Hayes, Elizabeth; Flannery, Daniele D. with Brooks, Ann; Tisdell, Elizabeth; and Hugo, Jane. (2000). Women as Learners: The Significance of Gender in Adult Learning. Reviewed by Richard W. Race, Keele University

Hayes, Elizabeth; Flannery, Daniele D. with Brooks, Ann; Tisdell, Elizabeth; and Hugo, Jane. (2000). Women as Learners: The Significance of Gender in Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers Pp. xxiii + 280 $36.95 (Cloth)   ISBN 0-7879-0920-3 Reviewed by Richard W. Race, Keele University February 26, 2001          Women as Learners was particularly interesting to me because of my experience as a part-time lecturer and tutor in the subjects of Education and Applied Social Science within an English university. The majority of the students I teach are women; how women learn and their experiences of education are, therefore, issues directly related to my practice as an educator. The book, which grounds its arguments in poststructural feminist theory, aims to synthesize what is known about adult women's learning.          The text is organized into nine chapters, each provided by one or more of the book's contributing authors. Although the discussion focuses primarily on learning, it encompasses a wider social and cultural appreciation of the problems women face. The authors—all white middle-class women with high levels of academic training and experience—nevertheless use their personal histories to highlight the diversity of women's experiences of education. Using a poststructural feminist perspective as the predominant framework for analysis, the authors examine issues related to adult women's ways of knowing, sources and applications of knowledge, and modes of communicating. In addition, several chapters direct attention to the way women's learning influences the formation of their identities.          Daniele D. Flannery and Elisabeth Hayes begin the book with "Women's Learning: a Kaleidoscope," which argues that instructional practice in adult education continues to reflect a limited understanding of how women learn. According to the authors, this situation persists despite increases in the number of women participating in adult education. Moreover, the authors discuss the difficulties associated with gaining full understanding of women's learning. In particular, they explore the way gender and culture interact to produce multiple approaches to learning. Navajo women, for example, situate learning within the context of the family; they are not inclined to seek or endorse learning meant to promote individual success, possibly at the expense of the strength and continuity of the family. Because of women's multiple ways of knowing, the authors believe that educators ought to ground research efforts in women's narratives about their own learning, going beyond the limited images of "reentry" women. The authors ask, "reentering" from where? "From someplace beyond the known world?" (p. 7) These and other perspectives depict women as marginalized, deficient, or invisible.          The first chapter also frames theoretical distinctions useful for understanding the analyses presented throughout the rest of the book. The authors explain that three different theoretical approaches can be used to make sense of women's ways of knowing: psychological feminist theories, structural feminist theories, and, poststructural feminist theories.          Psychological feminist theories build on Belenky and associates' work (1986), which argued that women's learning differs from men's learning both in terms of its developmental sequence and in terms of its underlying epistemology. According to these researchers, women prefer to learn in collaborative rather than competitive settings, and they view knowledge more as a set of connections than as a set of distinctions. For these reasons, women may benefit from an instructional method—the authors call it, "connected teaching"—that differs from the dominant, male-oriented approach. Critics of psychological feminism contend, however, that its theories tend to over- generalize, obscuring important variations in the approaches to learning favored by different women, especially those from different racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds.          Structural feminist theory focuses on social structures, notably patriarchy and capitalism that oppress women. Theorists in this tradition emphasize the dominating influence of these social structures, but by doing so they also tend to construe women as passive. Despite their somewhat deterministic view of women's circumstances, structural feminists nevertheless call for resistance toward the mechanisms in families, schools, and workplaces that serve to reproduce oppressive relations of power.          Poststructural feminist theory construes power relations in more complex terms, focusing on multiple systems of oppression, possibilities for resistance, and ways that relations of power work to shape women's identities. The authors argue that this theoretical approach is productive because it draws attention to the complexity of women's lived experiences while at the same time revealing opportunities for women to renegotiate gender-based relations of power. Yet this theoretical perspective can become overly abstract, making it less useful in drawing implications for practice or policy. The authors credit the contributions of all three perspectives in developing an understanding of women's learning. However, their perspective is most closely aligned with the poststructural approach , which they call upon often throughout the remainder of the book.          In a chapter titled, "Social Contexts," Elisabeth Hayes examines women's learning within various contexts, such as formal education, the home, community organizations, the school, the workplace, and so on. She argues that different contexts provide different opportunities for women to learn and to shape their identities. Women can garner the strength to resist domination by drawing on the opportunities afforded by the most liberating contexts for learning available to them.          