‘Doesn’t my experience count?’ White students, the authority of experience and social justice pedagogy

Abstract

Social justice pedagogy appeals to experience as a form of empowerment and as a starting‐point for working collaboratively in the diverse classroom. However, taking experience as unmediated and as an authoritative source of knowledge can function in ways that are counterproductive to the aims of social justice education. This essay examines the presumed authority of experience through a discussion of a debate around the meaning of ‘experience’ in feminist thought. Social justice educators, the author argues, must focus attention on how the subjective understanding of experience is mediated by politics, power and ideology.