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Not on the Reading List: Locating Queer Working-Class Knowledge | Yvette Taylor | Education Blog | University of Strathclyde Glasgow

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Not on the Reading List: Locating Queer Working-Class Knowledge | Yvette Taylor | Education Blog | University of Strathclyde Glasgow

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Not on the Reading List: Locating Queer Working-Class Knowledge | University of Strathclyde

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Yvette Taylor is Professor of Education, researching class, gender, sexuality, and higher education at the Strathclyde Institute of Education

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I’m a Queer Man of Color. Here’s How Intersectionality Impacts Me.  | Roberto Valdes | WHYY

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I’m a Queer Man of Color. Here’s How Intersectionality Impacts Me.  | Roberto Valdes | WHYY

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A Conceptual Framework for Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum in Private Higher Education | Nina Rossouw & Liezel Frick | Cogent Education Journal

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A Conceptual Framework for Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum in Private Higher Education | Nina Rossouw & Liezel Frick | Cogent Education Journal

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A conceptual framework for uncovering the hidden curriculum in private higher education

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The hidden curriculum has proven to be a challenging concept to understand and define. However, it remains an integral part of the curriculum within higher education. The literature reviewed addres…

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In line with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Education 4.0, inclusive pedagogy, and co-learning, UNITE creates sustainable and inclusive digital resources through four Work Packages:

I-TEACH creates innovative digital tools based on podcasts and mixed reality;

AWARE improves awareness of diversity and inclusion through training courses for University students and lecturers;

DONE facilitates the use of AI for students from all backgrounds by creating digital tools to support students’ learning;

GUIDANCE produces and shares good practices for a high-performing digital and inclusive education ecosystem.

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UNITE: University Network for Inclusive and Digital Education is an Erasmus+ Consortium composed of European universities and organisations in Czechia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. The primary goal of UNITE is to promote inclusion, drive digital transformation, and improve teaching quality in higher education by creating innovative programs, digital tools, and strategies. By utilising the consortium’s diverse expertise, it aims to establish best practices that universities can implement to reduce inequalities and encourage both innovation and inclusion.

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The University of Córdoba (UCO) is a non-profit higher education and research institution established in 1972. It is at the forefront of research in Andalusia, Spain, and is recognized among the top research institutions nationally. The UCO has a strong track record in Agricultural Sciences and Plant and Animal Sciences. With a deep commitment to society, the UCO promotes inclusion, innovation, research, technological development, and knowledge transfer as drivers of social and economic progress.

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This resource reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Erasmus+ Programme – Key Actyon KA220-HED – Cooperation partnership in higher education.

Project Code: 2023-1-IT02-KA220-HED-000162181.

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University Network for Inclusive and digiTal Education

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Unite project – University Network for Inclusive and digiTal Education

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Teaching the Hidden Curriculum | Boston University

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Teaching the Hidden Curriculum | Boston University

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The term "hidden curriculum" refers to an amorphous collection of " implicit academic, social, and cultural messages ," " unwritten rules and unspoken expectations ," and " unofficial norms, behaviours and values " of the dominant-culture context in which all teaching and learning is situated.

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Visible, Invisible: Black Women in Higher Education | Victoria Showunmi | Frontiers in Sociology

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Visible, Invisible: Black Women in Higher Education | Victoria Showunmi | Frontiers in Sociology

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Frontiers | Visible, invisible: Black women in higher education

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Word count: 162 words	This paper explores race and gender in the context of higher education, analysing the experiences of Black women in academia to create…

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Reshaping Schooling: How the History of Black and Native Education Can Inform Our Future | Eve L. Ewing | Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Reshaping Schooling: How the History of Black and Native Education Can Inform Our Future | Eve L. Ewing | Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Should We Drop Ethnic Minority for Global Majority? | BBC News

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Should We Drop Ethnic Minority for Global Majority? | BBC News

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Global majority: Should the term replace ethnic minority?

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The term, which is being used in place of BAME and people of colour, has both admirers and critics.

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HOW DOES YOUR INSTITUTION UPHOLD COLONIAL OR EUROCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS?

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REFLECT ON YOUR CLASSROOM PRACTICES AND CONSIDER HOW YOU CAN EMBED INTERSECTIONALITY INTO YOUR TEACHING.

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HOW MIGHT YOU DESIGN OR REVISE A LESSON PLAN OR SYLLABUS FOR A SINGLE CLASS SESSION THAT INCORPORATES DECOLONIAL THINKING AND CENTRES INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVES?

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Bonded now to long Western bent. Western lexicology, logorrhoea, lexithymia. Western grammar. Say it was said, what I will say, but not in English: In the Nôm script of pre-colonial Việt Nam: —[Tongue] ... [Revolt]— English demands: What is the function of each word? English demands: Which is the…

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Closer Look - Community Connections | The LGBTQ Perspectives Project – Intersectionality

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Closer Look - Community Connections | The LGBTQ Perspectives Project – Intersectionality

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Closer Look - Community Connections: The LGBTQ Perspectives Project – Intersectionality

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Navigating Intersectionality: Bridging the Digital Divide in Higher Education | Atif Choudhury | Higher Education Digest

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Navigating Intersectionality: Bridging the Digital Divide in Higher Education | Atif Choudhury | Higher Education Digest

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Navigating Intersectionality: Bridging the Digital Divide in Higher Education - Higher Education Digest

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Named on the Shaw Trust’s 2023 Disability Power 100, Atif Choudhury is a social entrepreneur with a background in economic justice and disability inclusion. Focusing on the inclusion of marginalised communities, Atif has worked on high-profile social development projects across the world, and spoken about his approach at global and national events. He is the Co-founder and […]

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Intersectionality and Education: The Case of Aliya | 
Black Inclusion Association

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Intersectionality and Education: The Case of Aliya | 
Black Inclusion Association

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Intersectionality and Education: The Case of Aliya

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Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy | Elizabeth Ellsworth | Harvard Educational Review

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Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy | Elizabeth Ellsworth | Harvard Educational Review

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Critical Pedagogy: Intentions and Realities | Maha Bali / مها بالي· | Hybrid Pedagogy

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Critical Pedagogy: Intentions and Realities | Maha Bali / مها بالي· | Hybrid Pedagogy

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Critical Pedagogy: Intentions and Realities

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This article is a response submitted for ourseries
[http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/tag/critical-digital-pedagogy-cfp/]about critical
digital pedagogy.See the original CFP for details
[http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/page-two/cfp-critical-digital-pedagogy/]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is one thing to read about critical pedagogy in the abstract, but I believe
there is much more

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Critical Pedagogy and the Path from Awareness to Action | CAFE

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Critical Pedagogy and the Path from Awareness to Action | CAFE

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Center for Academic & Faculty Excellence (CAFE) 

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FALL24-Critical Pedagogy and the Path from Awareness to Action

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Intersectional Identities: Do Educators Empower or Oppress? | Maryam Asenuga | Learning for Justice

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Intersectional Identities: Do Educators Empower or Oppress? | Maryam Asenuga | Learning for Justice

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"Don't bring your Muslim crap here." My "friend" said this to me. I was 16 years old, and she was taking me to her church. It was 2015, and in our post-9/11, divisive climate, I was desensitized to the othering of my faith: I had grown up in white, Catholic spaces.

As a Black, female Muslim, I have been caught in this battle of choosing which identity is acceptable to present in certain contexts. Here, I am only Black. Over there, I am just a woman. And over there, I am solely Muslim.

As educators, you can either empower or oppress students by the way you choose to teach and see them. Your intentional decisions to incorporate some communities and identities into the classroom while leaving others out show which side you choose.

The absence of education that incorporated various identities-and my subsequent, subconscious acceptance of others' mistreatment of my intersectionality-shows me that the educators in my life chose to oppress.

Choosing to Empower or Oppress

My educators played antagonistic contributors in my battle of identity trade-offs because they never acknowledged my intersecting identities. When I was growing up, my teachers did not recognize or address the reality of the " double burden" that Black women face for being Black and female. I never learned about Black, female, Muslim historical figures. Instead, my educators celebrated Christopher Columbus but somehow neglected his murderous, enslaving tendencies. Even more disturbing, my high school's mascot was the "Crusader"-an homage to the medieval wars against Muslims.

The only representation of intersectionality I received was the shallow exploration of Harriet Tubman.

The combination of the school environment and these lessons told me my identities did not matter.

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Intersectional Identities: Do Educators Empower or Oppress?

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"Don't bring your Muslim crap here." My "friend" said this to me. I was 16 years old, and she was taking me to her church. It was 2015, and in our post-9/11, divisive climate, I was desensitized to the othering of my faith: I had grown up in white, Catholic spaces.

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Intersectional Feminism as Pedagogy: Navigating an Ethics of Care in Research | Jessica Watkin & Sarah Robbins

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Intersectional Feminism as Pedagogy: Navigating an Ethics of Care in Research | Jessica Watkin & Sarah Robbins

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Intersectional Feminism as Pedagogy: Navigating an Ethics of Care in Research

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How can the employment of Intersectional Feminism as pedagogy in conducting graduate research reposition the quality of the knowledge-making generated by such arts-based research practices within the larger interests of the neoliberal university? Building upon Dr. Kathleen Gallagher’s assertion in The Methodological Dilemma of the impossibility of assuming a position of objectivity…

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Intersectionality: A Fun Guide | Miriam Dobson

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Intersectionality: A Fun Guide | Miriam Dobson

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Intersectional Pedagogies | Nothing Never Happens

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Intersectional Pedagogies | Nothing Never Happens

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Intersectional Pedagogies – Nothing Never Happens

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Dr. Case’s blog has tons of resources and practical materials and is available at: www.drkimcase.com

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Intersectionality Pedagogy: Centering Black Women’s Knowledges, Voices, and Lives in Teaching and Learning | Chayla Haynes, Lori D. Patton, Nicole M. Joseph | Qualitative Inquiry

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Intersectionality Pedagogy: Centering Black Women’s Knowledges, Voices, and Lives in Teaching and Learning | Chayla Haynes, Lori D. Patton, Nicole M. Joseph | Qualitative Inquiry

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Intersectionality Pedagogy: Centering Black Women’s Knowledges, Voices, and Lives in Teaching and Learning - Chayla Haynes, Lori D. Patton, Nicole M. Joseph, 2025

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Intersectionality is a perspective that brings visibility to how Black women are relegated to the margins of the university curriculum, if included at all. With…

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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive | Cult of Pedagogy

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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive | Cult of Pedagogy

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Last month, I reviewed Zaretta Hammond's fantastic book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Now I'm proud to have Zaretta here as a guest writer to share some specific strategies with us.

Culturally responsive teaching. Everybody is talking about it. The big question is: How do you actually make lessons culturally responsive? That comes up regularly when I am working with groups of teachers to improve outcomes for diverse students who are struggling. I remember working with a group of sixth grade teachers on improving learning for their at-risk students. These teachers were frustrated that their students, 95 percent of them students of color and English language learners, were not applying themselves to learning.

I suggested that we explore making lessons more culturally relevant in order to accelerate student learning. I remember the reaction of Janice, the science teacher. "I am not going to be rappin' about the periodic table," she said defiantly as she crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.

I couldn't blame her. Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle. That's because we usually talk about culturally responsive teaching only as an engagement strategy designed to motivate at-risk students to take learning seriously. Or we try to find a race-based connection to the content to make it "relevant" to minority students.

One of the biggest misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching is thinking you have to tie the lesson's content to African American or Latino students' racial background. The common belief is if you mention Africa, Mexico, or famous black and brown high achievers, it will spark students' attention. Then they will be motivated to participate.

In reality, culturally responsive teaching is less about using racial pride as a motivator and more about mimicking students' cultural learning styles and tools. These are the strategies their moms, dads, grandmas, and other community folks use to teach them life skills and basic concepts long before they come to school and during out-of-school time.

Culturally responsive teaching leverages the brain's memory systems and information processing structures. Why? Many diverse students come from oral cultural traditions. This means their primary ways of knowledge transfer and meaning-making are oral and active. It's a common cultural tradition that cuts across racial groups: African American, Latino, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander communities all have strong oral cultures. Each of these cultural groups uses the brain's memory systems for turning inert information into useable knowledge. They use memory strategies to make learning sticky, like connecting what needs to be remembered to a rhythm or music (that's why we still know the ABC song) or by reciting it in fun ways like a poem, riddle, or limerick.

I asked Janice what area of learning she wanted to help her kids improve. She said science vocabulary; they weren't learning the weekly words and it was getting in the way of their understanding of key concepts. She was frustrated and at the end of her rope. I asked how she was teaching it. She used the typical approach: On Monday, she listed the words on the board. Students copied them down and were required to look each word up and use it in a sentence. On Wednesday, there was a vocabulary test.

