Why so few women in 2500 years of learning theory?

In presenting my talk on 2500 years of learning theory and theorists, and my series of 260 learning theorists, a question  I often get asked is 'Where are the women?’ True, they are proportionally absent. This is not because of any conscious or unconscious exclusion on my part. The answer is stunningly simple. Women from the Greeks through the Middle Ages, up to the 20^th century were largely excluded, not only from being educators but also being educated. It is a extraordinary story of exclusion.

The dominance of religion and the fact that the dominant, global, religious leaders were all men, as were their zealot educators, meant that women were largely ignored as educators and theorists on learning throughout the Middle Ages. The Reformation certainly helped with its push towards universal schooling but the exclusion of women from the very structure of educational elites across many religions, still meant institutional exclusion. We still live with an antipathy, as we know, by certain religious factions, towards the education of women.

Renaissance

Even the Renaissance did little to improve the matter. Hypatia of Alexandria, a Neo-Platonist, is said to appear on Raphael’s School of Athens but there is an interesting backstory to her appearance. The funder, a Bishop asked, “Who is this woman in the middle?” “Hypatia, the most famous student of the School of Alexandria,” replied Raphael. “Remove her. Knowledge of her runs counter to the belief of the faithful! Otherwise, the work is acceptable,”. So he disguised her as the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere I. The story, apocryphal or not, illustrates the Church’s antipathy towards women as educated intellectuals.

We had to wait until the Enlightenment to hear women’s voices. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was certainly the most original and radical (see my views here). Her attack on Rousseau’s attitudes towards the education of women resulted in a well reasoned defence of the education of women alongside men, for the sake of their own intellectual autonomy, not as Rousseau claimed (see my views here), for the pleasure of men. However, even here, her recommendation that the poor be excluded at age nine, shows a less than generous spirit towards educational equality. Maria and her father Richard Edgeworth’s Practical Education was a deep and practical guide to education that recognised hte autonomy of the leaner but also emphasised practical education. Ada Lovelace can be added to these early thinkers having realised that computation was important.

The astounding fact is that women were almost entirely excluded from formal education, its institutions and even as teachers. This was cultural and legal with girls either excluded from the process of education or, if included, steered towards the domestic and social skills they needed as a wife and mother. The very notion of what it meant to be ‘educated’ was very much a male concern across two millennia. It was not until the 20^th century that a semblance of equality in education, opportunities in teaching and research became possible. Columbia University dod not admit women into undergraduate Degree courses until 1983!

The 20^th century saw drastic changes, politically in terms of the right of women but also in the world of learning. The post World War 1 era saw large numbers of teachers emerge after the carnage of the war. Universities, colleges and teaching were opened up to women, as were opportunities to get degrees and positions in higher education.

Maria Montessori (my views here) was one notable example of a woman who had a real, practical and long-lasting impact on schools and schooling from 1909 in her Montessori Method, which has open classrooms, a looser approach to teaching, more self-directed but still a strong emphasis on method and materials. Her methods certainly seemed to help Page and Brin of Google. Margaret Donaldson, who worked with Piaget and studied Vygotsky. Vicky Colbert was another who founded a schools movement in South America called Escuela Nueva.

We should not assume that just becuase a theorist is a woman, they are right. Katherine Briggs and daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, neither of whom had any training in psychology, set out to design their test and worked with the HR manager of a local bank, Edward Hay to take a smattering of Jung and turn it into a pyramid scheme. Rita Dunn and her husband Kenneth Dunn created a learning styles phenomenon in the 1970s. There are the psychoanalysts Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.

We had the pioneering study of racism from Mamie Clark, Elizabeth Bjork on memory, Judith Harris on personality, Carol Dweck on growth mindset,,

This struggle and the role of women in education is examined in detail by Jane Roland Martin (my view here), who saw the role of women in education as an unexamined topic. For the actual role of women in education across the ages she recommends we look not at established institutions but in more general literature and popular sources. She rightly states that the very concept of women, reflected in the academic bias in subjects, as opposed to the practical and vocational, the emphasis on schools, schooling and the ghettoisation of women into professions such as teaching and nursing. This wide set of perspectives was needed, she thought, in research into the role of women.

A heroine of mine is Jennie Lee, whose work literally created the Open University. A working class woman, daughter of a miner in Scotland, probable had more impact on Higher Education than any other person in the UK. Barbara Kellerman is a brilliant scholar on leadership.

In the psychology of learning I covered Elizabeth Bjork, Judith Harris and the fascinating group that included Gloria Gery, Victoria Marsick, Karen Watkins and Alison Rossett around informal learning and performance support. There are many others.

There's Mary Immordino-Yang, Lisa Feldman-Barrett on emotions and memory, with very different views. Judith Butler on queer theory and her arch critic Camille Paglia. Also Linda Darling-Hammond on teaching and schools.

More recently we have Jane Hart on learning tools, Ruth Clark on online learning and Daphe Koeller on MOOCs.

Online learning?

More recently, in online learning, one could also say, ‘Where are the women?’, especially on the technology side of the online learning delivery. This is to be explained by the dominance of male figures in the founding and building of large, dominant tech companies. The reasons for this are complex, even rooted in education itself, where girls are subtly discouraged from taking STEM subjects. On the non-technical, side of online learning it is very different, where both learning and online learning is much more gender balanced and there are many women experts and practitioners who are active on technology based learning.

There are few areas of human endeavour where women were so studiously excluded than in learning theory and practice. This was a process of deliberate exclusion but also because philosophical (Greeks), religious and even Enlightenment views, such as Rousseau, placed women in a secondary role. Even well into the 20^th century women had to fight for recognition and that fight is far from over.

Conclusion

I have written articles on 31 women who have played a significant role in learning theory and practice; Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Ada Lovelace, Maria Montessori, Margaret Donaldson, Vicky Colbert, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Linda Darling-Hammond, Isabel Myers, Katherine Briggs, Rita Dunn, Mamie Clark, Elizabeth Bjork, Judith Harris, Jane Roland Martin, Carol Dweck Gloria Gery, Victoria Marsick, Karen Watkins, Alison Rossett, Barbara Kellerman, Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, Mary Immordino-Yang, Lisa Feldman-Barrett, Jennie Lee and Jane Hart, Ruth Clark, Daphne Koeller.

What I have never done is claim this is an exhaustive or even representative list. I write about people I read, admire and sometimes do not admire. Many in this list remain largely unread and unknown to many. I have little time for Myer-Briggs and Feldman-Barrett's theory of emotions but it is important to include those who have been influential rather than just right. My real interest is in the nature of learning, not gender. Nevertheless, the story is definitely one of quite extreme exclusion and of interest in itself.