femi nistteachervolume21number21392011bytheboardoftrusteesoftheuni versi tyofi lli noi sResisting the Discourse on Resistance:Theorizing Experiences from an Action Research Project on Feminist Pedagogy in DifferentLearning Cultures in SwedenFREDRI KBONDESTAMIntroductionWriters on critical, feminist, and anti-oppressive pedagogy criticize the repres-sive myths of classrooms and other formal educational settings as neutral or unprob-lematic sites for production of knowledge and identities (Freire; Lather; Kumashiro). This vast theoretical and empirical work has challenged teachers to work through normative notions of power, authority, and knowledge (Friedman; Weiler, Freire) and develop teaching strategies aimed at overcoming different forms of resis-tance in education (Lewis). This latter aspect was intensively discussed during the poststructuralist turn in theories of education in general, and especially in the inspiring debates between critical and feminist writers on education in the early 1990s. Feminist researchers in pedagogy and feminist teachers working in womens studies departments adopted a critical stance against the ideas developed in critical pedagogy on students false con-sciousness when confronted with critical knowledge (e.g., Giroux), instead pleading for an interested, empowering, and trans-formative version of liberatory teaching (Ellsworth; Lather; Orner).At the same time, a certain ambivalence on how to actually frame and understand the notions of resistance to feminist knowledge in teaching remains, as many still claim students to be the sole problem when teaching on feminist knowledge. There is a continuing focus on students reinterpreting, accusing, and refusing feminist teachers and teachings on femi-nism (Markowitz 45), as well as a desire to construct typologies on student resis-tance, claiming that students who resist feminism reect four postures concerning womens inequality in a patriarchal soci-ety: deny, discount, distance, and dismay (Titus 22).It is of course true that many feminist scholars and teachers experience a mul-titude of problems in teaching situations, often related to questions of authority, power, legitimacy, antifeminist discourses in universities and in society at large, and so forth. It is also important to acknowl-edge that teachers often need to develop different teaching strategies in order to overcome the problems they face, or in order to be able to teach at all, given the experiences they face. But what is at FT 21_2 text.indd 139 11/3/11 9:00 AMstake here is the framing of these experi-ences and the consequences they have for teaching and learning in different respects (Ropers-Huilman; Titus). As Ber-enice Fisher points out, It is tempting to assume, for example, that the pedagogical difculty in a given class is one of stu-dent resistance when the problem might also be dened as one of the teachers anger toward a student for not accepting her point of view. . . . Thus, it is important what constitutes the problem, to allow for the possibility that what we consider a social justice teaching issue may be framed and reframed a number of times (21516; italics in orig.).This was indeed one of the crucial insights within the feminist poststructural-ist writings on education mentioned above: the urge to shift from student resistance to teachers own resistance to the assump-tion that their problem was not buying into our version of reality (Lather 142).This in turn called for a deconstructive approach in teaching, focusing on the mutual processes of constituting, disrupt-ing, and transforming authority, power, subjectivity, and knowledge in class-rooms, searching out not only a pedagogy of hope (hooks, Teaching Community) or a radical openness when confronting critical knowledge (hooks, Teaching to Transgress), but foremost a pedagogy of the unknowable: My moving about between the positions of privileged speaking subject and Inappropriate/d Other cannot be predicted, prescribed, or understood beforehand by any theoreti-cal or methodological practice. . . . This reformulation of pedagogy and knowl-edge removes the critical pedagogue from two key discursive positions s/he has constructed for her/himself in the literaturenamely, origin of what can be known and origin of what should be done (Ellsworth 323).Thus, feminist pedagogy implies per-forming some kind of feminist teaching practices, while at the same time contest-ing the very possibility of performing such practices. We need to start out from the assumption that only what cannot be fore-seen will enable us not just to overcome resistance to feminist knowledge and teaching but also to make such experi-ences a vital part of teaching and learning as such.Notably, the development of a feminist poststructuralist stance on education has grown almost exclusively out of feminist teachers experiences of the womens studies classroom in universities (see Gore). The same goes for the quite limited writings on how feminist pedagogy can overcome resistance in higher education (Deay and Stitzel; Stake and Rose; Stake and Hoffman). Therefore, there is a need to explore and develop feminist teaching strategies outside the womens studies classroom, as well as outside the realm of universities. In such a context, a number of interesting questions arise: How do we teach on feminist knowledge in non-fem-inist classrooms? How do we as feminist teachers work through our experiences of resistance in other educational settings? What can university teachers learn from experiences of feminist teaching in other non-academic classrooms?My interest in developing feminist ped-agogy in teaching practices outside uni-versities has grown out of my own experi-ences from trying to educate preschool, folk high school, and other non-academic teachers on how to teach gendered knowledge and