I suggested that we design word study to be more culturally responsive by making it more like the students' own cultural learning process. She was open for trying something different.

I offered her these three tips for transforming any lesson into something that looked and felt more culturally responsive to diverse students, something that would allow them to engage more and process the content effectively.

Games are the power strategy for culturally-grounded learning because they get the brain's attention and require active processing. Attention is the first step in learning. We cannot learn, remember, or understand what we don't first pay attention to. Call and response is just a way to get the brain's attention. Most games employ a lot of the cultural tools you'd find in oral traditions - repetition, solving a puzzle, making connections between things that don't seem to be related (Ever play Taboo or Apples to Apples?).

Organizing learning so that students rely on each other will build on diverse students' communal orientation. This communal orientation can be summed up in the African proverb, "I am because we are." Even making learning slightly competitive in a good-natured way increases students' level of attention and engagement. It's why the T.V. show Survivor has been around for so many years; it's a social-based game.

The brain is wired to remember stories and to use the story structure to make sense of the world. That's why every culture has creation stories. In oral traditions, stories play a bigger role in teaching lessons about manners, morality, or simply what plants to eat or not eat in the wilderness because it's the way content is remembered. Diverse students (and all students, really) learn content more effectively if they can create a coherent narrative about the topic or process presented. That's the brain's way of weaving it all together. (Bonus: It also offers a great way to check for understanding and correct misconceptions.)

So Janice took her weekly list of science vocabulary and created a variety of sorting and matching games for students. She built a set of simple card games based on Go Fish or Old Maid. In addition she created some team games. Each week students had different active ways to learn the vocabulary. For 10-15 minutes a couple of times during the week, students got to play these learning games rather than look up words in a dictionary. She gave them instructions for making the games at home if they wanted to.

Instead of the traditional weekly vocab test, she asked them to "storify" their understanding of key concept words like metamorphosis, using vocabulary from past weeks.

When I checked in with the group a few weeks later, she was the first one to share. She said student engagement was like night and day. Now all students were participating. She said she knew they were learning the vocabulary at a deeper level because they were actually using the new science terms during discussions and in their writing with no prompting from her.

The big A-ha's for the group that day were that (1) Culturally responsive teaching doesn't have to be some performance the teacher does to entertain students and (2) It doesn't have to mention race or reference culture at all. Instead, what makes a practice culturally responsive is that it mimics students' own cultural learning tools. They all realized that these practices are helpful for all students, not targeted at minority students.

The real trick is to use these strategies regularly as part of your instructional routine rather than doing them randomly every now and then. Consistency is the key. ♦

Learn more about how to improve diverse students' information processing skills and actually grow their brains in Zaretta Hammond's book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students .

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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive

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Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle.

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Human Restoration Project is informing, guiding, and growing a movement toward a progressive, human-centered education system. We are bringing together a network of radical educators who are transforming education systems across the world.

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Deciphering the Hidden Curriculum | Human Restoration Project

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Deciphering the Hidden Curriculum | Human Restoration Project

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Deciphering the Hidden Curriculum | Human Restoration Project | Free Resources

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This lesson focuses on analyzing the hidden curriculum present in various classroom situations, and encourages students to discuss and debate how these situations relate to broader societal messages and power dynamics. | A free resource hosted at Human Restoration Project on progressive education.

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Being a Steward of Intersectionality in Teaching | Anne-Marie Nuñez & Antonio Duran | Equity Alliance

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Being a Steward of Intersectionality in Teaching | Anne-Marie Nuñez & Antonio Duran | Equity Alliance

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Being a Steward of Intersectionality in Teaching by Anne-Marie Nuñez & Antonio Duran | Equity Alliance

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Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities | MLA

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Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities | MLA

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The Combahee River Collective Statement: Annotated | Liz Tracey | JSTOR Daily

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The Combahee River Collective Statement: Annotated | Liz Tracey | JSTOR Daily

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The Combahee River Collective Statement: Annotated - JSTOR Daily

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The Black feminist collective’s 1977 statement has been a bedrock document for academics, organizers and theorists for 45 years.

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Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed at Fifty | Liza Featherstone | JSTOR Daily

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Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed at Fifty | Liza Featherstone | JSTOR Daily

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The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.

The teacher was holding forth. Hired by the Brazilian government to set up a workers' literacy program, he waxed progressive to an audience of fisherman, peasants, and urban workers on why, according to the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, they should not beat their children. He was pleased with his lecture as he delivered it-a pretty lucid and engaging explication, if he did say so himself. Then a worker raised his hand to ask some questions.

"We have just heard some nice words," the man said, politely but pointedly addressing the teacher as "Doctor."

"Fine words. Well spoken... do you know where people live, sir? Have you been in our houses, sir?"

The worker described his own living conditions: his kids were "dirty, crying, making a noise... And people have to get up at four in the morning the next day and start all over again... If people hit their kids, sir, it's because life is so hard they don't have much choice."

The teacher was the Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire. As Raff Carmen, a scholar and practitioner of adult education, would write decades later in an obituary of Freire, the confrontation "stood out as the cathartic moment shaping Freire's thinking about progressive education: even when one must speak to people, one must convert the 'to' into a 'with' the people." The moment captured something vital about knowledge: it comes from lived experience -the teacher cannot just dictate from on high. In that moment, Freire realized that although his intentions in giving his Piaget lecture had been progressive, his pedagogy was not: he had treated his students as empty vessels-or as he would later write, vaults in a bank-waiting to be filled, not as interlocutors or partners in the learning process. He had not understood that he and his students were co-creators of knowledge; in dialogue, they would learn from one another.

The book that made these insights famous, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in Portuguese in 1968, and in English in 1970, fifty years ago. For a book infused with Hegel from cover to cover, and peppered with footnotes invoking Frantz Fanon, Erich Fromm, Karl Marx, and Chairman Mao, it has been surprisingly popular and enduring. More than a million copies have been sold worldwide since the 1970 English translation. Pedagogy has achieved more global fame than any other book translated from Portuguese. On a visit to Greece, a street vendor once approached Freire holding a copy of the book, asking for his autograph, and telling Freire his work was "very important in my country." Such scenes were repeated around the world in every country Freire visited.

Paulo Freire, born in 1921, was the son of a police officer. He grew up in the northeastern city of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, which was Brazil's poorest region. At the time, northeast Brazil was semi-feudal: run by a small group of wealthy landowners, and largely populated by extremely impoverished, illiterate peasants. Although Freire's family was middle class, they experienced hardships, including periods of hunger through the Great Depression and the loss of Freire's father in 1934. Throughout his teenage years, Freire struggled to get an adequate education. Eventually he did, however, complete his university studies, and worked in a government-led literacy campaign.

That program grew out of a peasant uprising in that part of the country, pressing for land reform, better education, decent living conditions, and job opportunities. While Freire was a radical, as were the movement's leaders, this uprising enjoyed support from some in Brazil's capitalist classes, because improving the lot of the peasants in the northeast would open up the region as a consumer market and also allow more industrial development.

In 1963, Freire became head of Brazil's National Commission of Popular Culture, under the liberal-populist government of João Goulart, who moved dramatically to the left once in power in response to popular movements. Policies to help the poor-including opening the franchise to people who couldn't read-enraged many among the country's upper and upper-middle classes. A right-wing dictatorship came to power in a military coup the following year, and Freire was thrown in prison by the new regime, which viewed mass literacy and political participation as a threat. After his release from prison, Freire went into exile for years, returning in 1980 and eventually accepting a position as secretary of education for the state of São Paulo. During his exile, he wrote the book that would make him Brazil's most famous global intellectual.

Even as many more people around the world have access to education, schooling everywhere remains intertwined with systems of oppression.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed was hugely influential on educators in the Third World struggling under conditions of mass illiteracy and poverty similar to those Freire described. Of course, many people who read the English translation of Pedagogy didn't know much about the context of peasants engaged in class struggle in rural Brazil. But the book's enthusiastic reception had a global context, too: the worldwide struggles for human liberation of the late 1960s and early 70s-Black civil rights, feminism, resistance to domination of poor countries by rich ones-may explain the book's appeal at the time of its publication. However, its enduring popularity and influence attests to another, even more intractable context: even as many more people around the world have access to education, schooling everywhere remains intertwined with systems of oppression, including racism and capitalism, and traditional models of top-down education don't work well for everyone.

At the time of the book's publication, there was also a movement for more open and more democratic schooling, especially in the English-speaking world. Pedagogy was embraced by-and influenced-educators active in this movement. Teachers influenced by that period continue to use Freirean methods in the classroom. A University of Georgia graduate student wrote a 2013 dissertation about three local middle school teachers trying Freirean methods for the first time. The students learned math, for instance, by coming up with their own solutions to problems facing their local government's economy, water supply, and school budget. In a discussion on poverty, one social studies teacher observed in a later interview with the researcher, when some students said that they weren't interested in the topic because it was a person's own fault if they were poor, she would in her normal teaching practice have allowed those students to abstain from the discussion, or told them they were wrong and explained why. But instead she put them in small groups, in which children had a variety of experiences with poverty, allowing them to educate one another on the subject. The teachers agreed that in all these Freirean lessons, the students were far more engaged than with traditional pedagogy (but also, sadly, observed that the current incentives and pressures of standardized testing would make it difficult to teach this way all the time).

The book has drawn criticism over the years. Brazil's current right-wing government has been doing its best to eradicate Freire's influence from that country's universities, using the bogeyman of Freirean leftist indoctrination as an excuse to defund social science departments and persecute left-wing professors. But the anti-Freirean ravings of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's far-right president, may actually be good publicity for this decades-old volume: in Brazil, book sales of Pedagogy of the Oppressed increased by 60 percent from 2018 to 2019. As Freire's widow recently remarked, Bolsonaro is "encouraging the sale of Paulo's books!"

Less doctrinaire conservatives than Bolsonaro have argued that the main purpose of education should be the mastery of specific subject matter, like math or history, not societal transformation. Other critics have questioned the implication that peasants-or any oppressed people-should be educated differently than elites. Some on the left, for example, have pointed out that during the twentieth century, in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, giving the working-class the same classical, "top-down" education that the children of aristocracy had previously enjoyed worked well, perhaps one of history's more successful experiments in mass education.

Others have criticized the inaccessibility of the book's language; words like "praxis" and "antidialogical" and "dialectic" aren't household words for most "oppressed" people, and Freire doesn't use many concrete examples to illustrate his arguments. (There is, however, one action-packed anecdote about some peasants kidnapping a landowner and holding him hostage.) Feminists like bell hooks have bristled at Freire's use of sexist language: he used male pronouns for pupils and teachers. To Freire's credit, he responded respectfully to this latter criticism-as hooks and others have reported-and later English translations of the book have been updated with more inclusive and universal language.

Despite such objections, educators have continued to find Pedagogy of the Oppressed relevant and to adapt its arguments to their contemporary context. In 2008, about ten years after Freire's death, in a special issue of the Journal of Thought dedicated to his ideas, for example, Cal State education professor A. Dee Williams has used the book to argue for the integration of hip-hop into the urban classroom.

One odd aspect of the book's legacy-at least in its English translation-is its popularity in contexts in which students are not oppressed. In an article provocatively titled "Pedagogy of the Privileged," the philosopher Tracey Nicholls, writing in the CLR James Journal (which is named for a Trinidadian Marxist), for a special issue on bell hooks, grappled with the paradox that, because higher education is still so class-segregated in the United States, radical American educators have found themselves teaching Pedagogy of the Oppressed -and its methods-in colleges and universities for the elite, contexts where students may be more likely to be oppressors. While Freire viewed the purpose of education as the liberation of the oppressed, in elite classrooms, Nicholls observes, the challenge for a liberatory pedagogy is to teach empathy and solidarity with the oppressed-who, in many cases, are not in the room.

In 2018, there was a wave of celebration of the book's impact. Journals devoted special issues to it. UCLA Library marked the occasion with a weeklong exhibition on the book, its author, and examples of contemporary critical pedagogy at UCLA. Events with guest speakers were held at Santa Monica College, in Los Angeles County, and many other colleges and universities around the world. Dublin City University, in Ireland, dedicated a day to reflection on the book, drawing teachers and activists from all over Ireland (the podcast of that event is available online).

The 50th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed was released in 2018 from Bloomsbury, with commentary from Noam Chomsky and other notables. Also in 2018, Bloomsbury published a student guide to Freire's text. This year, Bloomsbury marked the English language anniversary of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by publishing an anthology of critical perspectives on the book.
Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.

