What is Integral Feminist Pedagogy? (part 1)

Integral feminist pedagogy (IFP) is an educational philosophy centered on liberating our minds and hearts from patriarchal conditioning, culture, and religion. It envisions the classroom as a sacred space wherein students and teachers analyze history, religions, myths, political systems and identities through a feminist and decolonial lens while simultaenously connecting to the mysteries of the soul and spirit. While IFP challenges the erasure of spirituality from modern secular education, it is not a faith-based system. It is committed to the ideal of secularism inasmuch as this is understood as freedom to practice one’s spiritual tradition and freedom from religious coercion. As Charles Taylor argues in The Secular Age it, this concept of secular society sees it as “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.” IFP takes a broader view of spirituality than Taylor, however, expanding beyond “belief in God” to encompass …

I developed integral feminist pedagogy by weaving together many strands of educational practice. The “integral” in IFP is inspired by the integral philosophy developed by Aurobindo Ghose and Mirra Alfassa. Aurobindo and the Mother asserted that education must go beyond exposing students to knowledge about the material world to encompass the development of  “whole-person wisdom” including physical capacities, intellectual discernment, imagination, emotional awareness, and spiritual development.[1] (How is this done?)

Talk about CIIS here.

Integral educators seek to:

1.     Create spaces where the numinous dimension of existence can be explored without forwarding any particular religious or philosophical dogma

2.     Engage students’ inner lives in a way that supports their psychological and spiritual drive toward wholeness

3.     Embrace multiplicity, complexity, and paradox while encouraging students to do the same.

4.     Foster hope in the possibility of both individual and social transformation.

5.     Provide tools for students to explore deeper questions about the meaning and purpose of their lives.

[1] Jeremie Zulaski. “A Complete Integral Education: Five Principal Aspects.” Integral Review, 13(1). (2017: 20-29).

IFP brings together this focus on holistic development with a feminist perspective on power, privilege, and embodied knowledge.

Like integral education, feminist pedagogy encompasses many different philosophies and teaching strategies. Nonetheless, there are key ideas that unite feminist educators, who:

·      Believe that education can and should inspire social and political changes that engender equity and liberation of oppressed groups.

·      Engage students in historically situated analyses of power and privilege

·      Embrace narratives of personal experiences as sources of knowledge and solidarity

·      Support students in unlearning internalized oppression and internalized privilege.

What happens when we bring these together?