do feminist teaching in a broad sense. Early on I found many of the dilemmas in my own teaching were 140resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 140 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2141similar to the ones discussed above, and I often tried to resolve situations by cat-egorizing teachers responses in terms of resistance (e.g., denial, dismay, etc.) and then working against them through different feminist strategies (see Knowl-ton; Lewis). But in some situations it was not so much teachers resistance to my teaching, or my resistance towards teach-ers antifeminist knowledge claims, that structured reactions and discussion in my classroom. Rather, it seemed as if I had underestimated the pedagogical challenges immanent in learning critical knowledge altogether, especially feminist knowledge. Perhaps resistance was more a question of different and soundly situated reactions from my teachers rather than simple dismissals of feminist knowledge claims. Is it then possible to imagine a pedagogy that does not just overcome the obstacles experienced, but actually takes these experiences as the starting point for teaching and learn-ing? This led to formulating a participa-tory action research project (in line with Maguire) involving three different Swed-ish educational settingspreschools, folk high schools, and universitiesfocusing on feminist teachers teaching experi-ences in non-feminist settings outside the womens studies classroom. Before discussing this project in more detail, a brief sketch of the Swedish educational landscape will help put the project in its proper context.Education in Sweden:A Brief BackgroundIn Sweden, questions on gender and edu-cation and feminist pedagogy have a long but signicantly marginalized history. Dur-ing the 1960s and 1970s, ideas on empow-erment through education formulated within the womens movement set the agenda for producing knowledge on and by women within and beyond the formal education system. For example, the rights to ones own body, reproduction, sexual-ity, economics, and so forth involved both a challenge to the normative positions of women in family and society and a peda-gogical challenge for teachers, students, and educational organizations. At a time when the formal right to education was guaranteed to all regardless of sex, the contrasting and systematic devaluation of womens lives and herstories became a springboard for political activism. Radi-cal groups for consciousness-raising were established, study groups on feminist theory and activism ourished across the country, and together with other collective learning processes for womens emancipa-tion the established truths on educational norms were being challenged.During the early 1980s the concept of gender equality became a catalyst for the contestation of classroom practice, teacher-student relationships, and school curricula. Concurrently, there was a quest to nd models for teaching and organiza-tion of education that could achieve equal treatment. The concept of gender and equal treatment as apart from sex differ-ences went hand in hand even in those days, and it reected both the agreements within the Swedish welfare model and a consensus-centered pursuit of the edu-cational eld. At the same time, intensive discussions on womens education took place, and the need for special spaces for womens knowledge production was being formulated (see, for example, Gilligan). Experiences of injustice, oppression, and marginalization in education came up to the surface, and the discourse on wom-FT 21_2 text.indd 141 11/3/11 9:00 AMens relational learning grew in the wake of international debates.In the 1990s, legislation regulated in more detail how teaching must incorpo-rate knowledge on gender equality, while a counter discourse developed advocating voluntary and individual perspectives in the rst place. Some preschools imple-mented specic process-oriented gender equality projects and thus set a new stan-dard for change. Also, teachers at certain folk high schools developed theoretical knowledge and practical methods in order to deal with their heterogeneous class-rooms. In primary schools extensive work on common values was being done, and universities established detailed knowl-edge on sexual harassment and discrimi-natory education practices.Gradually, the theoretical concept of gen-der was accepted in the 1990s, and with it a more critical look at the structural condi-tions of teaching as well as marginalization, discrimination, and injustice in education. The difference between the construction of a gender-sensitive teaching and teaching on gender as theoretical knowledge was important as a way to emphasize teaching practices versus topic content. In recent years, several new concepts are being elab-orated on in Sweden, including multicul-tural education, anti-racist pedagogy, queer pedagogy, and norm-critical pedagogy, all of which challenge ways of understanding the problems within education, the objects of training, and the ways education can contribute to social change.The Educational Contextof the ProjectEducation on gender equality and gender discrimination thus has a long prehistory in Sweden, and it is clearly informed by different theoretical perspectives, chang-ing political initiatives, and different concrete teaching practices (see Weiner). Within higher education, it is possible to discern a relatively uniform development since the mid-1980s in Sweden, where an individual-centered, learning-focused pedagogy is being advocated and prac-ticed in general, and in recent years an increasingly accentuated albeit disjointed focus on a gender and diversity perspec-tive can be discerned. Issues of gender have only in recent years had a clearer impact on policy programs, curricula, literature lists, and so forth, especially