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Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed at Fifty - JSTOR Daily

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The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's book, first published in English 50 years ago, urges viewing students as interlocutors or partners in the learning process.

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How Does Trauma Informed Teaching Support Intersectionality? | Sustainability Directory

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How Does Trauma Informed Teaching Support Intersectionality? | Sustainability Directory

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How Does Trauma Informed Teaching Support Intersectionality? → Question

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Trauma-informed teaching + intersectionality = equitable, supportive learning for all. → Question

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LaGuardia Community College/The City University of New York 

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Inclusive Pedagogies Showcase | LaGuardia's Center for Teaching and Learning

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Inclusive Pedagogies Showcase | LaGuardia's Center for Teaching and Learning

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LaGuardia Community College/The City University of New York Inclusive Pedagogies Showcase at the LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning

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LaGuardia’s Inclusive Pedagogies (IP) Seminar Showcase, Part I, is a collaborative and scholarly presentation of classroom assignments designed by participan…

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Educational Equity: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Curricula | 
CUNYQueensborough

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Educational Equity: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Curricula | 
CUNYQueensborough

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Educational Equity: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Curricula

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A Talk to Teachers | James Baldwin, October 16, 1963. | Zinn Ed Project

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A Talk to Teachers | James Baldwin, October 16, 1963. | Zinn Ed Project

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Article. By James Baldwin. October 16, 1963. Baldwin addresses the challenges of education to prepare children to grapple with the myths and realities of U.S. history.

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Creating an LGBTQIA+ inclusive environment | Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

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Creating an LGBTQIA+ inclusive environment | Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

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The University of Connecticut is committed to providing a safe and supportive working and learning environment for all members of its community. This means recognizing, supporting, and celebrating the contributions of our LGBTQIA+ community members.

Creating an inclusive environment benefits students who identify as LGBTQIA+ while simultaneously improving the outcomes for all students in your classroom. The climate, or sense of belonging, within a classroom has a direct impact on the student experience, especially for queer and trans students. The independence gained from attending college allows students to explore their gender and sexuality when many may not have been able to do so safely within their home communities. For some, college may be the first opportunity to learn about queer culture and interact with the LGBTQIA+ community.

While there is quite a bit of research on how postsecondary education facilitates identity development, it's important to acknowledge diversity within the LGBTQIA+ community and how students with intersecting identities (for instance, queer or trans students who are also BIPOC, AAPI, MENA, and/or with disabilities) may experience multiple layers of oppression. Representation around the experience of the LGBTQIA+ community is often centered on white, cisgender men and women with normative bodies, which could lead to further marginalization of people who exist outside of those identities. Consider this diversity of identities when selecting classroom materials or media that represent the LGBTQIA+ community.

It is also critical to take both local and national policy into consideration. There has been an alarming increase in harmful rhetoric and legislation targeting LGBTQIA+ people, and most specifically trans people, across the United States in the past two years. Research from 2022 illustrates the negative impact of anti-LGBTQIA+ politics on the wellbeing of queer and trans youth, and the positive effect of access to affirming spaces.

Some suggestions to create inclusive classrooms for LGBTQIA+ students:
Prioritize Students' Safety and Privacy

Respect privacy if a student shares that they are LGBTQIA+ but does not wish to be identified in the classroom.

Clarify if you may use a student's pronouns and chosen name with everyone or if there are contexts where they should be referred to differently (for example, if they prefer another name used when speaking to their family).

Familiarize yourself with campus resources like the Rainbow Center's Creating Inclusive Classrooms and Gender-Inclusive Restroom Map .

Establish Expectations

Provide students with opportunities to share their pronouns and chosen names before class rosters are distributed.

Begin introductions by introducing yourself with your pronouns.

To avoid mispronouncing or using the wrong name, have students introduce themselves or use a sign-in sheet rather than verbally calling names off a roster.

Be clear about your expectations regarding classroom engagement and stress that hate speech will not be tolerated.

Include pronoun information in your email signature and/or any communications or materials sent prior to the first class.

Create Affirming Syllabi & Curriculum

Assume that you will have gender nonconforming students.

Include a statement that all members of the class will be expected to use their classmates' chosen pronouns and chosen names.

List your own pronouns on syllabi.

Include supplemental materials on pronoun etiquette or the Rainbow Center's Gender and Pronoun Guide.

Identify scholars, authors, and characters with diverse identities to include in your curriculum.

Include and use correct pronouns for gender nonconforming individuals or characters referenced in classroom materials.

Create opportunities for students to use singular they pronouns (they/them/theirs) in writing assignments.

Model Behavior

Promptly and appropriately address when someone is deadnamed or misgendered, even if that person is not present.

If you made the mistake of deadnaming, apologize briefly and correct yourself.

Correct others and encourage your class to correct your mistakes.

Avoid heterosexist or binary strategies-for instance, dividing the class into male and female groups.

When you are unsure what pronouns someone uses, use the person's name or the genderless they/them/theirs

Continue Learning and Commit to Expanding Your Allyship Toolkit

Use your power and access to leverage support for your queer and trans students-for instance, by requesting that your class be held in rooms near affirming and/or accessible spaces.

Support the Rainbow Center and UConn Affinity Groups.

Show up to campus or community events supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.

Explore your own identity to better understand your gendered experiences and assumptions.

Pursue further professional development.

Educate yourself on queer and trans history, culture, and academic research.

Additional Resources All employees and students remain subject to the University's Policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and related interpersonal violence, as well as the Student Code and Employee Code of Conduct. Any concerns or complaints will be handled consistent with these campus policies and utilize the University's existing investigatory procedures.

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Creating an LGBTQIA+ inclusive environment | Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

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The University of Connecticut is committed to providing a safe and supportive working and learning environment for all members of its community. This means ...

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Identities & Positionality | Teaching + Learning Lab

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Identities & Positionality | Teaching + Learning Lab

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Other identity reflection activities

Consider the following questions and time constraints to inform which pathway of identity reflection meets you where you are.

Is racial identity salient to you? How often are you reminded of your various social identities in different contexts? If racial identity is not salient and/or you are not often reminded of your various social identities, the brief activities below will give you practice identifying your social identities and provide some helpful context for reflecting on your identities.

The identity pie (sometimes called the social identity wheel). [Time estimate: 20 - 40 min] This is a useful tool for critically examining your identities and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. Watch this video of TLL colleagues Ben and Dipa constructing an identity pie (13:38). Now create an identity pie for yourself. You can draw it as Ben and Dipa did in the video or print and use this handout.

Social identity worksheet. [Time estimate: 30 - 60 min] Use this handout to map out different domains of your social identity (i.e., social group membership) and reflect on how these domains intersect to shape your life experiences.

If your racial identity is salient to you and you are often reminded of your various social identities in different contexts, these activities support deeper engagement with intersectionality ¹ and other sources of privilege that inform your positionality as an educator, ordered based on the time commitment from most to least:

Reflect on your racial identity development. Singh's (2019) Racial Healing Handbook involve reflecting on your past lived experiences with racism and how they shaped your racial identity, describing your current racial identity, and examining your multiple and intersecting identities. Singh's racial healing handbook provides many other valuable tools, available free here. (A New Harbinger Publishers account [also free] is required to download the tools.)

Guided inquiry on intersectional identities. The first module of the MITx Inclusive Teaching course offers guided reflection on more/less salient identities and intersectional identities, going beyond the identity pie activity to highlight intersectionality. The rest of the modules are also valuable and informative introductions to inclusive teaching practices.

Unpack social privileges as an educator. Consider the automatic, often unacknowledged, advantages of being able-bodied, native English-speaking, male, and/or white as you read and engage with Pamela Barnett's Unpacking Teachers' Invisible Knapsacks: Social Identity and Privilege in Higher Education.

1 Intersectionality is "a theory developed by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw [...] that explains that since identities interact and do not operate independently, there are interconnected systems of oppression (e.g., racism and misogyny) and privilege, which are impossible to disentangle." (from the Glossary of the MITx Inclusive Teaching course). For more details, watch the TED Talk on The Urgency of Intersectionality.

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Other identity reflection activities Consider the following questions and time constraints to inform which pathway of identity reflection meets you where you are. Is racial identity salient to you? How often are you reminded of your various social identities in different contexts?

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Tool: Intersectionality of Race and Disability | KPU Anti-Racism Pedagogy Toolkit

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Tool: Intersectionality of Race and Disability | KPU Anti-Racism Pedagogy Toolkit

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Tool: Intersectionality of Race and Disability – KPU Anti-Racism Pedagogy Toolkit

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Identity and Intersectionality in the Classroom | CTRL Faculty Resources | American University

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Identity and Intersectionality in the Classroom | CTRL Faculty Resources | American University

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Identity and Intersectionality in the Classroom | CTRL Faculty Resources

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Intersectionality is the concept that every person has multiple components of their identity (race, gender, class, age, sexuality, religion, ability, size, ethnicity, language, immigration status, education level, profession, subcultural affiliations, etc.) that intersect in ways that shape our unique experiences in the world. We can use this concept to help us see, respect, and engage the full humanity of the people we encounter.

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Do Not 'Decolonize' . . . If You Are Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond a Hollow Academic Rebranding | Nayantara Sheoran Appleton |Critical Ethnic Studies

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Do Not 'Decolonize' . . . If You Are Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond a Hollow Academic Rebranding | Nayantara Sheoran Appleton |Critical Ethnic Studies

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I write this from Aotearoa New Zealand, an immigrant in this country as I was in the United States for the 15 years prior. The way I see it, I am an immigrant from post-colonial India to two settler colonial states. In addition to my identity as an immigrant cis-South-Asian woman, I also identify as an academic. I often think of myself as an accidental academic. Academia was a space that offered me refuge as an immigrant, but it also allowed me to do the thinking, critical, questioning work I needed to do - but in a safe space. I started graduate studies in the post-9/11 world. As you can imagine, academia served as a particular refuge in that particular historic moment.

I have been in academia, either in training or teaching since...well, since I was seventeen. I have learned, trained, researched, and taught in four continents - my post-doc was in Geneva (even though most of that post-doc time was spend doing research in India). There are a lot of things I do not know, but there are some things I do know - one of them happens to be the intricate workings of academia - its peoples, its egos, its structures, the spaces of suppression, subversion, and subtle resistance. Within this space I see the hard work of resistance from individuals and groups, but also the dogged structural underpinnings of academia. Between the individual struggles and systematic dogma, is the troubling paradigm where academic structures and powers co-opt the struggles as their own - but contribute little to the cause. Over the years, I have seen academia do this co-optation and rebrand itself but not genuinely willing to do the hard work required to imagine a better academia. I have learned to navigate academia, but continually remembering to view this space critically.

This blog post, written as I transition into a tenured position at the interdisciplinary Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington, is my attempt to remember to keep thinking and engaging critically. I have been precariously employed and over the past few years, I have seen what precarity does to one's sense of self and relationship to others. I hope I never forget that feeling as it has been one of the most intellectually exhausting, but also critically generative space. It was in this space of academic precarity as an immigrant living and working on indigenous land, that I have seen the interesting mobilizing of the word 'decolonizing.' I have started to see the complexity inherent in how decolonizing has been co-opted from a vibrant and critical engagement to an academic buzzword. This was recently bought home to me when I saw a student wearing a rather colourful t-shirt with a 'Decolonize the ..." typed in boldface in the front.

While it was unclear to me what they wanted to decolonize, I was troubled by the text on the shirt, not because of my dislike of buzzwords (I've used them before) or because of the student wearing it, but rather it was just at the end of a long line of hollow 'decolonizing' moves I had witnessed - online and offline. Within the academy, I have seen the sloppy attempts to 'decolonize' a syllabus or a programme without any real structural changes - in the programme, the class, the faculty, or the university. This is NOT decolonizing the syllabus, or the programme, or the university. To take on decolonizing work without having ever engaged with the long tradition of scholars who have written on decolonizing - is sloppy and opportunistic. Especially sloppy if you have not read the seminal Tuck and Yang article which asks you to not use decolonizing as a metaphor.

In my avowed attempt to stay critically focused, I thus hold my fellow academics to account and ask for some refrain when using the word 'Decolonizing.' It does a disservice to the amazing indigenous scholarship and activist work that is targeting power structures to shake and reshape them to accommodate indigeneity. So, my humble suggestion, till you are actually willing and able to do the work of decolonizing the structures you (and even me) benefit from currently, let us think of better words to do what we are actually doing.

