courses. Atmosphere of Schools Feminist pedagogy seeks to critique and correct perceived power imbalances between forms of hierarchical authority, such as educators and institutions, and students, who are believed to be typically granted much less social power and agency in the knowledge creation process. In this sense, feminist pedagogy aims to restructure traditional learning environments in favor of a communal and collaborative experience of education, which ultimately views students as equal contributors and sources of expertise. The educational climate of schools, the result of dominant neoliberal competitive ideologies, does not prioritize communal processes of learning, research, and community action. Classroom power dynamics operating within neoliberal institutions exhibit a competitive style of engagement that employs fear and shame as a motivator for student growth. Traditional approaches to education maintain the status quo, reinforcing current power structures of domination. The "academic work process is essentially antagonistic to the working class, and academics, for the most part, live in a different world of culture, different ways that make it, too, antagonistic to working-class life." In contrast, feminist pedagogy rejects societal systems of oppression, recognizing and critiquing institutional and individual compliance associated with the academy that perpetuates larger ongoing societal oppression. The classroom is a microcosm of how power is disturbed and exercised in the larger society. "Students use subtle means to keep their vested power and attempt to enforce and replicate the status quo in the classroom." Qualities of feminist pedagogy Critical pedagogy advances the idea that knowledge is not static and unitary but rather results from an open-ended process of negotiation and interaction between teacher and student. Feminist pedagogy, as an offshoot of critical pedagogy, further holds that gender plays a critical role in the classroom, influencing not only "what is taught, but how it is taught." Like all forms of critical pedagogy feminist pedagogy aims "to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action." Feminist pedagogy aligns itself with many forms of critical pedagogy including those focused on race and ethnicity, class, post colonialism and globalization. The introduction to the collection Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward explained the qualities and distinctions from critical pedagogy: Like Freire's liberatory pedagogy, feminist pedagogy is based on assumptions about power and consciousness-raising, acknowledges the existence of oppression as well as the possibility of ending it, and foregrounds the desire for