in the humanities and social sciences, and today a range of local educational initia-tives are documented (see Bondestam, Gender-Sensitive). At the same time, this development has not affected the shap-ing of the contents of pedagogical courses for university teachers in general. Like-wise, recent developments in research and other documentation on feminist pedagogy and inclusive curriculum approaches, together with problem-based learning (PBL), comprise a wealth of useful knowledge that is marginalized in Swed-ish universities, in part due to the modest recognition given for good teaching as such. At the same time, gender is a matter of concern in other contexts in higher edu-cation such as the distribution of women and men in different disciplines and elds of study (Bondestam, Mapping). Notably, in order to work as a university teacher in Sweden, researchers are only obliged to fulll a two-week training course on higher education pedagogy, compared to those teaching in folk high schools and pre-schools, where a formal, two-year teacher education program must be completed.Folk high schools are educational institu-tions for adult education that generally do 142resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 142 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2143not grant academic degrees, and they are primarily developed in the Nordic coun-tries and Germany. At the folk high schools in Sweden, teaching practices are clearly diversied and have a history more clearly associated in some parts with critical peda-gogical perspectives. This is particularly true of folk high schools with a distinctly political or critical aim, and teaching situ-ations have long been characterized by student populations composed of various subordinate groups (e.g., women, work-ing class, immigrants, disabled). Not the least, Freire, Giroux, and other critical pedagogues inspired power-critical forms, a focus on participation, and an interest in liberatory pedagogy. At the same time, the documentation of these experiences is signicantly limited, and forums on peda-gogical issues concerning feminist teaching among folk high school teachers are still few and lack theoretical depth.Critical education on gender in pre-schools started off more systematically during the 1990s in terms of different gender equality projects. Prior to these interventions, discussions were marked by equality rhetoric and relatively unproblem-atic assumptions about girls, boys, and education, which informed the need for both gender theory and feminist interven-tion. Today, the situation is quite different in preschools, and the issue of gender, as well as other aspects of difference and power, is without doubt an expanding area. While it is clear that the political and organizational resistance to gender in the preschool area still is signicant, and that initiative to change is more often charac-terized by vague gender pedagogical ideas rather than feminist teaching practices, a number of ongoing feminist interventions in preschool settings profoundly challenge this situation.In sum, feminist teaching practices within all three educational settings dis-cussed here are in their infancy. At the same time there is a growing interest in new pedagogical perspectives closely related to feminist pedagogy in a broad sense. Queer pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy, anti-racist pedagogy and other critical stances have gained some inu-ence in discussions on teaching in Swe-den, mainly through different educational projects set up by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Sweden such as the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights (RFSL); Amnesty International; and Friends (see Brave; Darj and Bromseth).An Action Research Projectin Different Learning CulturesFormulating and conducting a participa-tory action research project involves many questions on resources, ethics, legitimacy, scientic credibility, and other compli-cating aspects, as is always the case when doing some kind of non-traditional, transformative research. Working also from feminist knowledge in such a proj-ect raises specic questions on norms, power, intersectionality, and other rel-evant aspects of contemporary feminist discourse. These specic questions will be dealt with in another text, and instead I focus here on the specic outcomes of parts of my project.The project involved fourteen teachers from three different educational settings in Swedenpreschools (5), folk high schools (3), and universities (6)from both larger cities and smaller communities. All four-teen participating teachers in this project identied themselves as white heterosex-ual or homosexual women, mainly from FT 21_2 text.indd 143 11/3/11 9:00 AMthe middle-class and ranging in age from thirty-two to forty-ve years old. All were trained educators and had at least a cou-ple of years teaching experience; all iden-tied themselves as being feminists and/or working as feminist teachers in some sense.1 The university teachers came from different faculties, mainly the humanities and social science, but also from medicine and technology departments.The project design was set in two par-allel stages aimed at creating spaces for developing feminist teaching strategies by enhancing fruitful dialogues and criti-cal reections on ones own and others teaching experiences. In the rst stage, the fourteen teachers engaged in four seminars on feminist theory and peda-gogy; they learned to use structured writing in personal journals, engaged in auscultations across disciplinary and educational borders, and tested out other similar teacher training tools. All teachers also participated in three joint two-day seminars where they all elaborated on their own documented feminist teaching strategies as well as the feminist pedagog-ical discourse