This does not give us/you a pass to not attempt to decolonize academia, but rather start planning the ways in which to do it and putting into place plans (hiring indigenous faculty on permanent positions, provide scholarships to indigenous students, accommodate teaching/learning structures to different knowledge production sites and ways, etc.) starting now. But at this exact moment, when enjoying the privileges afforded by academia on indigenous land, and when we actively working or are unable to work towards decolonizing work, we need to acknowledge that reality.
LANGUAGE FOR A PROGRESSIVE ACADEMIA - WORDS BEYOND 'DECOLONIZING'
To that end, here are some alternative suggestions to talk about the work we are doing now, while thinking of a decolonized sovereign nation future. To really keep it simple, I even suggest words start with the letter D [1].

Diversify your syllabus and curriculum

Digress from the cannon

Decentre knowledge and knowledge production

Disinvest from citational power structures

Diminish some voices and opinions in meetings, while magnifying others

All of this allows for anti-colonial, post-colonial, and de-colonial work in the academy; but not make claims to a 'decolonized programme,' 'decolonized syllabus,' or a 'decolonized university.' It allows you to be honest - about who you/we are and how you/we are situated within certain privileges.

This means starting the work that actual decolonizing requires - but those are long term goals and require YOU/ME to do a LOT of work. They also require becoming accomplices (not an ally or spectator) in local indigenous communities and politics as the fight for land and resources continues. There are concrete plans that can be put in place and how to get there (i.e. genuinely support decolonization) in a five-to ten-year period. Do not give up on the vision...just remember, academia is not there yet.
PROPOSED WAYS TO DECOLONIZED ACADEMIA - START PLANNING NOW
Just in case you were wondering, what will the decolonizing future facing project look like and what you can actually do enable it? This requires work and planning (starting now), rather than taking that energy and excitement (around decolonization) to just rebrand yourself and your site of knowledge production and praxis.

There are amazing scholars who can teach us all about the ways we can do this planning work. I share their wisdom humbly and with the hope that it allows the start of a conversation about the future of the academic space you/we inhabit.

Hire faculty from indigenous and marginalized communities so they can magnify the voices and concerns of their communities. Change your hiring criteria (and your hiring committees), if needed, to meet this goal.

Hire said faculty on permanent positions - not on precariously created contracts. To bring on a junior faculty for a year or two position (while dangling the possibility of a permanent position someday) means they are on the longest interview ever!

Hire faculty that actually challenge you - and listen to them (they are more than your token hire).

Be willing to be inter/multi/anti disciplinary - look beyond your cannon.

Design classes that have a '?' at the end of the title. Example: Decolonizing Geography?: How, When, and by Whom? Or Decolonizing Knowledge?: (re)Imagining the Future in Sociology.

Do not expect your precariously hired POC/BAME/Indigenous/queer/junior faculty to do the diversity work (or, ahem, as you call it 'decolonizing' work for you to take credit on - we do it in our scholarship, research, teaching, thinking, talking, listening, and being in the university and we need to be rewarded for it directly).

Create syllabus and curriculums that are innovative - there are more ways to assess work than the research essay, but do not use this as a short cut to not help marginalized students with academic work.

Make space for indigenous and marginalized students - both physical and intellectual.

Then there is the slightly more complex thing to do simultaneously, as a way to create space for indigenous and marginalized students:

Take the extra time with these students to help them/us [2] learn to read and write like 'power.' Teach us ways to operate in this oppressive world. Do not assume we cannot write as well as you, thus you should not put in the time or effort.

Also take the extra time to learn how we think, read, and write. Learn from us the ways we see and seek to change this oppressive world. Respect our refusal to write like you, even after you train us well to write like you.

These are not really radical suggestions. If you are one of these lovely people trying to decolonize your space, you already know this. But this is just a good reminder to myself as I move out of my precarious space and into a tenured position that decolonizing is not a metaphor!

While there are many examples of amazing scholarship that challenges colonial structures underpinning academia, I offer one example of a dear colleague doing this work every day. She offers a wonderful course that does this heavy, preliminary work of encouraging students to think of a better academia (better anthropology in particular). Lorena Gibson's paper titled, Anthropology for Liberation is an honest and humble attempt to think about a future of a discipline without making grand claims to have decolonized the discipline or academia. Like she says, this is the first step in a long journey that she has to walk alongside other scholars, students, and communities.

Through her work (amongst others) it is clear to see that decolonizing is real work which needs to have real world structural consequences - not hypotheticals. It should not be a buzzword to increase your 'woke' student enrollments. Do not deploy it in service of the structures it was created to destroy.

It is my obligation as an immigrant living, working, researching, and teaching on indigenous land to respect and remember the history - and act as an accomplice to the local communities, particularity when it means unsettling my own academic privilege and identity. Together, it is our obligation as academics to make plans for a decolonized academia, to take care our students, and hold people to account who use this amazingly powerful word recklessly for their own self-interest. This is important to recognize and curtail, so we can start the very hard work of imagining and planning a decolonised academia - rather than just rebranding the current space and carrying on business as usual.

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Do Not 'Decolonize' . . . If You Are Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond a Hollow Academic Rebranding - Critical Ethnic Studies

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I write this from Aotearoa New Zealand, an immigrant in this country as I was in the United States for the 15 years prior. The way I see it, I am an immigrant from post-colonial India to two settler colonial states.

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Antiracist Pedagogy Resources for Faculty | The Center for Teaching and Learning, Reed College

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Antiracist Pedagogy Resources for Faculty | The Center for Teaching and Learning, Reed College

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Antiracist Pedagogy Resources for Faculty - The Center for Teaching and Learning - Reed College

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Reed has stated its commitment to anti-racism in its Anti-Racism Statement. A crucial part of that work takes place in our classrooms. An anti-racist approach to teaching requires reflection on our own identities, positionalities, and pedagogies, as well as active work to acknowledge and disrupt racialized inequities. What is more, as Brown University’s Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning has put it, “Anti-Racist teaching is effective teaching.” We will become better teachers – more inclusive, more transparent, more engaging, more equitable – as we deepen our engagement with anti-racist pedagogy.

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Revolutionizing my Syllabus: The Process | Chanelle Wilson | Bryn Mawr College

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Revolutionizing my Syllabus: The Process | Chanelle Wilson | Bryn Mawr College

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Revolutionizing my Syllabus: The Process

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Professor Chanelle Wilson shares her own syllabus revision and decolonization process

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Inclusion by Design: Survey Your Syllabus and Course Design | Worksheet | Ed Brantmeier, Andreas Broscheid, Carl S. Moore

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Inclusion by Design: Survey Your Syllabus and Course Design | Worksheet | Ed Brantmeier, Andreas Broscheid, Carl S. Moore

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Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Lorgia García-Peña | Nothing Never Happens

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Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Lorgia García-Peña | Nothing Never Happens

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Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Lorgia García-Peña – Nothing Never Happens

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Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Lorgia García-Peña

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What Is Intersectionality and Why Is It Important? | Anne Sisson Runyan | AAUP

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What Is Intersectionality and Why Is It Important? | Anne Sisson Runyan | AAUP

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What Is Intersectionality and Why Is It Important?

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Building coalitions across identity categories is essential to the fight for social justice.

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Cambridge Academics Seek to 'Decolonise' English Syllabus | The Guardian

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Cambridge Academics Seek to 'Decolonise' English Syllabus | The Guardian

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A group of academics at the University of Cambridge is considering how to implement a call from undergraduates to "decolonise" its English literature syllabus by taking in more black and minority ethnic writers, and bringing post-colonial thought to its existing curriculum.

The debate is being followed closely by other universities. "I think it will grow and I think it will spread - and rightly. It is a good thing that there should be healthy dialogue between university academics and their students, and that their views should be taken seriously," said Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English education at Kings College in London, and former chair of the National Association fo the Teaching of English. "Good writing is good writing - it is ridiculous to stick to the reified canon when there are so many more interesting writers out there beyond its narrow confines. Good for the students for raising it.".

A statement from Cambridge university said that while the teaching forum of academics had no decision-making powers, discussions on how postcolonial literature is taught were ongoing.

The statement also condemned "the related harassment directed towards our students on social media as a result of the recent coverage", as a Twitter storm broke on the issue - with accusations both of racist thinking, and of the university giving in to student demands.

The discussion was begun last spring by a small group of students taking English who were concerned that their reading list elevated white, male authors at the expense of all others. Their thoughts were formalised by Lola Olufemi, women's officer in the Cambridge students' union, in an open letter widely circulated in the university, signed by hundreds and forwarded to the teaching forum, which met earlier this month. Although the teaching forum cannot enforce a change in the syllabus, its views are being taken seriously by the university.

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, a teaching fellow of Churchill college and member of the forum, with a specialist interest in postcolonial literature and theory, said no white writers would be affected by the proposed changes.

"Broadening the syllabus means putting different writers and texts in conversation with each other, not 'downgrading' or even eliminating a single writer. It's a request, as I understand it, for more representation of ethnic minority and postcolonial writers but for the purposes of thinking about these works alongside the existing texts."

"It is also not just about adding texts but about rethinking the whole question of Britishness, Englishness and what they mean in relation to the empire and the post-imperial world, questions of race, gender, sexuality and so on. There's also a sense that the curriculum should have an expansive sense of 'Britain' and English literature itself."

Rianna Croxford, who has just graduated in English, was one of the group of about 20 students who met in the spring. She said she was startled by the ferocity of some of the coverage. The Telegraph, for example, described Cambridge "caving in" to student demands.

She said they were generally encouraged by the positive response from academics. "We're not calling for the scrapping of the present syllabus, just stating that its horizons can be widened. It cannot be impossible to include at least one black writer, and one question relating to the postcolonial dimension," she said. "It should not be possible for any student today to read Shakespeare plays such as Othello or The Tempest, and not consider the postcolonial context."

Croxford comes from a state school background, and was the only minority ethnic or black student taking English at Trinity Hall in 15 years. She said one of the problems in the discussion was that there were so few such voices, both in the student and academic bodies.

"At present, the only option to write about BAME writers exists as an optional 'postcolonial paper'," she said. "Many students feel like a nuisance or 'token' for wanting to discuss race, gender, intersectionality, or writing about texts that are not considered part of the 'canon', and few academics specialise in these areas.

"As a result, we find ourselves doing our own research and paving our own curriculum. It is ridiculous that any English student can go through three years of their degree and never be confronted with race, colonial history or postcolonial thought: our course is called 'English Literature and its contexts' and unfortunately colonialism and its aftermath is a context intertwined across the centuries."

She added: "I enjoy the works of Donne, Hardy and Milton as much as anyone else, but I don't think my education in 'literature' ends there."

At the University of East Anglia, Christopher Bigsby, critic, novelist and professor of American studies, said "open discussions and disagreements can only enrich the lives of teachers and students alike... Today, it would be difficult to teach the contemporary British novel, for example, without reflecting those authors with roots elsewhere who have so enriched our literature. The list is long and irresistible."

However, he expressed disquiet about tailoring of a curriculum to suit particular views. "The idea that a curriculum should be patrolled to see that it accords to the views of particular groups, of whatever kind, backed up by formal requirements, makes me uneasy. No, more than that, it is unacceptable.

"The attempt by a government whip implicitly to seek to do that in the name of Brexit, dumb and offensive though it was, is a warning that the freedom of teachers to teach without intrusion has to be protected."

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Cambridge academics seek to 'decolonise' English syllabus

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A group of academics at the University of Cambridge is considering how to implement a call from undergraduates to "decolonise" its English literature syllabus by taking in more black and minority ethnic writers, and bringing post-colonial thought to its existing curriculum. The debate is being followed closely by other universities.

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Decolonising Your Course Toolkit – STEM Courses | The Brilliant Club

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Decolonising Your Course Toolkit – STEM Courses | The Brilliant Club

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Lesson Plans Overview | Introduction to Decolonisation

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Lesson Plans Overview | Introduction to Decolonisation

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This 12-week ‘Introduction to Decolonisation’ module is most appropriate for high school or undergraduate learners, but could be adapted for use with a range of audiences. Below, you will find plans for each of the 12 sessions, including suggested readings and teaching activities. These resources are supported by the accompanying module guide and glossary of key terms. You can engage with all of the materials directly through this webpage, or download the documents to print and work with offline.

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Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Race and Gender | Heidi Safia Mirza | Journal of Feminist Scholarship

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Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Race and Gender | Heidi Safia Mirza | Journal of Feminist Scholarship

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Abstract

Drawing on black feminist theory, this paper examines the professional experiences of postcolonial diasporic black and ethnicized female academics in higher education.1 The paper explores the embodiment of gendered and racialized difference and reflects on the power of whiteness to shape everyday experiences in such places of privilege. The powerful yet hidden histories of women of color in higher education, such as the Indian women suffragettes and Cornelia Sorabji in late nineteenth century, are symbolic of the erasure of an ethnicized black feminist/womanist presence in mainstream (white) educational establishments. The paper concludes that an understanding of black and ethnicized female agency and desire for education and learning is at the heart of a black feminist analysis that reclaims higher education as a radical site of resistance and refutation.