To illustrate this point, Hayes tells the story of Marilyn, an African American woman who became pregnant and then married at the age of 17. Within the context of a traditional home life, Marilyn felt stifled. When her husband forced her to quit college shortly after she enrolled, she engaged in Bible study and began a door-to-door ministry, which afforded her the opportunity to learn about international affairs. When her husband objected to these activities as well, she divorced him and entered the world of work to support her three children. In her work as a technician for a phone company she gained both technical skill and a firsthand view of racism in promotion and hiring practices. Her growing dissatisfaction and despair led her to attempt suicide. Later, however, she decided to go back to school, where she was able to explore her interest in literature and develop her talents as a writer. Divorcing her husband but staying deeply involved with her children, Marilyn was able to forge a meaningful identity situated in her family, workplace, and community.          Despite the opportunities that certain contexts offer for the development of women's potential, many contexts pose serious constraints to their learning. According to Hayes, many girls internalize negative messages as a result of the dynamics they observe and the roles they are expected to perform within their families of origin. Once they reach school age, girls continue to receive messages that limit their opportunities. Tracking arrangements in high schools, for example, restrict the learning environments accessible to girls, especially those from working class backgrounds. Furthermore, Hayes notes, adult literacy teachers—many of whom, ironically, tend to be well-intentioned women—typically come from more privileged backgrounds than their students. Lacking experiences similar to those of their students, these educators are often insensitive to concerns such as students' need for safe learning environments or their desire to use some school time simply for socializing. The conventional workplace also places restrictions on women's development. "Women's work," notes Hayes, lacks both status and adequate remuneration (p. 34). And many women fail to rise to their full potential at work because of the gender-segregation typical of many places of employment.          When women pursue higher education they often find their schooling in conflict with their family and home lives. To illustrate this point, Hayes reminds the reader of the storyline of the popular 1983 film, "Educating Rita." In the film, Rita breaks out of the restrictive roles imposed by a conventional marriage in order to pursue her education. Initially relying on the support of her instructor, Frank Bryant, Rita eventually breaks free from his thrall as well. Ultimately, Rita learns to take responsibility for her own destiny.          In part, self-determination depends on self-esteem, as Daniele D. Flannery suggests in the chapter titled, "Identity and Self Esteem." According to Flannery, identity formation constitutes an important type of learning, although it is not always regarded as such. In the conventional view, identities are shaped by internal psychological forces and by external social forces. Women's experiences in the home, at school, and in the workplace are typically viewed as the conditions that determine their identities. By seeing identity formation as a type of learning, however, one comes to realize that women do have some conscious control over their own identities. As Flannery argues, "women are not just passive recipients of...societal prescriptions; rather, they are often very proactive, choosing change" (pp. 67-68). Women have opportunities to learn, unlearn, and relearn who they are. Shaping their own identities through active processes of learning, women come to develop the self-esteem necessary to accomplish what they want to accomplish in the world.          Being oneself in the world has a great deal to do with "voice," as Elisabeth Hayes explains in the next chapter. "Voice" connotes both the ability to make connections with other people and the skill to express thoughts in ways that can be understood by others. Hayes explores voice along three dimensions: as talk, as an expression of identity, and as collective power and influence. In considering voice as talk, Hayes identifies two modes: (1) rapport talk, a communication style (favored by women) that relies on personal narrative to establish and maintain relationships and (2) report talk, a communication style (often favored by men) that establishes power within relationships. Rapport talk is conversational, with the participants actively listening and exchanging experiences and strengthening relationships. Talk in higher education tends mostly to be report talk. In this mode, some students present their arguments convincingly and in absolute terms, while other students engage in "ritual opposition," seeking to detect weaknesses in the arguments. The hoped-for result is the clarification of ideas and the strengthening of arguments. Of course, students unaccustomed to such a dialectical approach may find the experience unnerving. Class discussion that takes the form of "blood sport" can erode their confidence and eventually make them decide to remain silent.          Hayes suggests that talk in the classroom needs to strike a balance between report talk and rapport talk. She contrasts this perspective with one that simply favors the practice of teaching women to become more adept at report talk. Her concern with the latter approach is that it ignores an important benefit of women's more tentative approach, namely its sensitivity to multiple sides of an issue. Helping women make better use of report talk, however, might enable them to exercise their voices more effectively in work and academic settings. In the end, Hayes points out the wisdom of efforts to expand the talking-style repertoire of both men and women.          