as such.These processes on feminist knowledge essentially formulated the theoretical stance taken in this text, focusing mainly on resistance in earlier feminist writing on education. Reading through bell hookss texts, especially, created a strong sense of recognition among all of us, but also set a framework for understanding the similarities and differences between dif-ferent learning cultures. During the sec-ond stage, the fourteen teachers set up a teaching course of their own on feminist teaching, which they then performed in their respective educational settings using the experience and knowledge attained during the rst stage. This second stage of the project brought questions on resis-tance to the fore, and it is the experiences from this stage of the project that are being considered here, especially the dif-ferent ways resistance was understood and dealt with by the teachers.Currently within the context of the proj-ect, a range of texts are being written not only by teachers in the project but also by students and pupils from the differ-ent learning cultures. Several attempts to identify and overcome different obstacles in teaching feminist knowledge are being documented in collaborative writing pro-cesses. Also, aspects such as individual student resistance, notes and observa-tions on body language, silences, different aspects of desire in student-teacher rela-tions, and several other relevant issues are being discussed as pertinent material for collaborative writing processes. How-ever, in this text the aim is to reveal the very process by which the teachers think through their understanding of resistance when doing feminist teaching, and to theoretically reect on the consequences for teaching and learning, especially in higher education.Resistance to Feminist Teaching, or Feminist Resistanceto Teaching?In the journals written by the teachers in this project, a general tendency was that the university teachers differed sig-nicantly from preschool teachers as to how they reected upon experiences of resistance in their own teaching. A more interesting aspect, though, turned out to be how the teachers reected upon each others experiences. One of the preschool teachers had written extensively on her being quite surprised when listening to 144resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 144 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2145one of the university teachers during the rst joint seminar in the project:There seems to be a struggle going on, a ght for survival, with every minute being some sort of test of whether what she [the university teacher] claims is actually true or relevant, has any ground in theory or research, or if it is just her own political commitments shining through. As if the students were trying to dismiss not only what shes teaching about, but the fact that she can teach at all! At the same time, I get a bit annoyed by her saying over and over again that students are in the way of her teach-ing, that students are uninterested, lazy, and not motivated . . . . When she claimed that teaching students was the same as being a shepherd I got really upset! How can she call herself a teacher at all!? (Lisa 18)2This university teacher discussed here also wrote her own journal entry concern-ing the same episode during the joint seminar:It felt as if I were not being listened to by the other teachers, at least not by Karin, Lisa and the others who are not university teachers . . . . I think I real-ized too that I hadnt really listened to what they were trying to say to me. That they not just didnt listen to me, but that they really did not at all recognize what I was talking about when I described the way my students ridiculed me over and over again. How is that possible, how can you be a teacher and not recognize resistance? As a feminist teacher? I won-der if they really are feminists at all . . . . (Clara 22)These two teachers comments on how they perceived their discussion on resis-tance was challenged by yet another teacher in her journal. She wrote the fol-lowing after teaching a class session in her folk high school in a course on glo-balization and democracy in third-world countries: Today I tried to be aware of any comments or gestures aimed at disap-proving with me or my teaching in class. I even video-recorded parts of my teaching and sat down afterwards looking through the whole seminar in order to identify the things we talked about last week [during the joint seminar discussed by the other teachers above]. But all I see is engage-ment, critical questions being put, stu-dents elaborating on the tasks we formu-lated together. Some seemed to be a bit unfocused but overall what I can see hap-pened in my classroom today is learning going on en masse (Anna 36).When we all gathered for the third two-day seminar in the project, I had collected these excerpts and many other similar reections done during the project, all pointing to the radically different experi-ences the teachers had in their respec-tive contexts. This led to a transformative moment during one discussion on the sec-ond day of the seminar. One central part of this conversation went as follows:Clara (university teacher): I cannot help . . . but . . . that . . . er . . . what you are saying here is that we as university teachers are to blame for experienc-ing resistance from our students? . . . especially . . . I think the most engaged students . . . or am I . . . ?Lisa (preschool teacher): I dont think I put any blame on you as a teacher, but . . . it is as if you are so in to your own . . . your ideas on what the stu-dents . . . need . . . you see . . . to me . . . as a teacher in my class [Reggio Emilia preschool, 45 year olds] Im not in charge . . . or . . . every morning we all sit down together and listen to each other . . . what