Recommended Citation

Mirza, Heidi S.. 2015. "Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Race and Gender." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 7 (Fall): 1-12. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol7/iss7/3

DOWNLOADS

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Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Race and Gender

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Drawing on black feminist theory, this paper examines the professional experiences of postcolonial diasporic black and ethnicized female academics in higher education.1 The paper explores the embodiment of gendered and racialized difference and reflects on the power of whiteness to shape everyday experiences in such places of privilege. The powerful yet hidden histories of women of color in higher education, such as the Indian women suffragettes and Cornelia Sorabji in late nineteenth century, are symbolic of the erasure of an ethnicized black feminist/womanist presence in mainstream (white) educational establishments. The paper concludes that an understanding of black and ethnicized female agency and desire for education and learning is at the heart of a black feminist analysis that reclaims higher education as a radical site of resistance and refutation.

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CARE: Caring, Anti-Racist Education and Decolonial Pedagogies in the Neoliberal University and a Colonial-Born Discipline | Bhargabi Das & Ana Ivasiuc

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CARE: Caring, Anti-Racist Education and Decolonial Pedagogies in the Neoliberal University and a Colonial-Born Discipline | Bhargabi Das & Ana Ivasiuc

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PZ’s Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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PZ’s Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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Decolonizing the Classroom: A Conversation with Girish Daswani | Teaching Tools

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Decolonizing the Classroom: A Conversation with Girish Daswani | Teaching Tools

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Decolonizing the Classroom: A Conversation with Girish Daswani

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This Teaching Tools post features an interview with Girish Daswani, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of To…

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TOOLKIT FOR COLLECTIVE REFLECTION AND UNLEARNING | University of Exeter 

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TOOLKIT FOR COLLECTIVE REFLECTION AND UNLEARNING | University of Exeter 

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Decolonising Your Course Toolkit – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences | The Brilliant Club

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Decolonising Your Course Toolkit – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences | The Brilliant Club

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Courses

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Decolonising Europe #5: Decolonising the Curriculum| Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

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Decolonising Europe #5: Decolonising the Curriculum| Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

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Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

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Decolonising Europe #5: Decolonising the curriculum

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Did you know that even though America's infant mortality rate has gone way down in the last 50 years, Black babies are still almost 2.5 times more likely to die before reaching their 1st birthday?

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Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum | Chris McNutt | Human Restoration Project

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Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum | Chris McNutt | Human Restoration Project

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Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum

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What does it mean to instill a liberatory pedagogy?

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Teaching to Transgress Toolbox* | Funded by the EU

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Teaching to Transgress Toolbox* | Funded by the EU

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Over the past ten years, tendencies towards polarisation and discrimination in the wider society have had a perceptible influence on attitudes and behaviours within education with forceful impacts on inclusive learning and teaching in our classrooms.

In attempts to meet these threats to diversity and pedagogical inclusivity we identify the pressing need to respond to these political and social issues. Intersectionality asserts that oppressions (based in racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. Critical intersectional feminist pedagogies have, by now, been proven to provide valuable conceptual and practical tools with which to focus on inclusivity. This is particularly true in the field of art, where teaching is known to be open to devising and applying new critical frameworks, tools of analysis and creative practices. Read more about TTTToolbox.

Teaching To Transgress Toolbox* is a no-credit collective research and study programme on critical pedagogy using artistic tools based on peer-learning and collective research. The whole project runs for two years (2019-2021). The actual study programme is structured in four one-week workshops during 2020 and is developed transnationally by three European art schools, erg in Brussels, HDK/Valand in Göteborg and ISBA in Besançon. It is funded by Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Grant.

*The title is inspired by bell hooks' book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.

Upcoming events

Teresa Cisneros: Undoing the institution: (a person at a time)

"What does it mean for a body like mine to be inside the belly of the beast? What do I expect from it and what does it expect from me? In this conversation, I will be exploring my role as an administrator employed to think about and create 'change' to make institutions more equitable and just - thinking through the power of policy and behavioural change." @ erg, rue du Page 87, 1050 Brussels The talk will be streamed online. More...

Tour de Pronom

This presentation and workshop for teachers, administrators and technicians at the art school Villa Arson will introduce why it is important to do pronoun rounds how to facilitate them and how to take care of it afterwards in order to create a more inclusive classroom.@ Villa Arson, 20 Avenue Stephen Liegeard, 06105 Nice

Restitution TTTT

A public conversation inviting teachers and students from various schoold in France and beyond to a 3-day seminar Pédagogie critique en école d'art on critical pedagogy in the arts during the Covid-19 crisis and sharing some of the works/concerns of the Teaching To Transgress Toolbox programme. The event series is developed in conjunction with the art school Villa Arson in Nice, France. See public programme.

Sharing practices and tools on critical pedagogy

A three-day online workspace organised by ISBA Besancon that builds on the previous workshop Sparring Partners. This workshop will offer working time to develop and sharing first findings by the different groups working on issues such as the notion of neutrality in the classroom, the gender of language, rethinking admission policies, the institutional body, emotions in the classroom, how to agree to disagree, the complexities of pronoun- and access rounds, among others.

Sparring Partners

A three-day online workspace organised by HDK-Valand, Göteborg University. We will investigate the complexities of an institutional body. Meet and work this body through its members, its language, its movements, its protocols, its entry points, its questions. And then, what did we learn?@HDK-Valand, Vasagatan 50 Göteborg

Forming Ties

In the last months many new initiatives, groups and ideas havebeen created at Göteborg University and beyond. We would like to invite you all to a get together, so that we can meet and see each other to share ideas, experiences, contacts and resources to strengthen networks of feminist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, emancipatory solidarity within the university and beyond. @HDK-Valand, Glashuset, entrance Chalmersgatan 5, Göteborg. (SE)

How to say it?

Workshops hosted by erg, école de recherche graphique, Brussels.
We will examine modes of transmission as political tools: inclusive writing, non-binary languages, alternative voices, critical body.

A collective Interview
with Nassira Hedjerassi

Education as the Practice of Freedom
Sociologist specializing in popular education and feminisms, Nassira Hedjerassi is also a professor of education sciences at the Sorbonne University. She works on the work of bell hooks and has prefaced her works in France.
TTTToolbox participants will prepare a collective interview. @ erg, rue du page 87, 1050 Bruxelles (BE)

A collective Teaching To Transgress Toolbox performance
with sounds from ILL-SYL

We will examine modes of transmission as political tools: inclusive writing, non-binary languages, alternative voices, critical body. Work in progress by the TTTToolbox participants.
@ De Markten,
Oude Graanmarkt 5 rue du Vieux Marché aux Grains, 1000 Brussels (BE)

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Over the past ten years, tendencies towards polarisation and discrimination in the wider society have had a perceptible influence on attitudes and behaviours within education with forceful impacts on inclusive learning and teaching in our classrooms. In attempts to meet these threats to diversity and pedagogical inclusivity we identify the pressing need to respond to these political and social issues.

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Teaching To Transgress | Bell Hooks | Taylor & Francis eBooks, Referen

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In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks-writer, teacher, and insur­gent black intellectual-writes about a new kind of education, edu­cation as the

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Decolonising SOAS Learning and Teaching Toolkitfor Programme and Module Convenors May 2018 | Decolonising SOAS Working Group

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Decolonising SOAS Learning and Teaching Toolkitfor Programme and Module Convenors May 2018 | Decolonising SOAS Working Group

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Decolonisation in Higher Education | Times Higher Education

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Decolonisation in Higher Education | Times Higher Education

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Page 1 of 1 - Decolonisation | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

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From decolonising the curriculum to countering colonisation on university teaching, research and culture: academics offer advice on these complex challenges - Page 1

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Indigenous Perspectives on Learning and Unlearning | Educational Equity Podcast

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Indigenous Perspectives on Learning and Unlearning | Educational Equity Podcast

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Educational Equity: Indigenous Perspectives on Learning & Unlearning

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Hosted by Stephen Hurley (Executive Director at voicEd Radio) and Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (Professor and Vice Dean of Graduate Programs, University of Ottawa), w

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Decolonizing Pedagogy Podcast | Teaching Global Development Studies Companion

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Decolonizing Pedagogy Podcast | Teaching Global Development Studies Companion

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Teaching Global Development Studies Companion

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Decolonizing Pedagogy Podcast
This weekly show, airing Thursdays at 5 PM (Atlantic) on 93.3 FM the FOX, is imagined as a space for the StFX and Antigonish communities to share their social justice efforts/activism/campaigns. It contains over 70 shows covering such issues as women's rights, anti-racism efforts, LGBTQ initiatives, as well as global-local connections within each of these and many more categories.

This episode, "Decolonizing Pedagogy", features a conversation about decolonizing curriculum with Jonathan Langdon and Ajay Parasram with colleagues Shelley Price, Margaret Robinson, Sailaja Krishnamurti and Alex Khasnabish.
Listen to the episode here
See all episodes on Social Justice Radio here: https://socialjusticeradio.onelouder.ca/
More information on those featured in podcast: Dr. Shelley Price
The University of Victoria

Shelley T. Price, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at St. Francis Xavier University in the Department of Management. Shelley's passion for education, knowledge acquisition and respect for cultural, traditional and spiritual connection to the land is central in her research. As an Inuk woman from Labrador, she was raised to respect the teachings that her Elders shared with her through stories and through being on the land. Her research focus is in Indigenous storytelling leadership toward sustainable development, community wellbeing and responsible management. Shelley's work in gender and diversity brings her to focus on Indigenous women who are leading grassroots initiatives by sharing their stories and voices toward respect, resilience and compassion. She believes in incorporating Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous women's voices into the business process so as to respect an interconnected approach to leading change in economic, social, cultural, environmental and spiritual wellbeings of the local and global community. Shelley is a research member of PhiLab's Atlantic hub , Western Hub, and Indigenous Research Cluster.
Dr. Margaret Robinson
Dalhousie University

Margaret Robinson is a bisexual and two-spirit scholar from Eski'kewaq, Nova Scotia, and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. Her work examines the impact of intersecting oppressions and draws on critical, postcolonial, and queer theories, intersectionality, and third wave feminism.

She has been a community-based researcher since 2009, incorporating participatory, action-based, feminist, and Indigenous research methods. She has led studies on decolonizing research funding in Canada, two-spirit people's understanding of mental health, and cannabis use among bisexual women. In 2016 she led a team that developed and validated a measure of microaggressions and microaffirmations experienced by bisexual women. She is currently a Co-Investigator on studies of the regulation of non-medical cannabis (Dr. Sergio Rueda & Elaine Elaine Hyshka, PI), LGBTQ poverty and health (Dr. Lori Ross, PI), decolonization in Canadian and Taiwanese animation (Shannon Brownlee, PI), and the Atlantic Indigenous Mentorship Network (Dr. Debbie Martin, PI). She conducted her postdoctoral training at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health and was previously a Researcher in Residence in Indigenous Health at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network in Toronto.
Dr. Sailaja Krishnamurti
Queen's University

Sailaja Krishnamurti is an Associate Professor and Department Head of Gender Studies at Queen's University.
Dr. Alex Khasnabish
Mount Saint Vincent University

Alex Khasnabish is a Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University. His research interests revolve around the rise of the new populist and far right, fascism, and the deepening crisis of liberal democracy and neoliberal technocracy. I'm increasingly interested in popular forms of education and finding ways of connecting people at the grassroots to research that matters.

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I. Decolonizing Pedagogy Podcast - Teaching Global Development Studies Companion

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This digital book is a companion to Teaching Global Development.

