within certain segments of the women's movement resulted in the institutionalization of women's studies programs. The institutionalization of women's studies programs, facilitated the challenging of existing canons and disciplines which is reflected in classroom teaching methods. "The field of Women's Studies has expanded dramatically since the first courses were offered in 1970. The critiques of dominant paradigms and compensatory research efforts that characterized its early stages generated an explosion of scholarship that has significantly expanded the undergraduate women's studies curriculum, made possible the development of graduate level instruction, and propelled efforts to integrate the evolving scholarship on women across the curriculum. Throughout the evolution of the field, the processes of teaching women's studies courses have received considerable scholarly attention, resulting in a significant body of theory that attempts to define elements of feminist teaching". Influential figures Paulo Freire Theorist Paulo Freire is known for his work in the field of critical pedagogy, of which feminist pedagogy is a particular manifestation. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1968, Freire used Marxist theory to argue that the student-teacher relationship reflected and reinforced problematic societal power structures. He also argued against what he called the banking model of education, in which a student is viewed as an empty account waiting to be filled by the teacher, writing "it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power." Freire's work emphasized the need for teachers to eschew their class perspective and see both education and revolution as process of shared understanding between the teacher and the taught, the leader and the led. Feminist pedagogy, as it has developed in the United States, provides a historically situated example of critical pedagogy in practice. Feminist conceptions of education are similar to Freire's pedagogy in a variety of ways, and feminist educators often cite Freire as the educational theorist who comes closest to the approach and goals of feminist pedagogy. Both feminist pedagogy as it is usually defined and Freirean pedagogy rest upon visions of social transformation; underlying both are certain common assumptions concerning oppression, consciousness, and historical change. Both pedagogies assert the existence of oppression in people's material conditions of existence and as a part of consciousness. They also rest on a view of consciousness as more than a sum of dominating discourses, but as containing within it