do you want to FT 21_2 text.indd 145 11/3/11 9:00 AMdo today? . . . and eventually, this is what we will do . . .Bodil (folk high school teacher): Yes but . . . yeah . . . mm . . . its obvious to me that the difference here is that . . . your aim [turning to Lisa] is to engage in learning with the children, and Clara you are engaged in teaching students what to learn . . .Maria (university teacher): Yeah, yeah I mean . . . this is typically true . . . for me too . . . students want me to tell them . . . they urge for facts, for me to be their knowledge bank so to speak . . . mm . . . and I must say that . . . er . . . I cannot really see how this could be any different I mean . . . Im responsible for the course right? doing it your way Lisa . . . I mean [laughter] . . . thats anarchy isnt it? (Third joint seminar 1819)3This excerpt was just part of a wider discus-sion going on for about twenty minutes or so. It highlights the difculties experienced in university teaching compared with the way the preschool teacher frames her own function as a teacher. What is particu-larly interesting here is the demarcation line drawn between university teaching, being all about teaching students what to learn, and the aim of preschool teaching to engage in learning with the children. It emphasizes, among other things, the overall aim of teaching in different learning cultures, where university teaching tends to get stuck in its own authoritative claims on knowledge and the teacher as the master of that knowledge. This particular differ-ence recurred in our discussions, but in a slightly different context. We were engaged in a conversation on the specic nature of feminist teaching, and we ended up com-paring the possibilities to create learning on feminist knowledge:Dilba (folk high school teacher): Ok . . . so . . . what youre saying is . . . the point is that what we do in our class-rooms is of relevance . . . I mean . . . if we set out to teach someone on something . . . no matter what . . . then we get stuck in . . . er . . . how shall I put it? . . . never entering a state of learning . . . and also . . . we experience students being hostile . . . disapproving . . . being against the very idea of womens subordina-tion or the knowledge we have on . . . say . . . male violence in hetero-sexual couples for instance . . . is that . . .Interviewer (project leader): Well . . . if that is so . . . what can we learn from what you are saying? . . . that in pre-schools . . . learning . . .Gabriella (preschool teacher): Let me . . . let me put it this way . . . I have never ever experienced any hostility or . . . at least not amongst the chil-dren . . . of course some parents are a bit . . . er . . . and I know colleagues from my earlier workplace . . . but in the classroom so to speak . . . I have a truly committed group of children wanting to explore what things mean . . . how they come about . . . as for instance when we talked about lesbianism in society . . . er . . . chil-dren with two mums and such [refer-ring to a situation in which Cecilia participated during an auscultation] there were . . . not just a tolerance or vague interest . . . I think . . . mm . . . but they all really tried out different positions . . . yearning to be lesbians even [laughter] . . . to feel it under their skins . . . even the boys imag-ined themselves being lesbian god-desses . . . .Cecilia (university teacher): Yeah I know! . . . it was really astonishing! . . . it . . . so . . . what then if . . . mm . . . I 146resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 146 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2147think . . . the question put here is . . . er . . . overall maybe . . . is there at all any resistance to feminist teaching in preschools . . . I mean . . . or is it more true to say that . . . mm . . . we as university teachers, especially as feminist teachers in our classes . . . er . . . we resist teaching as such? (Third joint seminar 4142)During our discussions it gradually became clear to us that the question of teaching in itself bears with it implications for whether (if at all) and how learning comes about, and more importantly in this context, how we perceive and experi-ence resistance to feminist knowledge and feminist teaching. University teach-ers seem to be stuck in an educational system not only consisting (as we know it) of examination-driven teaching prac-tices, a strictly limited time-budget, harsh economic forces, and so forth, but also, or foremost, an educational system that promotes a teaching culture that actively works against learning as such.This is denitively a fact when listen-ing to the feminist university teachers in this project, as they experience working not only on the margins of the university as such, but on the margins of being able to teach at all. This is even more obvious when compared to the experiences from preschool teachers, because their teach-ing seems to be not a question of making children aware of the importance of criti-cal knowledge and then confronting their dismay and denial, but instead concerns making this knowledge comprehensive, connected to the everyday experiences of the children, not a specic knowledge claim at all but rather another phenomena open for learning.The Presence of Learning,or Learning as PresenceThese reections spur, among many other things, questions on how to create such a learning culture within universities, especially when working through feminist knowledge in university classrooms. What can university teachers learn from the way preschool teachers deal with feminist knowledge? Here it is instructive to read the concluding reections from two of the participating university teachers because they, from their respective horizons, for-mulate premises on not just overcoming student resistance