A Curriculum for Women by Women: Curriculum Transformation in the University of Colombo

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A Curriculum for Women by WomenCurriculum
Transformation in the University of Colombo

• Asha Abeyasekera-Van Dort
• Sri Lanka

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Outline

• Background to the Study
• Objectives
• Methodology
• Introduction and Overview
• Theoretical Framework
• Key Findings
• Conclusions

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Introduction Overview

• Feminist scholars driving force
• No national policy or institutional or faculty
  policies
• Gender courses introduced in all Faculties
  Exceptions Science and Management
• Significant impact on Women Students
• No overt discouragement. Efforts have stagnated
  at the personal level and lack of advocacy
• Negligible influence on male students

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The Percolation of Gender in to the Curriculum

• Master of Arts in Women Studies mid 1980s
• Gender Studies Stream 2004

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Gender Units, Lessons, Lectures
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Theoretical Framework

• Barbara Scott (1994) - three central components
  of curriculum integration and transformation
• increasing personal knowledge
• transforming the content and structure of courses
• changing classroom dynamics

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A Curriculum by Women

• All initiatives to introduce gender in the
  curriculum have solely depended on the personal
  interest of the coordinators.
• . . . depends on the personal interest of the
  lecturers
• The motivation for this had been my doctoral
  studies in England it was a time when there was
  some very exciting feminist scholarship was
  taking place. I was influenced by it and also I
  found that it was very easy to make the students
  enthusiastic about it, really I had a
  constituency already out there with my students.

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A Curriculum for Women

• Impact on the
• Intellectual and Professional
• Career Aspirations
• Personal Transformation
• Awareness
• Identity and Sexuality
• Power Relations

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Multiple Power Structures The Classroom

• Hierarchical cultural construction of the
  student-teacher relationship
• Perpetuates the traditional transmission pedagogy
  
• Subtle signs of gender discrimination
• Emergence of womens voices
• Silence of men?

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Sustainability

• Continuance of gender courses when individuals
  are no longer there
• Over-subscribed time of change-makers
• Lack of formal capacity building
• Lack of facilities and resources
• Lack of institutional mechanism to collate work
  done on women and gender

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Sustainability (cont.)

• Organizational structures, mechanisms and
  societal expectations have continued to uphold
  the traditional, i.e., male modes of thinking and
  acting
• Marketability of womens studies

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Gender Mainstreaming

• Danger of tagging on women
• Personal transformation as pre-requisite to
  meaningful interventions
• Need for validation
• Women vs Gender

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Conclusions

• transforming a curriculum must be an
  institutional endeavor
• policy makers and academics at all levels must
  subscribe to the principles of equality and
  justice because ultimately curriculum
  transformation embodies the belief that with
  words and ideas, marginalized groups can be
  empowered and justice can be achieved (Herbert
  1977).

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Acknowledgements

• Prof. Chandra Gunawardena
• Prof. Yoga Rasanayagam
• Dr. Tressie Leiton
• Kanchana Bulumulle