Fight the power: situated learning and conscientisation in a gendered community of practice

Abstract

In this paper, I employ situated learning theory to explore gendered processes of marginalisation and conscientisation in a social movement organisation. Using a student activist organisation as a case study, I explain women's awareness of and resistance to masculine performances of leadership and decision-making through the concept of gendered communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation. I explore how gender inequality is performed in a community of practice, and how it both impedes and facilitates learning and resistance through legitimate peripheral participation. I attempt to bridge situated learning and conscientisation to better theorise the learning and resistance that occur when people are marginalised within communities of practice.

Keywords:

• situated learning
• conscientisation
• consciousness-raising
• activism
• gendered community of practice
• social movement learning

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the respondents of this research for their activism and participation. Thanks also to Andrew Kohan, Indigo Esmonde, Peter Sawchuk, Sara Carpenter, Helen Colley, Sue Carter, Kate Curnow, Genevieve Ritchie, Ian Hussey, and Bradley Wilson for their helpful feedback throughout the research and the writing process. Additional thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and the Gender and Education editors for their administrative work and support.

Notes

1 Conscientisation is a process of developing critical awareness of the social and material world through reflection and action (Freire 1969).

2 ‘SWEPT UP’ and all participants' names are pseudonyms.

3 Reproductive labour is the labour that makes other work possible or allows a worker to reproduce her own labour power. For example, cooking, childcare, and cleaning are considered reproductive labour because this work allows people to do waged labour and reproduces future generations of workers (James, Rediker and Lopez 2012).

4 Critiques that centre on race and racialisation within communities of practice remain marginal in the literature. This is an important avenue for further research and theorisation that is related to my work, but outside the scope of this paper.