to teaching but on how to do teaching on feminist knowledge at all. It is hard work overcoming experiences of student resistance, but it seems even harder and in a way deeply paradoxical to formulate teaching at all that will not end up reproducing the problems identied during the project:I do not know really what to do. It seems as if I will get caught up in problems no matter what. If I try out new, different teaching strategies aimed at different forms of learning, students will deni-tively resist both them and feminist knowledge as such. But, I do realize that the only possible thing to do is to resist the way I experience student resistance. That is, I myself must be aware of how the knowledge I represent gets in the way of learning. Exactly how to do that, well, I havent got a clue. Maybe this is not possible as teaching in universities is being structured at the moment. (Julia 35, italics in orig.)It has been instructive to confront ones own teaching, both as an observer of other teachers teaching practices and by being observed when teaching FT 21_2 text.indd 147 11/3/11 9:00 AMmyself. To me it stands clear that what is needed (not just needed but essentially must be done) is a redenition of my own view on both me as a teacher and the idea of teaching. I am convinced that teaching is not a question of me being a teacher claiming knowledge that others must accept, but rather that my role is to make students aware that they already possess this knowledge. I must some-how create spaces for them to acknowl-edge this. Or else, feminist knowledge will never be relevant to them and there-fore my work as a teacher will continue to be a struggle against, instead of with, them. (Cecilia 35)These concluding excerpts point toward more than just ways to overcome student resistance in universities, which is com-monly put forward as the sole problem concerning feminist teaching. Rather, it calls for a thorough redenition of teach-ing as such and of the teacher as an insti-tution within universities. This is clearly emphasized by preschool teachers in this project, since they also point to the need for uncertainty in the teaching situation, poetically formulated by Lisa in this nal excerpt:Every morning as I sit down in front of the children I experience a sense of adventure. Its not so much in the air, but between us, so to speak. . . . Things are not adventurous in a pre-school teachers daily life, believe me, not at all, but the feeling I sometimes have is a true sense of exploration, of us all being curious on what will happen next. . . . There are no straight answers, there arent even any questions put in that sense, as to what we need to do or know. There is just a multitude of voices interacting, together forming an urge to be present, to create a meaningful pres-ence. This is the moment I also search for and urge to keep alive as a teacher. Maybe this is best done by just being, I mean, by not being a teacher at all? (Lisa 2526)Lisa positions the teacher and her work as the opposite of being, in the sense of being present, aware, part of the ongoing voicing of the present. This can certainly be read as a search for the unknowable, or at least a vision of the unnameable, the as-yet-unformulated state of being and learning in a classroom. I will now turn to these aspects in some nal remarks by theorizing the teachers experiences and by trying to point out some consequences for feminist teaching and feminist peda-gogy at universities.Concluding RemarksWhen reecting on the experiences from this project, listening carefully to all the voices in the material, it seems as if cur-rent ways of imagining teaching that will overcome student resistance to feminist knowledge and teaching may be barking up the wrong tree. This is not to say that there are no problems connected with teaching feminist knowledge. Rather it emphasizes the possibility that teaching in itself, and especially as it is generally (but not always) situated and performed in university settings, may not be just part of the problem but intrinsically and profoundly in the way of students learn-ing critical knowledge at all. Perhaps the most daring challenge facing feminist teaching is not just realizing the way resistant learners expose the educators attempts to colonize their identities by using feminist knowledge (Hughes 198) but rather completely reconceptualizing the core idea of teaching critical knowl-edge as such.148resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 148 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2149This is in a way in line with recent dis-cussions on how to, if at all, teach stu-dents about difference (Kumashiro). It also points toward the practice of teach-ing at universities, generally understood as a project for teachers to control and perform. Facts, instrumentality, and cor-rectness tend to overrule students urge to ask stupid questions, their being completely uncertain, or their need to be in touch with knowledge at all. It implies asking profound questions on what enables learning in itself: Freedom, play, affordance, meaning itself derive from the wealth of mutually nontransparent possi-bilities for being wrong about an objectand, implicatively, about oneself (Sedg-wick 107108).As a starting point, it seems reason-able to claim that difference is not merely something we have yet to learn, but some-thing that we desire not to learn in order to somehow keep things and ourselves in order. That is, we resist learning that will disrupt the frameworks we traditionally use to make sense of the world and our-selves (Kumashiro 57). Therefore, what is at stake is creating a situation where learning involves something more than confronting difference as some form of otherness. Instead, learning should rather be understood as a process of unlearn-ing what we