Meeting Students Where They Are: Analysis of Current Events in a Psychology of Women Course

• Published in: Psychology of Women Quarterly 2011-09, Vol.35 (3), p.479-482
• Main Author: Fuehrer, Ann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Assignments; Behavioral Objectives; Course Descriptions; Current Events; Females; Feminism; Feminist psychology; Learning; Mass Media; Outcomes of Education; Power; Power Structure; Psychology; Psychology of women; Social Change; Socialization; Undergraduate Students; Womens studies
• ISSN: 0361-6843; 1471-6402
• DOI: 10.1177/0361684311406090

A social change agenda is central in feminist psychology. In creating learning outcomes for a psychology of women course, instructors might wish to facilitate processes that have the potential to move individuals from acceptance of a status quo toward various degrees of feminist thinking. This agenda could include endorsing social constructionist approaches, which introduce dynamics of representation, power, and hierarchy as well as promote socialization and contextual explanations. Assignments can provide the opportunity for students to coauthor knowledge. One learning objective the author has for students in her undergraduate psychology of women course is to apply the concepts from the course to understanding their own, or a specific woman's, experiences as a gendered person. To assess students' learning relevant to women's experiences, one assignment asks each student to identify a story from current media that is relevant to their experiences in her class. This assignment asks students to draw on their consumption of mass media and knowledge of current events in the public domain to illustrate their emerging understanding of feminist psychology. Providing such opportunities to students allows for meeting students where they are, while promoting the usefulness of principles of feminist psychology. This assignment also focuses assessment in a way that could guide future practice.