Abstract

The object of this study is understanding pedagogy and in particular, home economics pedagogy. This work began as a response to the text What is home economics education? , with the intention to translate into teacher-talk the messages conveyed in the text. For it was with an initial uneasiness about the way the topic was talked about in Brown's text, that raised the question of the appropriateness of the framework of critical theory to understanding pedagogy of home economics. ;Set in the context of the contemporary social, political and ecological crises that beset the world together with the disarray in Western philosophic, scientific and social scientific thinking, the paper seeks to illuminate the way education and pedagogy are understood within an orientation to the world influenced by the empirical-analytic sciences. To the extent that this orientation remains positivistic, the paper seeks to show how feminist and critical theories, hermeneutics and phenomenology challenge this tradition of consciousness and how our understanding of pedagogy is enriched by the insights afforded by these alternative perspectives. ;Insofar as the work takes the form of a talk about pedagogy rather than a traditional analysis of a concept, it follows Gadamer's and Rorty's elaboration of the way conversation serves edification when there is willingness and openness to attend to what others are saying about something and to the way they say it. Thus the interpretation of the text What is home economics education? is approached as a hermeneutical task to show how significant the text is towards understanding the topic, while also revealing its limitations with regard to the experience of being home economics teachers or parents, to the meaning of being teachers or parents, and to a language of pedagogy for home economics that does not encompass the familial words such as caring-for, belonging-to, being-with. ;The paper concludes with further questions that invite the reader to participate in continuing conversation on the topic, home economics pedagogy, and is it teachable or only experienceable?