure, sexual satisfaction;
· Women's use of their bodies to negotiate for power;
· Institutional regulation and control of sexuality;
· Pornography, consumerism and voyeurism that objectifies women;
· Trafficking in women, abuse of women, violence against women;
· Abuse of children and paedophilia;
· Birth control, prevention of pregnancy, abortions;
· Forbidden pleasures and desires, inhibitions;
· Socialisation, religion, power of fear of stigmatisation and hatred;
· Media messages about older women and older men, menopause, mid-life crises, monogamy, polygamy and polyandry, affairs with younger / older partners.

To compound the terrain further, the discussion drew attention to the cultural, religious, social and geographical differences in African sexualities, cautioning against over-simplifying understandings of sexuality in Africa.

The third round of this dialogue also focused on sexuality, addressing the particular challenges of teaching about sexuality on African campuses, and considered the pedagogical questions that arise in an area that is widely perceived as controversial, if not disreputable, unless treated as a biomedical or health condition or under a demographic rubric (population studies).

We found ourselves emphasising the need to work in ways that do not alienate or overwhelm learners, and which are strategic enough to avoid provoking the kind of backlash that overtly radical or confrontational styles might generate. This required a degree of institutional acumen, and an understanding of the status hierarchies and the teacher's positions within this. Teachers need to be open-minded and sensitive to nuances themselves. It became clear that there were already a number of strategies being used by teachers, most of whom are highly adept at engaging with students in their locale, and make good use of their familiarity with local contexts and cultures in order to facilitate learning.

The complex relationship between sexuality and gender clearly need to be developed carefully, given the levels of confusion currently prevailing (view a model which illustrates this). Given the centrality of sexuality to other aspects of identity and culture, and to their transformation away from repressive and inequitable legacies towards more self-affirming, liberatory and egalitarian possibilities, teaching in these areas was defined as a strategic imperative for gender studies. Neglecting to attend to matters of desire, subjectivity and emotional life was seen as evading the fact that these lie at the core of social and political life, and pervade institutional cultures in ways that can either retard or advance transformative processes, and therefore need to be attended to.

The conversation on teaching about sexuality was later developed into a teaching resource on Sexuality [view resource]. Further resources on teaching about culture and identity are currently being developed

Interested scholars are referred to Feminist Africa 2: Changing Cultures.

Dialogue 3: Talking about Teaching: Feminist Theory and Activism, Politics, Law, and Policy

This conversation began with a focus on intellectual activism, and what it means to carry out transformative teaching in the more familiar and established terrain of gender studies in law, politics and pedagogy. Feminist teachers are openly committed to transforming gender relations, and see teaching and learning as route for pursuing this transformation. It was concluded that the difference between conventional teaching and feminist approaches to gender and women's studies lay in two main challenges:

•  grounding the teaching and learning in ongoing feminist activism in the intellectual, political, legal and policy arenas,
•  insisting on bringing African experiences and applications to bear on all concepts and theories, rather than passively applying prevailing models that have mostly been developed in the very different social and political contexts of Western Europe and North America.

Transformative teaching from a G/WS perspective also requires that learning be grounded in the ongoing realities of gender struggles in African contexts, i.e. in the feminist theory and activism that has emerged and developed in post-colonial African contexts. This would help to bridge the persisting gap between the academic world, and the communities in which academic institutions are located.

Students have different needs, agendas and degrees of activism. Activist students are in the minority, and this impacts on understandings of transformation, to some extent determining what can be taught in the classroom space. It was felt that encouraging critical thinking is essential and the best way to maintain rapport with students is to try to understand what attracts, repels or engages them through regular course evaluations. The aim of transformative G/WS teaching is after all, not to guide students to a pre-determined conclusion but to inform and inspire them to articulate their own questions, to search for their own answers, and to find ways of taking individual or collective action in pursuit of their interests.

However, in seeking to keep teaching current, and to be able to bring real examples of legal, political and policy activism, teachers find it necessary to draw resources from beyond the pool of existing published material that might (or might not) be available to teachers. The difficulty arises because many highly relevant issues and current activism is neither documented nor theorised. Teachers therefore need to be alert to the limitations of international publications, and to make particular effort to source material from local archives, social movements and organisations and policy-making bodies, and to retain close contact with ongoing research, newsletters, policy-papers, workshop reports and other media.

