Newcomb Institute Releases a Guide to Feminist Teaching
By Maya Schioppo (LA ’22)
This article was originally published in Tulane Today on September 29, 2020.
Despite Tulane’s student population being 59% female and 41% male, undergraduate professors are only 36% female. These figures combined with the sudden switch to online learning pushed Dr. Clare Daniel and Dr. Jacquelyne Thoni Howard of Newcomb Institute to create the “Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online.”
The guide describes feminist pedagogy for online teaching and learning, and includes sample assignments, Canvas tutorials and other technology tools, and campus resources. It has now reached 8,500 views, is being circulated on Twitter and is getting praise from the wider academic community including those outside of Tulane University.
At the time of the guide’s creation, Dr. Daniel and Dr. Howard did not realize just how much the academic community needed a guide such as this one. Now that it is done, the creators reflected by saying, “I’m not sure we realized we were filling a need for the wider feminist academic community when we began creating the guide, but the very positive reactions we have gotten indicate this,” said Daniel. “It’s great to see people engaging with the guide and passing along their feedback and suggestions. We look forward to continuing to develop it into a robust digital resource for feminist instructors across fields.”
While the guide was made with online learning in mind, it can most definitely be applied to physical classrooms as well as virtual ones. Dr. Howard says she hopes, “that with the right instructional technology tools and intentional integration of feminist pedagogy principles, instructors could construct dynamic and active online learning communities similar to what occurs in the traditional classroom.”
Dr. Clare Daniel
Dr. Jacquelyne Thoni Howard
Lauren Lehmann (LA ‘21), one of the co-presidents from Feminist Alliance of Students at Tulane, encourages people to read the guide, saying “it is so necessary to include increased gender and sexuality education in Tulane’s curriculum to send Tulane alumni out into the world with a well-rounded and inclusive world view.”
With effort from the entire Tulane community, hopefully this guide for feminist teaching can be implemented to create an inclusive and encouraging educational environment.
