Introduction

This book explores the consequences and risks of confronting patriarchy and critiquing malestream knowledge in the classroom. Our aim is to undertake an analysis of teachers and their work which takes account of feminist, postfeminist, post-structuralist and postmodern scholarship. Feminist scholarship and empirical work have been fundamental in shaping our understandings of education and teaching over recent decades. Indeed it could easily be argued that feminism, broadly conceived, has been responsible for shaping the theory and practice of teaching over the course of the twentieth century. The feminist educational project has informed research and helped to shape policy.