I am sitting in a workshop for Playback Theatre. We are invited to tell our stories about Women's Business/ Men's Business. I find myself saying I have a story, even though I have no idea what it is...
I surprise myself as I explain how for many years I worked in a man's world of science, engineering and industry and how I strove to fit into this world earning the respect of its inhabitants. But then I began to realise that in embracing this scientific modernistic economic rational perspective and ways of doing and being that I was supressing a really important part of myself.
I surprise myself as I explain how for many years I worked in a man's world of science, engineering and industry and how I strove to fit into this world earning the respect of its inhabitants. But then I began to realise that in embracing this scientific modernistic economic rational perspective and ways of doing and being that I was supressing a really important part of myself.
When I started creating sculptures of femine forms I realised that I was beginning to reclaim this part of myself - my women's ways of knowing and being. My further research into women's ways of knowing (Belinky et al) helped me to see that I wasn't alone in wanting more from science - I wanted to come to know the world in rich interconnected ways, marrying objectivity with intuition, relationships and history - and this is what women want!
As the actors play back my story showing the conflict between the masculine and feminine I wonder why this story came to the surface. After all, the research on women's ways of knowing has been around since 1982, and formed part of feminine discourse for last 20 plus years. But has it really filtered down into everday science education that we see in schools?
What is science anyway? At the core of its meaning is the verb "scire" - to know.... to inquire into something.... and over time this has become associated with a particular way of coming to know.
While we see more ethical issues, more stories about science and more relevant contexts to appeal to girls in science classes, modernist science seems to still dominate the way students discuss and think about science - dispassionate debate, creating assertions and defending them. Does this turn off the female students? Mine certainly have said so. Perhaps we need to allow students to be in three minds about something, to admit to uncertainty and change in thinking, to role play possibilities, consider other ways of knowing, get inside the thinking of the scientist, and to reflect on their own ways of knowing and being that they are bringing.
So are these different approaches a result of the gender divide? Is there a mens science and a womens science? Perhaps they also reflect the difference in modernism (a more masculine voice) and post-modernism (a more feminine voice)? What might then be an integral voice?
As we see english curriculum move to embrace post-modernist sensitivities, should science be doing the same? After all this generation have only grown up in a post-modern world... perhaps relevance to them is more than providing current contexts, it is also being congruent with the very knowledge paradigm that they are living in.
So what might an integral science be like and could this honour both men's and women's ways of knowing the world?
As the actors play back my story showing the conflict between the masculine and feminine I wonder why this story came to the surface. After all, the research on women's ways of knowing has been around since 1982, and formed part of feminine discourse for last 20 plus years. But has it really filtered down into everday science education that we see in schools?
What is science anyway? At the core of its meaning is the verb "scire" - to know.... to inquire into something.... and over time this has become associated with a particular way of coming to know.
While we see more ethical issues, more stories about science and more relevant contexts to appeal to girls in science classes, modernist science seems to still dominate the way students discuss and think about science - dispassionate debate, creating assertions and defending them. Does this turn off the female students? Mine certainly have said so. Perhaps we need to allow students to be in three minds about something, to admit to uncertainty and change in thinking, to role play possibilities, consider other ways of knowing, get inside the thinking of the scientist, and to reflect on their own ways of knowing and being that they are bringing.
So are these different approaches a result of the gender divide? Is there a mens science and a womens science? Perhaps they also reflect the difference in modernism (a more masculine voice) and post-modernism (a more feminine voice)? What might then be an integral voice?
As we see english curriculum move to embrace post-modernist sensitivities, should science be doing the same? After all this generation have only grown up in a post-modern world... perhaps relevance to them is more than providing current contexts, it is also being congruent with the very knowledge paradigm that they are living in.
So what might an integral science be like and could this honour both men's and women's ways of knowing the world?
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