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Centring Intersectionality and Decolonisation in an Online Undergraduate Gender and Development Course in Canada | Geetanjali Gill | Development in Practice

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Centring Intersectionality and Decolonisation in an Online Undergraduate Gender and Development Course in Canada | Geetanjali Gill | Development in Practice

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Turning the Decolonial Gaze towards Ourselves: Decolonising the Curriculum and ‘Decolonial Reflexivity’ in Sociology and Social Theory | Leon Moosavi | Sociology Journal

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Turning the Decolonial Gaze towards Ourselves: Decolonising the Curriculum and ‘Decolonial Reflexivity’ in Sociology and Social Theory | Leon Moosavi | Sociology Journal

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Turning the Decolonial Gaze towards Ourselves: Decolonising the Curriculum and ‘Decolonial Reflexivity’ in Sociology and Social Theory - Leon Moosavi, 2023

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This article provides a theoretical evaluation of the author’s attempts at decolonising a sociology and social theory course in Singapore. It also introduces th…

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Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies in Canadian Nursing and Medical Education | Taqdir K. Bhandal, Annette J. Browne, Cash Ahenakew, Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham | Nursing Inquiry Journal

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Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies in Canadian Nursing and Medical Education | Taqdir K. Bhandal, Annette J. Browne, Cash Ahenakew, Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham | Nursing Inquiry Journal

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Decolonial, intersectional pedagogies in Canadian Nursing and Medical Education

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Our intention is to contribute to the development of Canadian Nursing and Medical Education (NursMed) and efforts to redress deepening, intersecting health and social inequities. This paper addresses…

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How to Decolonise the STEM Curriculum: A Practical Guide | The University of Edinburgh

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How to Decolonise the STEM Curriculum: A Practical Guide | The University of Edinburgh

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How to Decolonise the STEM Curriculum: A Practical Guide

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This is a concise guide to decolonising the curriculum in STEM subjects. Recognising that this topic is not commonly discussed among STEM academics, the guide seeks to emphasise the primary theories originating from the social sciences, while offering practical guidance for classroom implementation.

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Reflections on Decoloniality, Time, History and Remembering | RACE.ED

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Reflections on Decoloniality, Time, History and Remembering | RACE.ED

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Photo by Jireh Foo on Unsplash

Cross-posted from E-International Relations - Blog post by Ali Kassem, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Amidst a wider decolonisation debate, racialised communities across metropoles have contested, and protested, questions of the 'past', of history and of memory. This blog post engages this question of 'time' to argue for the need to centre specific, unequal, and power-laden relationalities to history and memory across the north-south divide as foundational to the global reproduction of Eurocentric modernity/coloniality as well as to the (im)possibility of moving beyond it. In doing this, it reflects on the similar yet distinct modalities through which a narrative of history and the past is constructed and a specific relationship to it is naturalised across Beirut in Lebanon, Singapore, and Edinburgh in the UK.

Beirut

Lebanon as a country 'never existed before in history. It is a product of the Franco-British partition of the Middle East' (Traboulsi 2007: 75). Beirut itself was relatively marginal city until it was transformed into a major port and capital by the French. Gaining its independence from French colonisation in the wake of World War 2, Lebanon is said to have achieved a period of relative prosperity. A few decades later, the country entered a protracted civil war that did not end until 1991. Mainly with Gulf Petro-money, Beirut was then effaced and re-built anew: a modern cosmopolitan tourist hub on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. From high-rise buildings to new-found waterfronts and land reclamation projects, Beirut was made unrecognisable as the remnants and testaments of war were tore down. Since then, the city has gone through multiple crises, the most recent of which were the 2020 port explosion and an ongoing economic collapse. Today, while much has changed and the glitter of post-war has worn off, a particular mode of relating to the past persists.

In Beirut, memory is taboo - one that many parents refuse to discuss with their children. The Lebanese have few resources to learn their history - particularly as school and educational curricula as well as the various media outlets in the country anxiously avoid any such discussion. Despite this, this past seems to be well known within the collective imaginary of the Lebanese: one of conflict, of war, of suffering that is both hated and left unspoken for fear of its return. The same largely applies to the country's longue durée history - an Ottoman protectorate housing minorities, with many rounds of famine said to have enjoyed little peace or prosperity as the site of Ottoman-European conflict and competition. In line with this, growing up in Beirut or any of the country's urban centres one is standardly socialized into a rejection of 'traditional' norms, habits, and customs - the 'backward' practices of 'ignorant' forebears. The only exception to this is the celebration of the immediate post-independence moment - the moment of Eurocentred Christian Maronite domination and exploitation engineered, enabled by, and serving French and U.S. Imperialism - and a lamenting of its loss and impossible return.

Surely, there is more to the land and its people's histories than this, and more to the story of Lebanon. Such a framing cannot be taken to be an 'authentic' representation or a 'natural' story of the land and those who inhabit or have inhabited it. From long traditions of pluralistic dwelling to elaborate indigenous models of education, health, and agriculture, much is here missing. Systematically, this is all erased, as a specific construction of a 'dark' past and a consequent relationship to it are rendered hegemonic - sponsored by state discourses and policies with collective imaginaries of inferiority and backwardness.

Without identifying relations to history as a key nexus of erasure, and undoing such relations, reclaiming colonised dignity and 'selfhood' remains impossible, as Shariati (2011) explains. This hatred of the so-called past, in other words, is a key component of erasing the colonised self. The anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle accordingly calls 'to remember' and reclaim a history and forms of knowing and being in the world that start 'elsewhere', with forms of being that do not (re)produce the crises of this very celebrated modernity (Al-Hardan 2016; Cooppan 2019; Umbreen 2022). In Lebanon, this struggle to remember is not in the face of a struggle to an ahistorical presence. More often than not, it is a struggle of what to remember, who to remember, and how to remember in the face of a disfigured, inferiorising, and assaulting construction of the past. But what kind of remembrance could unfold when one is already socialised, taught, conditioned to abject and loathe their past? How would a call to remember speak to those whose very bodies have deeply inscribed a movement away from their own histories as inferior, conflict-ridden, ignorant, and primitive?

Instead of liberatory remembering, an inferiorising one is instilled and a powerful rejection of the past is accompanied by a powerful desire to be future-oriented, forward-looking. Here, one must embrace progress, and (Eurocentric) modernity - consumerist, empiricist, technological, liberal, secularist. Yet, in Beirut, this desired future has failed to arrive. With its multiple rounds of instability, conflict, war and disruption under a neoliberal westernised present/absent state (see Baumann 2017), Lebanon has not moved into the dreamed 'developed' horizon. Rather, the country remains trapped in cycles of instability, of collapse and growth, of conflict and truce, and of violence and calm. The so-called past in Lebanon must not be remembered, and it refuses to become past - it episodically persists and tyrannises the present.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is a city built on the wealth of empire and the extraction of colonisation. Today, historical colonialism itself is not past in Edinburgh - not to mention contemporary colonisation, imperialism, and coloniality. Having greatly invested in 'preserving' its history, its colonial is material, visible, inescapable. This can be seen as a consistent physical presence throughout the city's architecture and symbols - not least of which are the monuments of (as well as streets, buildings, and squares) named after Lawrence Dundas, George Rodney, John Locke, and David Hume among many others. Within this, one finds a celebration of British, Scottish, and European history - a history upon which the lauded modern present and future are to be secured. Edinburgh's present is understood to have been made possible through this past, one of 'Enlightenment', hard labour, freedom and democracy, rights and forward-looking struggle. This future was the present, and it was/is also the future of this present. To enter the present, Edinburgh does not seem to need to abject its past, nor to rid itself of its memory. Rather, this 'heritage' is proudly treasured.

Edinburgh is typically understood to be in, or at least moving steadily and 'naturally' toward, the future. It is not trapped in this present. Rather, it is perceived as an innovation hub and a leading city to be followed, mimicked. The University of Edinburgh itself is often portrayed as a key example of this, self-presenting as 'shaping the future' from within the walls of its listed Victorian buildings and the classrooms and halls built on colonial wealth and decorated with imperial lootings. For most, there is no contradiction there. The past, the present, and the future are continuous. They are deeply connected. They make sense of one another.

Within this selective (even ironic) narrative of the city's past, long and ongoing histories of violence, war, famine, poverty, and scathing inequalities, both within the city, within Scotland, and across a deeply interconnected and co-dependent globe, are disavowed. The colonisation, enslavement, theft, rape, and violent and systematic extraction of wealth over hundreds of years that made the proclaimed and celebrated 'heritage' and 'development' possible are all erased. In this sense, the particular construction and imagination of Edinburgh's past loaded with selective erasures and amnesia - the past that must be remembered - erases the 'darker side' of this history, disfigures this history, and also absences its connections to the rest of the globe to anchor a 'self' and a history that seem to be located within the narrowly defined space of Edinburgh and 'its people'. Yet, Edinburgh's 'past', and the present this past has enabled, surely cannot be understood as localised or contained within the accounts or events that have taken place in the city's narrow geography. Rather, a connected historical sociologies analysis (see Bhambra 2014) where Empire is transnationally centred is needed.

Over the past few years, as the decolonisation movement has gathered pace in the UK, a number of reviews, campaigns, and efforts have been made to challenge some of these narratives and celebrations. While the University of Edinburgh renamed its 'Hume Tower' to '40 George Square' in 2020, the city council has decided to erect (small) plates in relevant locations 'explaining' the histories in question. The plaques, hardly noticeable and at times hardly legible, stand as reminders of a past that, also here, refuses to be past.

The material presence of the colonial and the imperial, coupled with a significant 'whiteness' systematically lends to feelings of unbelonging for western modernity's negatively racialised subjects with accompanying narratives of indebtedness, gratitude, and exclusion. This is made all the more potent in light of the UK's hostile environment, rising populist fascist politics, as well as reactive right-wing assertion. All of this is only possible with this specific narrative of time and relationality to the past. Had Edinburgh's past been understood along the lines sketched above - where this 'wealth' is understood as being of a global imperial constitution rather than of a national citizenry - questions of rights, claims, and belonging would take on different valences.

As Bhambra (2022: 318) argues, re-orienting our understanding of the histories that have shaped the present reorients how we understand the question of who has 'the right to have rights within a state and to be regarded as a legitimate object of public policy or recipient of welfare provision', for example. In this sense, reorienting our relations to the past and history is the condition to inhabiting the present in a specific place/space in specific ways, both for those thought to belong to said space and those considered not to. It is, further, the a priori condition of shifting our relationship to 'futures' and making other possibilities possible. Without understanding how this celebrated presence came to be, as well as what it does, how it functions, and how it is sustained, it cannot lose its hold over our imaginaries.

Singapore

Singapore is an Asian post-colonial city-state. An 'invention' of the British in many ways, it is a 'highly developed' country with some of the world's best living standards. In Singapore, an obsessive compulsion to be 'future-oriented' seems to dominate the city-state and its multiple (urbanised) spaces. Within this, modernisation is the hegemonic frame where a specific kind of future appears as the only possible. Here enters the stereotype that Singapore is in an endless cycle of destruction and reconstruction where buildings are constantly razed to the ground for newer, higher, more 'advanced', ones. The flip side to his is a particular and specific construction of the past - one where there is none.

In Singapore, one feels they are in a space that has come into being in the second half of the twentieth century. There seems to be little history. Even places of worship, often some of the oldest buildings one finds in much of Europe and Asia, are 'recent'. If one asks 'locals', they are likely to be told that there was 'nothing' on the Island pre-colonial times, except perhaps a small fishing village. There was no city, no civilisation, no inhabitants. It is said that it was, in many ways, a true terra nullius chosen by the British and (trans)formed into a regional port and trading hub in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This transformation came about with very little (if any) violence, and very little (if any) theft, it is said. British colonialism is therefore turned into a success story of wonderful modernisation and development enabling the 'coming' of various people from across Asia to collectively form a city-state through hard work and perseverance.

The history of Singapore, its past, therefore begins with British colonisation, and successfully continues apace along the script British colonisation set out for it, it is said. What does it mean for one to envision their histories and selves as beginning elsewhere - with colonialism, with Europe - and continuing along its set plan? While some attempts to challenge and rethink these narratives of British colonisation have been made in recent years, such work has found few possibilities and much resistance.

It is this state-sponsored narrative that governs contemporary life in Singapore, people's imaginaries and their 'common sense'. These 'stories' are, ultimately, not only fundamental to the imagination of the nation-state as much critical scholarship has aptly argued but also to the larger governing of everyday life where a specific sort of modernist present as well as future becomes the only possible - naturalised as desired, inevitable, necessary. Singapore's collective amnesia here appears power-laden where a modernist narrative of linear time stands at the core of aggressive pursuits of 'progress', 'growth', and 'development' (Rutazibwa 2019; Grosfoguel 2011).

With its looming materiality of steel and concrete, glitzy skyline, automated digital commerce and high-tech industries, one often hears that Singapore is not in the present - but rather in the future. It has to be, otherwise it would fall back. Examining this, Singapore's relationship to the past appears more complex. Indeed, even if the geography itself has little past, Singapore seems to be threatened - haunted - by an undetermined distant past that must continuously be kept at bay by moving forward along the modernist script. One might ask why this is so, and what past the city is seeking - so vigorously - to escape and ensure remains 'past'. Perhaps this past is not geographical, but racial, epistemological. Perhaps it is a past the bodies of its Chinese, Malay, Indian, and other communities carry with them. Ultimately, here too, it appears that there is a past that is inferior, threatening, anxiety inducing, hated. It is the one that does not begin and map itself with Europe and its colonial modernity. With massive mental and psychic effects, the possibilities for alternative remembrance here appear slim.

