ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews epistemological debates about experience as valid knowledge and examines pedagogical issues stemming from use of experience and in the process argue foregrounding experience as a curriculum strategy allows the development of similar intellectual and critical skills to those espoused by others engaged in the academy. It demonstrates that reframing the epistemological basis of the curriculum to legitimate experience may enhance rather than undermine the shared goals of members of the academy. An interest in and a recognition that experience has had a crucial part to play in Women’s Studies came from two major and inter-related sources. One was the Feminist critique of the main Western paradigm of knowledge, which has been dominant since the Enlightenment. The second source of interest in experience came from the relationship between the Women’s Movement of the post-second World War period and the development of Women’s Studies.
