Connected Education for Women

Abstract

We present a model of education, called “connected education,” designed to be appropriate for women, and derived from interviews with 135 women, varying widely in age, social and ethnic background, and educational institution. We explore four features of the model: (a) explicit confirmation for modes of thinking and kinds of knowledge that women value; (b) opportunities to explore the particularities of firsthand experience, before moving to conceptualization of that experience; (c) support for women's efforts to define their own educational tasks and develop their own individual styles of work; and (d) arrangements for egalitarian, collaborative construction of knowledge among teachers and students.