Rethinking Pedagogical Practices: Alternative Approaches to Feminist Education

Abstract

This thesis explores alternative approaches to higher education, questioning current pedagogical practices and envisioning future possibilities. More specifically, the research focuses on creative and collaborative methods of teaching and learning, challenging the constructed divisions between producers and receivers of knowledge. Drawing on interviews I conducted with students and lecturers in the GEMMA Master’s Degree programme, I analyse some of the obstacles to transforming the university – including institutional pressures and the growing influence of neoliberalism – and I examine prospective areas for change. The research also centres decolonial approaches, highlighting the need to disrupt and deconstruct conventional learning structures and the potential to imagine new forms of engagement. Throughout the thesis, I foreground the importance of collective work, discussing co-creational teaching strategies and emphasising shared accountability for what happens in the classroom space. Additionally, I question the different spaces where learning takes place, and I underline the role of friendship and interpersonal connections in educational processes. Focusing on Gender Studies classes, this work also provides a self-reflexive analysis of feminist education, encouraging more critical interrogation of the ways in which we allow and perpetuate unequal power relations. Looking forward, I invite further discussion and call for us to continue questioning, to think beyond the current confines and to collectively work toward alternative futures for higher education.