always already know, a form of knowledge that in itself often is both partial and oppressive. This calls for a profound crisis for students, for they will be both unstuck (i.e., distanced from the ways they have always thought, no longer so complicit with oppression) and stuck (i.e., intellectually paralyzed and needing to work through their emotions and thoughts before moving on with the more academic part of the lesson) in the process of teaching (Kumashiro 63). At least it will if this is the way we frame teaching: that is, if we insist on separating the unlearning of students from the aca-demic parts of teaching, if we continually address students attention in this divided fashion. The conclusion then cannot only, if at all, be that educators need to create a space in their curriculums in which stu-dents can work through crisis (Kumashiro 63). Although this seems to be the most realistic way to work things out, I suggest we instead continually insist on crisis as a normative condition of being for both students and teachers.This is exactly what occasionally hap-pened in the preschool classrooms during the project, albeit crisis was not apparent as an obstacle or even a feared or desired state of mind among the children. This was instead the very core emotion of the group in the sense that being a child is always already being in a state of pro-found unlearning and learning, of being part of a continuous (de)stabilizing pro-cess on what is and what can be. It is not a mystifying concept sought here; nor is it even a certain condition aimed for; it is just a destabilizing of the core contents of university teaching as such. This neces-sitates on a more profound level taking Freires critical writing on banking edu-cating, Fishers urge to reframe the prob-lem of resistance endlessly, Ellsworths claim on searching out the unknowable, or Kumashiros desire to look beyond what we already know. We must take these ideas more seriously and imagine the full consequences of what they are trying to tell us.The preschool teachers experiences in this project point toward abandoning a set of taken-for-granted ideas on uni-versity teaching. For example, it involves recognizing the problems connected with FT 21_2 text.indd 149 11/3/11 9:00 AMteachers acting as omnipotent researchers in the classroom. University teachers often actively control the notion of valid knowl-edge and consequently teach as if the aim of learning is to teach something to stu-dents, instead of the teacher trying to be part of a collective learning process with them. It also concerns realizing that teach-ing in academic settings often implies an ongoing disallowance of students experi-ence and knowledge. University teachers, generally speaking, tend to ignore the fact that students always already possess relevant knowledge and are constantly in the midst of a process of translation, of trying to harmonize to different principles of reality. In terms of a Swedish context of higher education, this is no doubt an unforeseen consequence of not recogniz-ing the need for a thorough teacher educa-tion program for university teachers.The experiences from preschool set-tings in this project, therefore, urge a renewed politics on university teachers standards and pedagogical skills, but also insist on acknowledging university teach-ing as a misrecognized form of banking education in Freires sense. The challenge for university teachers seems to be to accept students processes of knowledge production by helping them translate what they already know and think of. This also implies, in the context of the project described, being fully aware of teachers own tendencies to situate resistance to feminist knowledge in individual student responses. Further, the experiences from this project seem to imply a restoration of preschool teachers competencies in the context of education in Sweden, tak-ing their experiences as a starting point for revising university teaching in many respects. Foremost, there is a need to move beyond traditional power structures in the eld of education, and acknowledge the need for university teachers to learn from educational settings outside aca-demia.By learning from doing teaching in other settings, perhaps university teach-ers can also work through current femi-nist discourses of knowledge in their own classrooms. As university teachers, and perhaps as teachers and educators in any respect, we clearly need to start out by resisting the discourse of resistance. That is, we need to refuse to ignore the very conditions for learning that we always already accept when dealing with the ways resistance is in the way of teach-ing. We must instead engage in, together with our students and colleagues, a criti-cal and never-ending redenition of the learning conditions set up by both our educational organizations and the way we choose to perform our own teaching. Perhaps we must abandon the concept of teaching and learning altogether, at least in the sense of teachers perform-ing one and students the other, for the benet of creating a meaningful presence where unlearning oppression and learn-ing critical awareness is not just a means to an end but the sole means of engaging in the production and consumption of knowledge.notes1. Except two university teachers who had only completed a two-week compulsory course on pedagogy in higher education.2. All quotes in this text from the teachers journals have been approved by them, and the same goes in the following for the excerpts from recordings of the discussions we had from the joint seminars during the project.3. The recordings from the three seminars were transcribed and analyzed in line with a general discourse analytic framework (Potter 150resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 150 11/3/11 9:00 AMfemi nistteachervolume21number2151& Wetherell 