This study provides detailed accounts of the perspectives on teaching and learning
experienced by the instructors and participants in three career exploration programs for women.
One of the programs was located at a community college, one at a private college, and one was
offered through a non-profit agency. The perspectives of the women are represented by each
individual's expressed attitudes, feelings, and ideas about how they experienced teaching and
learning. I also examine and relate the accounts of the women to the ways in which teaching
processes and learning objectives were created, influenced, and/or constrained by the broader
social and administrative context in which the programs take place. Therefore, the study
addressed the following broad questions: (1) What values and attitudes toward teaching and
learning are expressed by instructors and how do they shape the pedagogical interactions that
take place in these career education programs? (2) What has been the participants' experience of
learning in these programs? And, (3) In what ways does the social, institutional, and political
context in which the programs take place affect the teaching/ learning environment?
This study originates from my interest as a feminist educator to gain a greater
understanding of how critical and feminist pedagogical approaches are manifested in actual
practice, in this case, three particular career exploration programs. Information for the study was
gathered from program instructors through semi-structured interviews; through an informal focus
group in each program with volunteer students; and by reviewing relevant program related
materials.
After providing detailed accounts of the perspectives of the instructors, participants, and
descriptions of each program, the external factors which create, influence, and constrain the
nature of the programs, and the voices of the instructors and participants are explored in relation
to the literature reviewed for the study. This analysis revealed that the instructors employed
teaching approaches which are consistent with the values and aims of critical feminist pedagogy.
However, teaching approaches were also applied which appear to reside within traditional
educational approaches. Thus, in these particular contexts, the instructors created and acted
within a teaching-learning environment which both reproduced and challenged the status quo.
The methodological approach utilized in this study illustrated how adult educators
concerned with the liberatory possibilities of adult education must invariably operationalize these
ideas in complex, constrained, and often contradictory social sites which act to shape the possibilities of instruction. It did so by directing attention to both the social actors and the social
and political processes that act to create and organize specific adult education activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4616 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Mullins, Kathleen Ann |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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