Feminist Critical Policy Analysis

These two volumes set out to challenge the traditional power basis of the policy decision makers in education. They contest that others who have an equal right to be consulted and have their opinions known have been silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed and otherwise ignored. Policies have thus been formed without any feminist critical glance. These two volumes focus on those areas that have been silenced and identify the tools and theories for dismantling and replacing politics, theories and modes of policy analysis that have created the situation. The chapters illustrate how and why it will open up the area to wider scrutiny and to incorporate critical and feminist lenses and thus create policies to meet the lived realities, needs, aspirations and values of women and girls.

Volume 1. Part 1: What happens when feminism is an agenda of the State? feminist theory and the case of education policy in Australia, L. Yates; gender policies in American education - reflections of federal legislation and action, N. Stromquist; gender and the reports - the case of the missing pieces, L. Weis; feminist approaches to gender equality and schooling in the 1990s, M. David and M. Arnot. Part 2: the politics of evading gender in teacher education - in pursuit of new practices and policies, S. Hollingsworth; discourses of computing confidence, evaluation and gender - the case of computer use in the primary classroom, P. Singh; decentering silences/troubling/irony - a feminist postmodern approach to policy analysis, W. Pillow; tales from an "annoying, black girl trapped in a white girl's body, who acts like a boy" - gender adolescence and schooling, N. Adams. Part 3: feminist anlaysis of sexual harrassment policy - a critique of the ideal of community, J. Laible; transforming Western science - lessons from feminist scholarship, L. Parker. Volume 2. Part 1: women managing for diversity in a postmodern world, R. Deem and J. Ozga; making the "People's University" in South Africa, M. Walker; affirmative action and the status of women in the academy, J. Glazer; legitimacy maintenance - the politics of women's studies, C. Marshall and J. O'Barr. Part 2: lesbian existance and the challenge to normative constructions of the Academy, E. Bensimon; Emotional Work In A Chilly Climate, S. Acker And G. Feuerverger; new piece on women in math in universities, S. Frances. Part 3: "Mother's School" with feminist philosophy in Netherlands, Ter Dam; feminist pedagogy and the politics of authority, power and desire - educational theory, C. Luke; teaching to trangress - education as the practice of freedom, B. Hooks; from margin to marginality - a feminist in a PE classroom, R. Lock.