The particular role of women's movements in effecting social change has long been recognised among African political and social movements. Yet there is very little scholarship addressing the contemporary mobilisations of women in Africa's 54 countries. The significant and diverse modes of activism in the rapidly changing continental contexts have remained largely un-documented and un-analysed. Although several texts have been produced in Uganda and South Africa in the last five years, very little of the existing work has been conducted from the perspective of a local feminist analysis, or driven by the intellectual and strategic concerns of activists themselves. This has led to a situation in which despite a long history of political, legal and policy activism, the vast repository of experiences accumulated by African women's movements have not been adequately reflected upon or theorised, with the result that contemporary activists and scholars are deprived of a highly useful resource. The need for African G/WS scholars to address this knowledge deficit as a matter of priority is clear.

Shereen Essof, graduate student at the University of Cape Town, presented a case study of the Zimbabwean women's movement, observing that the collective expression of women's interests is intrinsically linked to the formation of their political identities. In the current Zimbabwean context, gender politics are dynamic, contested and continuously improvised, as they response to changing national political conditions. Essof's own interests, as both a graduate student and an activist, have led her to identify the importance of the link between activism and the academy and the potential for this link to be one of the markers of transformative teaching.

The dialogue on activism clearly illustrated that feminist activism in African contexts has very often focused on the state and international development, with feminists seeking legal reforms, insisting that policy-making be sensitive to gender and that women play a greater role in politics and decision-making.

Theoretical resources and conceptual tools that pertain to African contexts appear to be very underdeveloped, leaving teachers to rely on ‘universal' (i.e. Western theoretical texts that are not adequate to the task of deepening understanding or explaining particular African situations, let alone to contributing to African epistemological and social transformations. The need to develop theorisations and theories out of our own complex and changing realities and struggles was identified as a scholarly priority which needs to be integrated into all areas of teaching.

This dialogue led to the production of a bibliographic listing on African feminist theory and activism, and related international work.

See Also Feminist Africa 4 (forthcoming in 2005) which will address Women's Mobilisations

Teaching About Politics and Political Activism

The dialogue on how feminists might teach about politics was initiated by Winnie Byanyima, a Ugandan Member of Parliament. She outlined key aspects from her years of experience as a gender activist, politician and self-identified feminist, so providing an original real life scenario that raised several areas of discussion.

The lack of a strong gender constituency constrains the effectiveness and credibility the women's movement has in acting as a voice for women's interests. Women have been reluctant to engage more in the African political arena because it has until more recently been dominated by military conflicts and militarism, and in the Ugandan case, affirmative action seats have sought to mitigate the male-domination of the political sphere.

A second area of weakness is women's limited organisational capacity and the fact that elite women are often the ones in leadership positions and therefore are not always sensitive to the ethnic, culture and class diversities among women.

Various efforts have been made to train women candidates. While these have sometimes tried to develop a feminist agenda by encouraging women seeking office to incorporate feminist issues into their campaigns, very little has been achieved because of women's tendency to perform in ways that affirm the most patriarchal aspects of their traditions and ingratiate themselves to male leaders. This pointed to the need for women to develop and assert alternative political identities in order to engage more critically with the status quo. This is something that can be taken up in teaching and training strategies, designed to better equip women for political leadership.

There is a need to develop and work with conceptualisations of feminism that are not limited to matters conventionally understood to be the business of women's movements, but also to extend to activism against corruption and militarism, and for the democratisation of state and policy processes, all of which have effects of women's status and lives.

In teaching politics and G/WS, the diverse variants of gender politics need to be addressed. Teachers need to develop students' strategic acumen, their ability to identify key political players and their capacity to improvise strategies. This requires the development of a framework for teaching politics within G/WS, and a research agenda that addresses the current features of women's involvement in politics across the continent.

See also Feminist Africa 3: Gender and National Politics contains an interview with Winnie Byanyima

The www.gwsafrica.org website carries the text of Winnie Byanyima's International Women's Day presentation, hosted by the AGI at UCT: Being a Feminist Politician

Teaching About the Law as an Activist Tool
The conversation was led by Sylvia Tamale, who began by acknowledging the extent of legal activism carried out by Africa 's women's movements, and noting its many achievements. Women all over Africa have used the law to pursue struggles for gender equality. Feminist jurisprudence has contributed both to feminist theory and to the struggle for transformation of gender relations. Positive interventions that African scholars can draw on include the many instances in which more gender-responsive legislation has been introduced, either in the constitution, or in the statute books, e.g. against domestic violence in South Africa, in favour of women being recognised as full adults able to inherit property in Zimbabwe (during the 1980's). However, there are also frequent backward slippages, often on the basis of male-orchestrated re-assertions of custom that are discriminatory towards women. Feminists have also successfully lobbied for affirmative action, for the provision of legal aid and legal literacy services.

