How do I engaging with (my own) multiple identities?

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In Engagement 1 the notion of the virtual classroom as a strictly neutral space is dispelled by introducing it as embedded in multiple, overlapping ‘contexts within contexts’ on a micro, meso, macro, and meta level. In the engagement the concept of positionality is subsequently introduced as a tool for concretely articulating how your personal perspective is shaped by those layered social, cultural, and political contexts. In this sense, micro encompasses the virtual classroom environment, meso indicates the institutional level of higher education, macro describes the societal landscape, and meta refers to the global context.

Once you dive deeper into the complex interplay of those contexts, it becomes clear that the boundaries between them are not rigid. This grey area between context levels obfuscates our sense of what strictly fits in which category. In the same vein, this insight complicates the notion of objectivity by showing how certain dominant values, ideas, and perspectives percolate across those boundaries from meta to micro and vice versa. In other words, what happens in ‘outside of the virtual classroom environment’ has consequences for the classroom interactions and activities.

Concept

Engagement 1 allows you to explore the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape your identities and perspectives. As you will notice, much like those contexts, our identities are also layered and complex. Precisely those features of complexity and having layers are what creates characteristics which are unique to a context – but also persons. Understanding how those unique characteristics relate to a specific social, cultural, and political context is tricky, but in the context of inclusive (digital) education it is relevant to grasp how those contexts – and the people in them – can (re)produce mechanisms of exclusion.

The concept of intersectionality offers a way to understand how people carry multiple inextricably linked identities with them at all times. For example, a person is not just their gender or ethnicity at any point in time, but instead specifically the combination of those identities. Through this insight, intersectionality elucidates that people with certain identities are more likely to experience those exclusionary mechanisms. Conversely, some people can experience privileges in a particular context because of the social dynamics. The exclusions and privileges can be very clear at times: someone able-bodied who can see, more often than not, can access online content more easily, whereas someone with a visual impairment is made dependent on whether people took their condition into account when preparing the content such as Alternative Text. At other times, certain benefits or exclusions can manifest insidiously: where one student has access to a home environment conducive to online learning, another student might have to deal with barriers such as their internet connection or sharing a device with their siblings.

Understanding intersectionality as context dependent also illustrates the dynamism and changeability of the dynamics. One way in which this occurs is when characteristics which increase the likelihood of exclusion in one situation, can also create benefits in another context. For example, a student with a disability that is visible can enjoy the anonymity of an online environment. They are thus less likely to be (mis)judged for their disability. However, if a student and their needs are not visible, it is very difficult to take their condition into account. What makes the online classroom setting unique is that because it is geographically fragmented, it disperses each person across different contexts. The questions of what is ‘outside’ or ‘inside’ of the virtual classroom and therefore relevant for a teacher’s consideration thus becomes especially complicated. This is exemplified in the scenario of this engagement which centres around a so-called hot moment: a moment of conflict or tension that is emotion-laden that “threatens to derail teaching and learning” (Willner Brodksy et al., 2021).

Scenario

In the forum space of your online classroom, a student raises a concern: one of their classmates used the n-word in a group chat that some of the students are in. The student is very upset and is openly calling on you as a teacher to intervene and address the situation by explicitly calling out the student for their insensitive behaviour. The debate that you organised in the forum is now interrupted, and some students are commenting that the involved classmates need to resolve the issue among themselves, in their own time. However, some students are arguing that this behaviour is not acceptable. The dilemma is that the interaction happened in a group chat on another platform outside your virtual classroom, while the confrontation occurred in a forum that you lead and moderate.

Challenge (15 minutes)

Reflect on your emotional reaction and your course of action in this situation. Try to use the proposed insights and the concepts in the analysis for your reflection. Writing your answers down can help your reflection process. Use the prompts below to guide your thoughts.

Prompts

What are your initial thoughts on the issue?
What does an intersectional lens on your identities reveal to you (about your positionality)?
How do you think your particular intersection of characteristics (in terms of ethnicity and ability, for example) influence your perspective?
Are you inclined to side with a particular group; namely, the students calling for the involved ones to resolve the issue in their own time outside of the virtual classroom, or the student who experienced the language and classmates calling on you as a teacher to address the issue?
What do you think your role is as a teacher in addressing the conflict? Why?
If you choose to address the conflict, how would you approach the dialogue with your students?
How can you address future hot moments in your classroom? What agreements can you make with your students for addressing such moments?
Even more than in conventional classroom, in an online environment, certain interactions are not visible. How can you take these hidden aspects of online classroom interactions into account? How do you think your students perceive your position and perspective regarding this situation?
What do you think online classroom participants can learn about this situation? (Including yourself?)
How might different students experience this situation? How do you think this impacts them in the setting of the online classroom? How can you find out?
How can you use digital approaches to your advantage in this situation? (Maybe making use of anonymous or asynchronous reflections, or collaborative methods?)

Example

Because your personal reflection is specific to you, this section illustrates an intersectional analysis by applying it to the identity described in the example of Engagement 1. An intersectional lens can offer new insights by showing how multiple social identities in a certain context construct an experience that is particular to that combination of identities in that context.

As someone who is a migrant and first-generation university student, I understand the difficulties of assimilating into a new country, system, and culture – such as not having shared experiences with people around me. I am aware of the different barriers first-generation students can encounter during their studies, as well as the hindrances students with a migrant background can face – such as being rejected for jobs and internships because of assumptions about my language proficiency. However, I also am a permanent resident of my host country, despite being a migrant. Consequently, I am not familiar with the experiences of migration that requires the visa and the risks of deportation.

An intersectional analysis of this particular experience could reveal the following:

Having multiple identities that are excluded from participating in a society in systematic ways, has the effect of increasing the risk and likelihood that they experience exclusion. In this case being a migrant and first-generation student means that they have two catalysing factors contributing to a lack of social support. There are specific patterns of exclusion that can be traced to certain groups which share perceived traits and the ways in which these exclusions manifest in a given social, cultural, and political context. The reverse is also true; namely that certain perceived traits lead to a position of relative privilege. This is context dependent and can thus shift. While exclusion can often be linked to groups of people who share a perceived trait in a particular context, the context of an individual is also constantly changing, which shifts their experience of exclusion or inclusion.

Learn

To gain a better understanding of the ways in which your students’ experiences and perspectives manifest requires an awareness of students’ individual experiences in your online classroom environment. You can then develop an awareness of how multiple overlapping identities in multiple overlapping contexts produce particular social dynamics. From this awareness, teachers may then develop the competence to analyse identities and their contexts from an intersectional lens in order to effectuate education that is inclusive of the diversity of students in the classroom.

The micro-learning module ‘Get to Know Your Students’ Backgrounds, Perspectives and Learning Journeys’ is a learning resource which helps develop the competence to learn your students’ experiences and contexts in a digital education environment. It invites you to think about ways to connect with your students on a deeper level. See also Guideline 2 ‘Get to know and adapt to the needs of students’ in our Handbook of e-Inclusion.