Critical reflection as feminist pedagogy: teaching feminist research in the field

ABSTRACT

A recent trend in gender and development research has been to equip local researchers with the skills to design and implement research projects that meaningfully resonate with them and their communities. In 2017, the International Women’s Development Agency initiated a three-year research project on women’s pathways to leadership as a collaborative exercise with women’s grassroots organizations based in Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, supported by established research practitioners (the authors). Taking Hollingsworth’s argument that teaching is itself a form of research, we present our findings on teaching non-traditional researchers in development contexts. We argue that a hallmark of feminist pedagogy must be critical reflection both on the structural conditions in which research is designed and implemented and on personal teaching practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist research
• feminist pedagogy
• development studies
• reflection
• women’s leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The work was carried out through a contract with Le Groupe-conseil Baastel ltée.

2 The project ended in June 2020, resulting in its own findings report, which is available at www.iwda.org.au.

3 Due to the limited number of researchers and their countries and organizations of origin, we anonymized each person quoted in this article and allocated an alphabetical character to protect their privacy. Permission to use partners’ quotes was sought and obtained in July 2020.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonia Palmieri

Sonia Palmieri is a Gender Policy Fellow with the Department of Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. Her research interests include women’s political participation and leadership in the Pacific and globally, gender-sensitive parliaments, and capacity building for gender and feminist research. In pursuing these research agendas over the past 20 years, she has worked across academic, development, and parliamentary institutions, publishing for both academic and practitioner audiences.

Melissa MacLean

Melissa MacLean is a specialist in gender, research, and evaluation at Le Groupe-conseil Baastel ltée, an international development consulting firm based in Canada. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and has three decades of experience in research, policy, evaluation, knowledge translation, and program support, working with civil society organizations, governments, United Nations (UN) agencies, and others around the globe on initiatives that support just, inclusive, and sustainable institutions and societies. With a feminist approach to gender equality and women’s empowerment, she has a particular interest in issues of participation, governance, and social development.