At the same time, it is important to remember that the laws that are applied derive from Western legal traditions, and for Africans it is important to address the challenges presented by colonial legacies (including, for example, customary law), and to carry out legal research that can support and advance the use of the law as a tool for effecting transformation.

Despite some successes, African legal feminism is still plagued by certain limitations in achieving transformation. In general, legal training is often not transformative, emphasising technical knowledge of the law, rather than the deployment of legal training for radical ends, and this can limit the extent of activism. The separation of legal theory and practice is compounded by the separation between the academy and legal practice. Academics generally maintain a liberal perception of the law as ‘above' social realities and partisan interests, or as ‘neutral' when in fact it is often conservative, unless turned to radical purposes.

African legal feminism is under-theorised and has limited itself to certain subjects (violence against women, constitutional rights, family law), perhaps to the neglect of other important areas such as land reform and labour rights.

Teaching Resource on the Law by Sylvia Tamale

Policy Activism was explored through a critical discussion of the well-known policy strategy of the Women's Budget Initiative, which has been taken to more than 20 countries across the world by Debbie Budlender, a South African policy activist, who initiated the discussion.

Gender Budgeting has been widely taken up in a number of African countries, but its impact is highly dependent on the nature of the political and administrative processes of national budgeting, and the extent to which women are mobilised within government to push the process.

More broadly, it was observed that G/WS teachers and scholars need to be critical thinkers whose ideas are not limited to servicing government agendas, but also offer visions that go beyond the production of policy frameworks to consider a range of strategies of effecting social transformation, especially given the limited reach of government in terms of the lived reality of most African people, and its withdrawal from many of the areas in which women have recorded the greatest gains.

Teachers and learners need to be conversant with critical conceptual skills that they can use to analyse policies, and to actively engage with policy-makers to push the boundaries of change processes. This is especially so given that today's learners will become tomorrow's policy makers, who may be in a position to advance gender equality policies.

Teachers find bringing politicians, legal practitioners, policy-makers and activists into the classroom, and finding other ways of using their experience (interviews, biographies, discussions and media reports about their work) to be a very useful way of linking the academic teaching to ongoing realities and the multiple contexts in which transformation is being pursued.

Dialogue 4: Using ICT to Strengthen Teaching in Gender and Women's Studies
This dialogue set out to share and review the ICT strategies being pursued within the project, and how effectively they were in fact working to strengthen teaching and research among the scholars now participating in the feminist studies network through the G/WS-Africa list-serve and website. The aims included improving access to African research and other information resources to support teaching in G/WS, and overcoming the sense of intellectual isolation and institutional marginalisation that members of the network had expressed, and which had motivated its establishment at the project launch workshop in January 2002.

African contexts pose particular challenges to the use of ICT, most obviously around infrastructure and access to the world-wide web. Furthermore the levels of access and capacity differ widely across the continent. These challenges have been addressed by the careful combination of face-to-face working meetings and continual collaboration online via email distribution groups (the TRG, the Feminist Africa editorial advisory group), the main G/WS-Africa list-serve, and continued off-line networking, sharing and discussion.

Dissemination also relies on a dual strategy developed in response to ongoing feedback on the question of access, which indicated the need to make resources available in both hard copy and electronic form, in order not to compound the digital disadvantage of those with less access.

Younger, less experienced teachers had a sense of confidence to interact both in this space and in their own institutional spaces because of the confidence they had gained from attending the meetings and contributing and gaining from those spaces. They also felt supported by this network when facing challenging in own institutional spaces. There had been a sharing of knowledge and experience and a sense of solidarity. Online learning environments generally equate to higher levels of interaction both among “students” and between “student” and “teacher”.

This contrasts to more radical theories, usually located within adult learning, and developed for example in the notion of a ‘hidden curriculum'. The TRG took the ‘hidden' aspects of the curriculum seriously enough to place these at the centre, in order to confront the particular challenges of working as feminist scholars in post-colonial, African institutions that we envisage as having a key role to play in social transformation, and gender studies as a site for intervening proactively in the ‘hidden' production of gender identities.

Footnote

[1] This contrasts to more radical theories, usually located within adult learning, and developed for example in the notion of a ‘hidden curriculum'. The TRG took the ‘hidden' aspects of the curriculum seriously enough to place these at the centre, in order to confront the particular challenges of working as feminist scholars in post-colonial, African institutions that we envisage as having a key role to play in social transformation, and gender studies as a site for intervening proactively in the ‘hidden' production of gender identities.