ABSTRACT
Pedagogy is a term widely used in educational writing but all too often its meaning is assumed to be self evident. An examination of how the term is used and the implicit assumptions about teaching and education that underlie its use is a valuable way of understanding how the education process is perceived. Many of the strategies that have been developed to redress inequity in schooling have targeted classroom practice and teaching as an important site for change. For this reason, attention has been paid to pedagogy, its meaning and relationship to curriculum. Feminist research has revealed how particular relations are reflected and reproduced in schooling at a number of levels. At the ideological level, ideologies of ‘race’, ‘ethnicism’ and ‘gender’ act to socialize students for their future roles. At the structural and organizational level of institutions, both in their overt and covert practices, messages are relayed to students about the relative power positions of different groups and individuals; and about the subjects and aspects of those subjects which are deemed appropriate for them to study. These subject divisions typically reflect the occupational structures in societies and the sources and selection of knowledge represented in curriculum subjects.
