“To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.”
bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress
In this quotation, bell hooks emphasizes that students are humans, first and foremost, with experiences inside and outside the university context that shape their learning experiences. I have chosen to begin this final exam review module with this quotation because I want you to remember as you write this exam that you are more than a student who is expected to perform well on a test. Your finals are not necessarily the sole measures of what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown, or what you’ve overcome this semester.
bell hooks challenges what she calls the “banking system” of education, meaning the idea that learning is a series of transactions wherein “all students need to do is consume information fed to them by a professor and be able to memorize it and store it”. This exam aims to go beyond this “banking system” by encouraging you to:
- reflect on what you’ve taken away from this course
- make unique connections across different modules
- engage with your peers’ contributions to the discussion forum – make sure to reference them
- identify issues that matter to you in the study of gender and social justice
Learning Objectives
By the end of this final exam review module, you should be able to:
- Describe the exam requirements, format, and submission instructions
- Identify available supports including email and office hours
- Identify questions about the exam
- Define key concepts or “big ideas” from the course
- Distinguish between distinct theories from the course
- Explain authors’ main arguments and how they relate to one another
- Identify issues in the study of gender and social justice that matter most to you
- Explain why these issues are important in the contemporary moment — what is at stake?
LESSON & BIG IDEA REVIEW
