Powerful Learning: A Study of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry 1921-1938. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

This paper reviews the program of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, held from 1921 to 1938, and attempts to discern whether the curriculum and pedagogy of the school was feminist. An introduction notes that sources for the paper include course syllabi, videotaped interviews, and first person accounts of the school's functioning. A section describing the history of the summer school covers the thinking of its founders, Hilda W. Smith and M. Carey Thomas, the opening of the school, the curriculum, the student body which was racially integrated, and the school's involvement in the union movement (which eventually caused its close). A central section looks at the characteristics of the school, student evaluation, non-academic learning experiences, curriculum, and the effect of the school on its students, women from blue-collar occupations. A further section offers an overview of feminist pedagogy and method as a preparation for a section on the use of feminist pedagogy at the Summer School. This section notes that the school's educational philosophy was founded on feminism and the progressive education of John Dewey. A conclusion argues that the experience of the school demonstrates that a commitment to women's learning makes possible collaborative process, shared authority, and empowerment. (Contains 23 references.) (JB)