Hayes concludes the chapter with the reminder that there are multiple voices and multiple identities that need to be honored in all learning environments. Because domination by one cultural voice should be resisted, adult educators ought to examine the connection between voice and power in their classrooms, workplaces, and other sites in which teaching and learning take place. Hayes argues that the best solution is to strive for collective voice and shared power. And she asks the following question to foster thinking about ways to realize such a solution in practice: "How might we support women in developing individual and group voices?" (p. 109)          Flannery's chapter titled "Connection" begins by pointing out the distinction, often overlooked, between knowing and learning. Knowing is an interpretive framework constructed internally by a process of integrating learning with personal histories, worldviews, experiences, and so forth. Flannery urges readers to be mindful of this difference—first drawn by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986)—as they engage with the literature she reviews on women as connected learners. She explores the idea of connected learning along two dimensions: connections with/in the self and connection with others. An understanding of how women connect learning with/in themselves is enriched by research and theory drawn from the disciplines of psychology, social psychology, and neurology. Research on cognitive styles, for example, often characterizes women as global processors, that is, people who tend to derive meaning from new information or new situations by attempting to understand them holistically, attempting to "perceive the overall patterns and structures of what they are learning" (p. 115).          A similar perspective was presented in the research of Belenky and colleagues who discussed women's capacity for subjective knowing, that is, for "knowing from within, or from one's inner voice" (p. 116). When they come to know something in this way, women rely upon their own sense or feeling of what is true. Women, however, often find their inner voices at odds with the types of knowledge-construction privileged in the academy.          Flannery also does a thorough job of describing the literature on women's learning as connection with others, including learning via interactions and relationships – that is, women's tendency to value the knowledge that comes from their own and others' personal experiences. In her discussion of intuition, Flannery reminds the reader of the "patriarchal" distrust of this sort of "nonrational" knowing. In fact, according to Flannery, this type of knowing has been discredited at least since the beginning of the "age of reason" and perhaps even before that, when reason was thought to be disconnected from feeling, and mind from body. Today, however, researchers are seriously investigating the nature of intuition from physiological, psychological, sociological, social-psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives. Flannery briefly reviews insights provided from all of these vantage points.          Ann Brooks'chapter, "Transformation," examines how language and story can kindle transformative learning in women's lives. Transformative learning changes learners' structures of meaning, including their beliefs, feelings, interpretations of events, and even their expectations for their own lives. This form of learning has commonly been understood to involve a highly rational, abstract process effectuated by challenging the texts (and other messages) students have internalized from their families and the broader culture. Drawing on her own experience with a small group of female doctoral students, however, Brooks construes transformative learning somewhat differently. She explains that the sharing of narratives (rather than the abstract analysis of texts) helps women derive new meaning from experiences that had previously been confusing or inaccessible. By uncovering the common elements of their experiences, women can find ways to resist messages from the institutions that often subordinate their knowledge. This approach enables women to challenge the hegemony of the academy.          Involvement with a support group can empower women to work and learn with a sense of integrity, helping them to remain true to their understanding of complex situations and to give voice to those understandings. Foucault, for example, argued that subjugated knowledge has been written out of history because history has been constructed as a way to promote the dominant discourse. Storytelling can liberate subjugated knowledge by establishing relational intimacy, enabling women to gain their voices and take action. Brooks concludes that while there are differences amongst women, based on race, sex and class, "... all of us are victims of silence" (p. 153).          Elizabeth Tisdell, in "Feminist Pedagogies" traces the development of feminist methods of teaching based on psychological, structural, and poststructural models. She begins by tipping her hat to Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, describing their groundbreaking study in the mid 1980s as epitomizing "the psychological models of how women come to know and learn" (p. 163). In fact, most of the chapters in this volume use this study as a starting point, and proceed by reviewing literature that has either expanded on or critiqued it in the subsequent 15 years.          According to Tisdell, four of the five themes commonly discussed in contemporary feminist pedagogy draw upon Belenky and associates' early work: women's construction of knowledge, their development of voice, their quest for authority, and their ever-evolving identity. The psychological approach focuses on individual experience—primarily the experience of white middle-class women—and seeks evidence of similarities among women. Subsequent work has investigated a fifth theme in feminist pedagogy, the experiences of "marginalized groups" such as working class women, women of color, and lesbian and bisexual women.          