Blending in: reconciling feminist pedagogy and distance education across cultures

ABSTRACT

Distance education’s mandate to expand outreach to those with limited access to higher education makes it a particularly welcome mode for non-traditional women learners. Feminist pedagogy, which has tended to privilege the classroom space in the learning experience, has stopped short of a wholehearted acceptance of distance education which relies heavily on self-study and has become increasingly defined by technology aided learning in recent years. Despite this conflicted relationship, their shared democratising mandate and learner-centric approaches have made it possible to envision a rapprochement between the two. This has been aided by a revised understanding of ‘distance’, a dislodging of real/virtual dichotomies and an exploration of ‘hybrid’ spaces in the interest of feminist goals. After mapping these developments on an international canvas, I explore a similar reconciliation in the context of developing countries, specifically India. Here, I argue that despite the significance of democratisation, challenges posed by consumerist trends in mass-based open education call for suitable strategies, including a re-adaptation of the ‘hybrid’. Using the example of a ‘blended approach’ programme, I attempt to show how contextualised innovations may help to sustain the partnership between feminist pedagogy and Open & Distance Learning. It is hoped that such an illustration, despite its limitations and specificity, may provoke other experimentations in diverse socio-cultural contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance education
• feminist pedagogy
• international
• India
• consumerism
• democratisation
• hybrid
• virtual
• blended

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Dr Nilima Srivastava, along with all other members of the programme team at the School of Gender & Development Studies for their contributions in the development and ongoing support of the MAWGS programme, to the Regional Services Division, IGNOU for providing relevant data related to this research, and to all the MAWGS students who provided important feedback for my research. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and Dr. Shubhangi Vaidya for her insightful reading of previous drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Professor Anu Aneja is currently the Director of the School of Gender & Development Studies, IGNOU, New Delhi where she coordinates postgraduate programmes in Women’s and Gender studies. She has previously taught at Ohio Wesleyan University, in the USA. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Penn State University and a BA in French from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her current research interests are in the areas of contemporary feminist theory, motherhood studies, French and francophone women writers, feminist pedagogy and DE. She has published widely in the area of postmodern and postcolonial literary discourse, and is the author (with Shubhangi Vaidya) of Embodying Motherhood (Sage-Yoda Press, 2016). Her other interests include clay sculpture and creative writing.

Notes

1. See Mohanty’s (2003) elaboration of David Noble’s phrase ‘digital diploma mills’.

2. UK Open University: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=18650&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

3. For distinctions between behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism, see http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/301/how-do-people-learn-some-new-ideas-for-e-learning-designers

4. See Keegan (1997).

5. On campus mode was briefly introduced in 2011 and shut down in 2013.

6. For similar comments, see also Rose (1995), 54.

7. Programme Coordinators: Anu Aneja and Nilima Srivastava, School of Gender & Development Studies, IGNOU.

8. See Bourdieu (2011).

9. Based on a need assessment survey carried out in 2009; data analysis of survey done by Nilima Srivastava.

10. The MAWGS online forum has been listed as an example of “Best Practices in ODL” on a centralized site maintained by the University of Hyderabad: http://connect.uohyd.ac.in/cu-vcs-discussion-page/forum_topics/sharing-of-good-practices

11. Important updates such as the one regarding the December 2013 decision of the Supreme Court regarding Section 377 which overturned the previous (July 2009) High Court judgment de-criminalizing homosexuality have been a focal point of discussion.

12. I use these terms instead of the ‘active/passive’ binary since the witness space is not a passive one; it allows participants to be watchful, to assimilate without ostensibly participating.