Feminist Pedagogy in the Elementary Classroom: An Agenda for Practice

Because elementary education is predominantly made up of women, it is interesting that not much research in the field has been conducted with an inherently feminist perspective. Lisa Goldstein notes that developmental psychology has been the theoretical foundation for early childhood education--an irony, especially considering the pervasiveness of masculinist discourse within that field. The authors of this paper, following a thorough review of the literature on this topic, concluded that, with few exceptions, feminist pedagogical practices are relatively unstudied in and virtually unapplied to the elementary school level. This paper explores the possibilities for student-empowering pedagogical practice on the elementary level and suggests a new agenda for research into feminist teaching in K-5 classrooms.