1987, Potter 1996). In this context, I have simplied the transcriptions in order to make them readable for an audience not used to reading discourse analytic research.referencesAnna (folk high school teacher). Unpublished journal entries. N.d. Print.Bondestam, Fredrik. Gender-Sensitive Peda-gogy for University Teachers. An Introduction and Bibliography. Stockholm: Liber, 2005. Print.. Mapping and Analyzing Relations between Gender and Pedagogical Educa-tion in Higher Education. Report no 3 for the Delegation for Equality in Higher Education. Stockholm: Ministry of Education, 2010. Print.Brave, Lovise. Methods for Normcriticial Teach-ing. Stockholm: Friends, 2008. Print.Cecilia (university teacher). Unpublished jour-nal entries. N.d. Print.Clara (university teacher). Unpublished journal entries. N.d. Print.Darj, Frida, and Janne Bromseth. Normcriti-cal Pedagogy. Power, Learning and Strate-gies for Change. Uppsala: Centre for Gender Research, 2010. Print.Deay, Ardeth, and Judith Stitzel. Reshaping the Introductory Womens Studies Course. Dealing Up Front with Anger, Resistance, and Reality. The Feminist Teacher Anthology: Pedagogies and Classroom Strategies. Ed. Gail Cohee et al. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. 8797. Print.Ellsworth, Elizabeth. Why Doesnt This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repres-sive Myths of Critical Pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59 (1989): 297324. Print.Fisher, Berenice. No Angel in the Classroom: Teaching through Feminist Discourse. Lan-ham, Md.: Rowman & Littleeld, 2001. Print.Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury, 1973. Print.Friedman, Susan. Authority in the Feminist Classroom: A Contradiction in Terms? Gen-dered Subjects: The Dynamics of Feminist Teaching. Ed. Margo Culley and Catherine Portuges. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. 203208. Print.Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Psychologi-cal Theory and Womens Development. Cam-bridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1982. Print.Giroux, Henry. Theories of Reproduction and Resistance in the New Sociology of Educa-tion: A Critical Analysis. Harvard Educational Review 53 (1983): 25792. Print.. Theory and Resistance in Education: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition. West-port, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 1983. Print.Gore, Jennifer. The Struggle for Pedagogies: Critical and Feminist Discourses as Regimes of Truth. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.Hughes, Christina. Pedagogies of, and for, Resistance. Gender, Teaching and Research: Challenges of the 21st Century. Ed. Gillian Howie and Ashley Tachert. Aldershot: Ash-gate, 2002. 188200. Print.Julia (university teacher). Unpublished journal entries. N.d. Print.Knowlton, Eloise. The Hand and the Hammer: A Brief Critique of the Overhead Projector. Feminist Teacher 6 (1992): 2123. Print.Kumashiro, Kevin. Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Anti-Oppressive Education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002. Print.Lather, Patti. Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/in the Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.Lewis, Magda. Interrupting Patriarchy: Politics, Resistance, and Transformation in the Femi-nist Classroom. Harvard Educational Review 60 (1990): 46788. Print.Lewis, Magda. Without a Word: Teaching Beyond Womens Silence. New York: Rout-ledge, 1993. Print.Lisa (preschool teacher). Unpublished journal entries. N.d. Print.Maguire, Patricia. Doing Feminist Participatory Action Research. Amherst: University of Mas-sachusetts Press, 1987. Print.. Uneven Ground: Feminisms and Action Research. Handbook of Action Research: FT 21_2 text.indd 151 11/3/11 9:00 AMParticipative Inquiry and Practice. Ed. Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury. London: Sage, 2001. 5969. Print.Markowitz, Linda. Unmasking Moral Dichoto-mies: Can Feminist Pedagogy Overcome Student Resistance? Gender & Education 17 (2005): 3955. Print.Orner, Mimi. Interrupting the Calls for Student Voice in Liberatory Education: A Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective. Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. Ed. Carmen Luke and Jennifer Gore. New York: Routledge, 1992. 7489. Print.Potter, Jonathan. Representing Reality: Dis-course, Rhetoric and Social Constructionism. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.Potter, Jonathan, and Margaret Wetherell. Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: Sage, 1987. Print.Ropers-Huilman, Becky. Feminist Teaching in Theory and Practice: Situating Power and Knowledge in Poststructural Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. Print.Sedgewick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Print.Stake, Jayne, and Frances Hoffman. Putting Feminist Pedagogy to the Test: The Experi-ence of Womens Studies from Student and Teacher Perspectives. Psychology of Women Quarterly 24 (2000): 3039. Print.Stake, Jayne, and Suzanna Rose. The Long-Term Impact of Womens Studies on Stu-dents Personal Lives and Political Activism. Psychology of Women Quarterly 18 (1994): 40312. Print.Third joint seminar. Unpublished transcript of recordings. N.d. Print.Titus, Jordan. Engaging Student Resistance to Feminism: How is this Stuff Going to Make us Better Teachers? Gender & Education 12 (2000): 2137. Print.Weiler, Kathleen. Freire and a Feminist Peda-gogy of Difference. Harvard Educational Review 61 (1991): 44974. Print.. Women Teaching for Change. Gender, Class and Power. South Hadley, Mass.: Ber-gin & Garvey, 1988. Print.Weiner, Gaby. Feminisms in Education. An Intro-duction. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1994. Print.152resi sti ngthedi scourseonresi stanceFT 21_2 text.indd 152 11/3/11 9:00 AM