As anti, post, and decolonial scholars as well as other critical thinkers and activists have explained, western modernity functions as a self-reproducing narrative that selectively erases, oppresses, and silences through its very 'modernisation' (Vázquez 2009; Mignolo 2011). It is against this very silencing that decolonial labour functions to remember differently and produce alternative futures. Within a space like Singapore, the decolonial struggle needs to also involve a remembrance beyond that of the colonial: remembering the non-colonial, the de-colonial. This would, for example, include the histories of Singapore's indigenous communities - some of the country's poorest populations who survive despite shattered lifeworlds - and their rich relations to both sea and land (see Schneider-Mayerson 2021). A critical liberatory and anti-oppressive remembrance away from any fetishizing romanticization, foreclosures, or finalities could here be the starting point of thinking and generating alternatives to a failed present. For this, the colonised and inferiorised's relationship to the past must be shifted, freed, to pursue alternative futures alongside these denied memories, without being confined to them.

Concluding Reflections

How people inhabiting a particular space make sense of that space's past, its history, its memory, and consequently of their own histories and intergenerational memories produces deeply different modes of inhabiting - or not being able to inhabit - the present. It is here not only how the past is constructed within the collective imaginary of a particular space, but how people relate to this past and how that significantly shapes people's present relations to themselves as well to the dreamed and desired futures they pursue or see themselves as capable of pursuing. These extant stories of being and sense-makings of one's self, one's identity, one's position in the world and how this world came to be, ultimately emerge as specific products of a modern/colonial world order loaded with avowals and disavowals - dangerous ones that are key in the reproduction of coloniality and, consequently, in the destruction of its Others' possibilities of being Otherwise.

With Eurocentred selective constructions of the past and narratives of linear time dominating these three cities, vastly different relationalities to history and memory unfold: hate and forced forgetfulness in Beirut, pride and treasuring in Edinburgh, denial and fear in Singapore. Though Beirut appears to its citizens stuck in a morbid past/present, Edinburgh appears to seamlessly fuse past and future, while Singapore labours to continuously move and affirm itself within a threatened desired coming. These constructions across these three cities are not separate, but rather deeply connected and co-constituted, dwelling under the hegemony of Eurocentric modernity/coloniality. It is by places like Edinburgh having constructed a narrative of the past to be 'proud of' that places like Beirut self-erase while sites like Singapore frantically pursue 'progress' in a racialized world governed through a global north-south divide - in a modern teleological world where Europe is made the only 'real' through 'a form of temporal discrimination in which the 'other' is relegated as being either in the past (as barbarian, underdeveloped...) or simply negated as absent as outside of history' (Vazquez 2012: 7).

How the past is understood and related to - irrespective of what happened in this 'past' - shapes how people inhabit the present and, consequently, the possibilities and impossibilities of the future. In this sense, the argument here is to more seriously incorporate an analysis and account for this question of time, and people's relation to the past and the memory that have been constructed (often state-sponsored) and that imbue the collective consciousness in specific places, in understanding the socio-political processes of the contemporary world, and the reproduction of modernity/coloniality's hegemony. What accordingly emerges is a needed struggle to undo the differential constructions that Empire has epistemologically sewed across the globe over the past 500 years and establish different kinds of relationalities to time, ones that transcend both the materiality and the temporality of hegemonic Eurocentric modernity, in the pursuit of alternative liberatory futures.

References

Al-Hardan, Anaheed. 2016. Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Baumann, H. 2017. Citizen Hariri: Lebanon's Neo-Liberal Reconstruction, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bhambra, G.K. 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bhambra, G. K., 2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Grosfoguel, R., 2011. "Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality." Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1), pp. 1-36.

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. 2020. Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene. Singapore: Ethos Books.

Mignolo, W. D., 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rutazibwa, Olivia U. 2019. "On Babies and Bathwater: Decolonizing International Development Studies 1." Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning. 1st ed. Routledge, pp. 158-180.

Shariati, A., 2011. Retour à soi. Beyrouth: Editions Albouraq.

Traboulsi, F., 2007. A History of Modern Lebanon. Pluto Press: London.

Umbreen, S. 2022. "Decolonial Dialogues: COVID-19 and Migrant Women's Remembrance as Resistance." Globalizations, pp. 1-11.

Vázquez, R., 2009. "Modernity Coloniality and Visibility: The Politics of Time." Sociological Research Online 14(4): 1-7.

Vázquez, R., 2012. "Towards a Decolonial Critique of Modernity: Buen Vivir, Relationality and the Task of Listening." In Raúl Fornet-Betancourt (ed.), Capital, Poverty, Development, Denktraditionen im Dialog: Studien zur Befreiung und interkulturalität, Vol 33, Wissenschaftsverlag Mainz: Aachen, pp 241-252.

Vilashini Cooppan. 2019. Time-Maps: A Field Guide to the Decolonial Imaginary. Critical Times 2 (3): 396-415.

This blog post was originally published by E-International Relations on 17 January 2023.
About the Author

Dr Ali Kassem (he/him) is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the University of Sussex, UK and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK. In 2020-2021, he was an early career fellow with the Arab Council for Social Sciences funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Reflections on decoloniality, time, history and remembering | RACE.ED

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RACE.ED showcases teaching, research and KEI in race and decolonial studies at the University of Edinburgh

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Decolonial Dialogues | Teaching & Learning

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Decolonial Dialogues | Teaching & Learning

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Black Feminisms Lesson Plan | Global Feminisms Project

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Black Feminisms Lesson Plan | Global Feminisms Project

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Creator: Marisol FilaDuration: 2 class periodsPublished: Summer 2021

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Intersectionality Lesson Plan | Global Feminisms Project

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Intersectionality Lesson Plan | Global Feminisms Project

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Overview

In this lesson, students will learn about interlocking oppressions that multiply shape women's experiences and understand how women build coalitions across differences in the United States and globally through small and large group in-class discussions and an assignment to be completed outside the classroom.

Keywords: Intersectionality, Coalition-Building, Shifting the Center, Centering Difference, Either/Or Thinking, Solidarity, Interlocking Oppressions, Hegemonic Femininity, Race and Gender, Disability and Gender, Class and Gender
Country sites: USA, India, Nicaragua

Learning Objectives

Explain the multiplicity in women's experiences by exploring and analyzing how these experiences are shaped by interlocking oppressions.

Identify and interpret how women work across their differences for political and social change.

Resources

Activities

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In this lesson, students will learn about interlocking oppressions that multiply shape women's experiences and understand how women build coalitions across differences in the United States and globally through small and large group in-class discussions and an assignment to be completed outside the classroom.

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Intersectionality in Education | Rationale and Practices to Address the Needs of Students’ Intersecting Identities | OECD Education Working Papers

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Intersectionality in Education | Rationale and Practices to Address the Needs of Students’ Intersecting Identities | OECD Education Working Papers

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Rationale and practices to address the needs of students’ intersecting identities

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Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals’ identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students’ attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.

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Pedagogies for Peace Podcast | Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies / University of Notre Dame

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Pedagogies for Peace Podcast | Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies / University of Notre Dame

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Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies

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So many people never see themselves represented within the classroom, and Ph.D. programs offer little (if any) pedagogy training, let alone having to do with intersectionality and decoloniality. We live in a time where old classroom conversations and ways of thought are proving to be insufficient. New approaches are needed.

Join hosts Ashley Bohrer, assistant professor of gender and peace studies, and Justin de Leon, senior advisor with the Mediation Program and former visiting assistant professor, for Pedagogies for Peace: Intersectional and Decolonial Teaching, an audio series that foregrounds critical pedagogies with a focus on intersectionality and decoloniality. Each week, Ashley and Justin are joined by professors and teachers for wide-ranging conversations about new ways of teaching peace.

Episodes are also available at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and TuneIn.

Music for the podcast was created by David Hazardous, and artwork was created by Dona Park.

Introducing Pedagogies for Peace

Join hosts Ashley Bohrer, assistant professor of gender and peace studies, and Justin de Leon, senior advisor with the Mediation Program and former visiting assistant professor, for "Pedagogies for Peace: Intersectional and Decolonial Teaching," an audio series that foregrounds critical pedagogies with a focus on intersectionality and decoloniality. Each week, Ashley and Justin are joined by professors and teachers for wide-ranging conversations about new ways of teaching peace.

Season 2

Episode 1: A Conversation with Matthew Wildcat

In the first episode of the second season, Ashley and Justin sit down with Matthew Wildcat, a faculty member within the Department of Political Science and faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.

Episode 2: A Conversation with Regina Shands Stoltzfus

Ashley and Justin sit down to talk with Regina Shands Stoltzfus, professor of peace, justice, and conflict studies at Goshen (Indiana) College about building resilience when teaching intense topics, community care in the classroom, and more. Regina is co-author, with Tobin Miller Shearer, of the new book, "Been in the Struggle: Pursuing an Antiracist Spirituality" (Herald Press).

Episode 3: A Conversation with Zachary Casey

Ashley and Justin sit down with Zachary Casey, Associate Professor and Chair of Educational Studies at Rhodes College, to discuss radical pedagogy strategies, paradise-building in the classroom, and more.

Episode 4: A Conversation with Yasser Payne

Ashley and Justin talk with Yasser Payne, Associate Professor of Sociology & Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. They talk about Dr. Payne's ethnographic research program which is centered on exploring resilience on the streets of Black and Brown America using the Street Participatory Action Research (Street PAR) methodology-the process of involving street-identified persons or members of this population in the process of activist-based research.

Season 1

Episode 1: A Conversation with William Paris

Ashley and Justin talk with William Paris, the Frank B. Weeks Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Episode 2: A Conversation with Kelsey Wrightson

Ashley and Justin talk with Kelsey Wrightson, Executive Director of Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning. They discuss the unique educational approach of Dechinta, which centers Indigenous knowledge and voices in its educational efforts.

Episode 3: A Conversation with Miguel Gualdron Ramirez

Ashley and Justin talk with Miguel Guladron Ramirez, who will begin in 2021 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. They discuss strategies for building more just syllabi, responsive teaching techniques, and developing "epistemologies of resistance."

Episode 4: A Conversation with Tiffany Lethabo King

Ashley and Justin sit down for a conversation with Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. They discuss how COVID and a move to remote teaching has necessitated a change in pedagogy, the changing needs of students in higher education spaces, and more.

Episode 5: A Conversation with Sheryl Lightfoot

Ashley and Justin talk with Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot, Senior Advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs; Canada Research Chair in Global Indigenous Rights and Politics; and Associate Professor, First Nations and Indigenous Studies and Political Science at the University of British Colombia. She is Anishinaabe, a citizen of the Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe, enrolled at the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Baraga, Michigan.

Episode 6: Justin Interviews Ashley

Our co-hosts turn the mics back to each other. In this episode, co-host Justin de Leon interviews Ashley Bohrer, who, in addition to hosting this podcast, serves as assistant professor of gender and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. They discuss Ashley's road to academia, how activism and other experiences inform her teaching, and being real and emotional intelligence in the classroom.

Episode 7: Ashley Interviews Justin

In the second part of our co-host interviews, co-host Ashley Bohrer interviews Justin de Leon, who, in addition to hosting this podcast, serves as a visiting faculty member at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. They discuss the influences that have shaped Justin's teaching, creative represencing, and positionality in the classroom.

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Marketing Communications: Web // University of Notre Dame

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Pedagogies for Peace Podcast // Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies // University of Notre Dame

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So many people never see themselves represented within the classroom, and Ph.D. programs offer little (if any) pedagogy training, let alone having to do with intersectionality and decoloniality. We live in a time where old classroom conversations and ways of thought are proving to be insufficient. New approaches are needed.

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UDL and Intersectionality | Denia Bradshaw | Think UDL

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UDL and Intersectionality | Denia Bradshaw | Think UDL

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Welcome to Episode 93 of the Think UDL podcast: UDL and Intersectionality with Denia Bradshaw. Denia Bradshaw is a UDL Advocate and Independent Scholar, an adjunct instructor at Landmark College, a musician, and the Music Department Coordinator at California State University, Los Angeles. We are fortunate to hear how she brings all of these amazing gifts to bear in her work during this conversation. This episode centers on the emergence and history of both Universal Design for Learning and the concept of Intersectionality. We will define these terms and discuss similarities and connections between the two, taking particular aim at what has been overlooked and what to do now. We will discuss why using both of these lenses matters in higher education today.

