Whose Knowledge Counts? Female Adult Learners and the Limits of Modern Educational Advancement

Mary Kennedy, Sacred Heart University

Inspired by the idea of a hegemonic relationship among forms of knowledge, this paper considers how a social structure that allows only certain, largely Westernized, forms of knowledge to be exalted could affect adult learners, particularly women. As certain forms of knowledge have historically conferred privilege, university degrees have become markers not just of knowledge but also power and social legitimacy. Additionally, knowledge learned in classroom settings, especially higher education settings, has been favored over knowledge gleaned through life experience, which functions to exclude people of lower socioeconomic status and marginalize forms of knowing more commonly associated with female adult learners. The instructional methods encountered in higher education limit the full participation of adult learners by excluding experiential knowledge from the discourse and reinforcing Westernized, modern models of educational advancement. Through the framework of Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Laura Rendon’s Sentipensante, this paper examines how two different systems, limited educational tracks for adult learners and modes of instruction that discount experiential learning, work together to restrict female adult learners.

See paper

 Presented in Session 38. Gender and the Making of Knowledge across Traditional and Modern Institutions