Structural feminist pedagogy developed along a parallel track during the same time period as the psychological approach, inspired primarily by the work of Brazilian critical educator, Paulo Freire. Freire was concerned with structural sources of oppression and privilege. He, bell hooks, and others examined the appropriate uses of authority, urging the sharing of authority while at the same time acknowledging that authority cannot be abandoned entirely in an educational setting.          Tisdell then moves into the main focus of her chapter, poststructural feminist pedagogy, an approach that draws on psychological and structural models, but extends beyond them. In particular, poststructural feminist pedagogy highlights the positionality of learners and instructors and engages them in a quest for emancipation. Tisdell provides a brief general discussion of postmodern and poststructuralist theories, arguing that all versions of these theories engage in deconstruction of the ways individuals have been socialized to construct various features of their identities, especially features related to class, race, and gender. She draws a further distinction between "ludic" postmodernism—generally the domain of elite academics who focus almost entirely on deconstructing language—and "resistance" postmodernism, which focuses on "the resistance of particular marginalized groups while remaining mindful of the danger of absolutizing any particular category" (p. 170). Tisdell concludes the chapter by showing how feminist pedagogy's five major themes are understood by postmodern and poststructuralist thinkers.          In a chapter titled, "Perspectives on Practice," Jane Hugo argues that, although women form a numerical majority in the postindustrial workforce, adult education has been slow to integrate feminist research. In this chapter, which speaks most concretely to issues of practice, Hugo reviews and elaborates on the work of Pratt and associates (1998), focusing on ways to connect a gender-based analysis to these authors' insights about adult education. As Hugo notes, Pratt and associates outline five different primary commitments, claiming that every adult educators holds at least one of these as his or her perspective on practice. These commitments concern: (1) effective delivery of content, (2) apprenticeship, (3) cultivating ways of thinking, (4) developing self-efficacy, and (5) creating a better society. For each of these five perspectives, Hugo explains how insights from feminist pedagogy can enhance women's learning and adult educators' efficacy as teachers. Acknowledging that it is "easier to think about women as learners than to do something with our knowledge" (p. 211), Hugo reports that recent studies show a widespread resistance among adult educators and curriculum developers to openly discuss in classroom or training situations, scenarios featuring gender roles or sexism. Moreover, such studies demonstrate the overwhelming dominance of curriculum content for adults that is decontextualized and monologic.          In the final chapter, "Creating Knowledge about Women's Learning," Hayes reiterates the need to question old beliefs and assumptions and to build new knowledge about women's learning. She warns of the danger of pitting men's learning needs against those of women. For Hayes, gender affects all aspects of women's learning. Moreover, in her view, the discourse on adult learning is permeated by sexist and racist assumptions. In reaction to this prevailing discourse, Hayes exhorts critics to expose the biases of as well as to reframe dominant (male-focused) theories of adult learning. From her perspective, adult learning theories need to incorporate more inclusive understandings of identity formation and diversity among women. Hayes concludes that gender studies ought to have an important place in all research about learning, explaining that by "making women's learning more visible as a legitimate and important topic for understanding, we can all contribute to building new knowledges to inform teaching, learning and living" (p. 243).         To be honest, I found the book a real challenge. I felt swamped by the ideological nature of some of the arguments and wondered if the insights offered really required such a densely theoretical treatment. Moreover, I thought the contributing editors made a strategic error by assuming that the target audience would primarily include women. From my perspective, the book needs to be read and comprehended by men as well as women.         As a male reader of the book, I found that the arguments presented in the book caused my own ideas about gender to change in significant ways. I now understand that gender dynamics are much more complex than I originally had imagined. And I now have a better understanding of why adult education has been slow to integrate feminist research. Personally, the book has given me an increased awareness of some of the problems women face within the education system and society in general. I have, as Hayes suggests in the postscript of the book, started in a meaningful way "to think of women's learning and lives" (p. 250). Note This review was produced under the editorship of Aimee Howley, Ohio University. The reviewer would like to thank Pat Hammer of Ohio University for her editorial assistance with the manuscript. References Belenky, M.F. Clinchy, B.M. Goldberger, N.R. Traule, J. (1986) Women's ways of knowing: the development of self, voice and mind. New York, Mind Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. New York: Pantheon. Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Freire, P. (1972). Cultural action for freedom. Harmondsworth, England.: Penguin. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Boston: South End Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge. Pratt, D. D. and Associates. (1998). Five perspectives in teaching in adult and higher education. Malabar, FL: Krieger. Film Source Rank Video. (1983). Educating Rita. London: Acorn Pictures.