Resources

Intersectionality: A Critical Framework for STEM Equity (AWIS, 2021)
Google Drive of Denia's resources
UDL and Intersectionality: A Printable Reflection Worksheet (Google Doc)

UDL and Intersectionality: A Printable Reflection Worksheet (PDF)
UDL and Intersectionality References Tomlinson, Y., & Baruch, M. (2018). Framing Questions on Intersectionality. US Human Rights Network, 2013. Videos to Check Out that Denia Recommends
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
udl, intersectionality, students, people, learning, understand, learners, identities, barriers, important, disability, workshop, concept, variability, universal design, question, policy, podcast, thinking, feel
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Denia Bradshaw

Lillian Nave 00:02

Welcome to think UDL, the Universal Design for Learning podcast where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I'm your host, Lillian Nave. And I'm interested in not just what you're teaching, learning, guiding and facilitating, but how you design and implement it and why it even matters. Welcome to Episode 93 of the think UDL podcast UDL and intersectionality with Danya Bradshaw. Danielle Bradshaw is a UDL advocate and independent scholar, and adjunct instructor at Landmark College, a musician and the music department coordinator at California State University in Los Angeles, we are fortunate to hear how she brings all of these amazing gifts to bear in her work during this conversation. This episode centers on the emergence and history of both universal design for learning and the concept of intersectionality. We will define these terms and discuss similarities and connections between the two. Taking particular aim at what has been overlooked and what to do now, we will discuss why using both of these lenses matters in higher education today. Thank you for listening. And a special thank you to the folks at the UDL H E network that stands for Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education Network for their financial support of the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor, Texthelp, a global technology company helping people all over the world to understand and to be understood, it has led the way in creating innovative technology for the workplace, and education sectors, including K 12. right through to higher education for the last three decades. So I'm very excited to get to talk to you today. Denia, thank you so much for being on the podcast with me.

Denia Bradshaw 02:21

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is such an honor. I love listening to your show.

Lillian Nave 02:26

Well, I, I've learned already a lot from you. And when I saw that you were presenting at Landmark College and saw your I asked for like, tell me what you're doing and wanted to get a chance to talk to you. And we go back aways and have have worked together in the UDL at Universal Design for Learning in Higher Ed, organization or group. And I'm just really excited to kind of showcase your knowledge on this. It's a really interesting topic about UDL and intersectionality. So that's why I'm super interested to get this out. And I know other people are interested, too. So I'll start with my first question. You know, it's coming, and that is what makes you a different kind of learner.

Denia Bradshaw 03:16

Oh, my gosh, it's so funny. It's like the one question I could prepare for that I did not prepare for. Like that could go either way. But one thing I did think about when thinking about this question is I've noticed, like, you know, we all know what works for us or what doesn't, and we figure this out through experience, right? And I think for me, the the what makes me maybe different. And I imagine maybe not so different because a lot of people could benefit from this is really getting to know if I'm learning a new concept, or I guess I'll just keep it at concept to keep it kind of open that I need context, like how does this fit? Like, if we're talking about engineering or putting something together? It's like, okay, well, what purpose does this serve? Like? I think context helps me a lot. But it really depends on what I'm doing. Like, like, a couple of weeks ago, I I bought these like crystals, and they're really pretty and I'm like, I kind of want to wear them and I didn't like the little cages that people kind of pull it apart and you kind of put them in there. I was like, there has to be something prettier. And I like Googled wire wrapping crystals and it's a thing and I literally followed a YouTube video and would pause I would try something pause. So it's like, I mean that one specifically. It's like I just needed the visual. So I think sometimes it just depends. So yeah, I think the biggest part is that I've never really realized when I was younger, maybe more so when I was older is being able to understand its purpose. I think it serves my deep learning better because I under Standard why it exists and what purposes it exists for. So I don't know if that makes me different. But I've noticed that that's very essential for me.

Lillian Nave 05:10

Yes. Well, that it's very context, you're saying your learning is very context dependent. And I know what we're going to talk about. And it's all about context and understanding your learners and where they come from. And that's so much what UDL is, is knowing that our learners are all different. And everybody has a different context. So we need to be facilitating that connection for for all of our learners. So that to me, it makes a lot of sense that you would say, context, I didn't know you're gonna say it, but it totally makes a lot of sense with the scholarship and research that you're doing. So. So okay, so you've done some really interesting work on UDL and intersectionality. It's a term that's really useful, important, well used in our day, like right now, but I don't think everybody knows exactly what that means, or how we can apply it and how you intersectionality and UDL go together. So I'd like to explore your ideas on these concepts and their relationship. But first, let's start with some definitions. of both. Yes, intersectionality and your definition of UDL.

Denia Bradshaw 06:28

Cool. So in preparing, like my presentation at Landmark, and for the summit, I, I wanted to make sure that the definitions use were from kind of like from the origins I suppose, like, before I get into intersectionality, for instance, for us and like our, like a lot of the listeners I made sure I use the definition that's in the the foundational UDL book, The Universal Design for Learning theory and practice. So that's the definition I use for that in terms of intersectionality. I, there's different definitions from different places, they all kind of say the same thing differently. I like the way Kimberly Crenshaw describes it. But the definition I'm going to use today is from the Oxford dictionary, and the way it's described there is that intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorization, such as race, class, and gender, among many more, that's not in the definition, but I continue, as regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. So kind of to add, it's based on whatever identity markers an individual may have, or not have can put them in a place of advantage or disadvantage. Obviously, if you're in a place of advantage, a framework like intersectionality would not emerge, right? A lot of frameworks and practices and things like this come about because we want to understand a phenomena or an issue and increase understanding for purposes of finding solutions. So intersectionality is this I guess, this framework, this overarching concept of different? Yeah, identities, like I the way Kimberly Crenshaw describes it all the time is as a prism, which I think is really powerful. The way a beam of light, you know, might strike a prism and express itself in who knows, we can't always determine what way it's going to express itself, this angle, and this new color. It's unanticipated, and a lot of the connections that that I see with intersectionality. And UDL is it's like, in the classroom, like, variability is the norm, right? Not the exception. And that's how I feel about intersectionality. It's like, you can't really anticipate things you can't just put things in boxes. There's there's really a lot of unique contexts is circumstances, experiences, identities, backgrounds, cultural sovereignties, there's just so many things to consider and understand before just making assumptions and putting things in boxes. Yeah, so I'll, I'm sure at some point, I'll describe more about the history. I think that's one of our other questions. It's coming. It's coming. So I hope that I mean, maybe that's a little simplistic, or maybe I overdid it, but how was that in terms of defining what it is?

Lillian Nave 09:51

Very good. Yes. I mean, that's we just need a place to start. And I think that's very helpful. And yeah, go ahead. You're you're you Do a definition to I really appreciated that when you do these workshops, you make sure everybody knows where we're starting, that there's not some sort of loosey goosey understanding where I think I know what you're talking about. But that's what I want to clarify. So your UDL definition that you share?

Denia Bradshaw 10:18

Okay. Yeah, I think it's really important to not have misinformation, to obviously the scholars that come up with these, you know, frameworks and ideas and concepts that that, you know, that they get credited. But anyway, the UDL definition that I have, I have Universal Design for Learning is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. So yeah, it's just right, the learning brain neuroscience, removing barriers, not just physical, right?

Lillian Nave 10:59

Yeah, it's, it is it's a, it's a pretty big concepts. And I often have trouble coming up with just one definition. So I wanted to give us both the starting point, before we talk about these two things, UDL and intersectionality. So yeah, so here's that question we both referenced, what similarities do you see about the history and emergence of both UDL and intersectionality?

Denia Bradshaw 11:24

Okay, you. So the history as why they came about, and why it's important. So I think I mentioned this at the workshop, too. I like to think of, like backwards design, and obviously not an instructional curriculum design way. So working backwards, so these concepts not come about from nowhere. And I believe that by understanding why they emerge, their history and their development, again, adds context, increases understanding and awareness with factual information, the truth, the correct information. And I mentioned that because there's a lot of misconceptions and misinformation that is being spread about things like intersectionality. And I think it's because of this lack of awareness. Honestly, this is happening, I think, if awareness increased and was high end about what it really is, and how it really came about and what purposes it serves. I think the misinformation, or the misconception wouldn't exist. And I feel this way with UDL, too, I think when it's misunderstood, or when people think it's overwhelming. Again, another thing I find, as a misunderstanding is not I mean, it's not that I'm saying anyone's overwhelmed, should be dismissed in any way, shape, or form. I'm just saying it's not an overwhelming framework. It's actually quite simple. But I think, again, with heightened awareness and understanding the those, those can be deemed demystified. So yes. So um, so again, so they emerge because of a phenomena occurring that we may not fully or understand at all. But we want to and I think to this is important, because this is happening in our lives. It's something we observed, it's happened to someone we know in our community, something we experienced, it might be something we're researching. And again, these concepts are part of this body of research that aims to identify ways to understand generally implications, whether that's for practice and or research. But again, to find ways to solve them. We see similarities. So with intersectionality, so this was coined by a legal studies scholar Kimberly Crenshaw. This was in the context of her research and critical race, legal studies on domestic violence against women of color, specifically women of color, who are immigrants in Los Angeles. And just the complexity of that, if you think about it, it's it's kind of scary, right? The fear of reporting, economic challenges, a lack of multilingual services and shelters. And to compound it further, there's these other barriers that for further subjugate these women that are already vulnerable to isms, such as classism, racism, sexism, so she was doing this research and even though she coined this term and framework in the late 1980s intersectional intersectionality is actually based on a concept that has developed over many years prior to that of struggle. And again, the research one of the core cases that really I guess kind of brought this to her. Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, his attention was a court case in 1976, it was De Graaff. And read versus General Motors. So in the 1970s, this, a lot of black women were laid off from this company, and they took this to court indicating that they are being discriminated on race and gender. And the court dismissed it, they claimed that, that they did hire women, and that they did hire black people, not understanding the compounding of the intersections of race and gender. So, but the problem was that the workforce was being segregated by race and gender, the women that were hired were white women, and the black people that were hired were black men. So she, you know, she just found that just really interesting. And it's, I find it interesting, too. And now also, obviously, it's problematic. Because it I mean, the 1919 76, that was, I don't want to like put out my age here. But I wasn't alive at the end. But you know, it wasn't too long before I was born. And to me just that. But then again, and I'm sure we'll get to this later, when we talk about some of these reflection questions I had for the workshop where you reflect on your own identity and privileges and things. Like a lot of this, I'd never would have thought about given my own experiences, identities, backgrounds. Granted, I'd have had my own struggle, which I could talk about later, which is unique in its own way that, you know, someone who doesn't identify with the things that I've, I guess, have lived with live through, may not understand. So it's since I mean, people are complex and not in a complicated like, not in a negative way in it's just you can't plan for it. You just have to accept again, back to you do that variability is just the norm. That's just what it is. Okay, let's see. I'm like thinking, Am I catching everything similarities? Okay. So some of the similarities between that and how UDL emerges? Again, it's to understand something UDL, I think has more of an evolved process, because it's kind it's, you know, it was the founders originally were making, like technologies for education for students with disabilities and throughout their research in improving their practice, as all good practitioners should do. They, you know, met up with the neurosciences. And we're like, hey, like, these three learning networks always light up when learning but never in the same way. What you know. Yeah, I love that, that saying that the brain is as unique as a fingerprint, because it's true, right? There's qualities of it that are the same. But they're all different.

Lillian Nave 18:17

And every individual has this very different learning profile, a jagged learning profile as we as we talk about in UDL.

Denia Bradshaw 18:25

Yeah. So I think that's maybe like, the biggest similarity is just that whole, that variability of whether it's, I mean, intersectionality emerged from basically, you know, people being discriminated and others not understanding that. Like, there's a compounding happening here because of their identity. And the, like I said earlier, the isms involved. And then UDL. It's, it's kind of like, it's a little different, but similar in a way that we have this traditional way of approaching education and teaching students and we think that's how it works. But then you explore further and you realize there's actually a lot more to it. I love Todd roses book and of average such a great book. Because there is no average that doesn't exist. There's I mean, I like to call it the status quo. But so I think that's where I see the biggest similarity is this whole notion of honoring and accepting the uniqueness among whether it's about learning or someone's experiences that may have shaped them who they are, may have shaped their beliefs and views. There's history behind both really,

Lillian Nave 19:53

yeah. When when you were explaining especially that intersectionality part and the court cases, it made me think about UDL in a slightly different way. I'm not sure if I've used this word before about the way that the status quo, I think is a great word to say we're not saying that's right. But it's it's been in the educational space and higher ed for a long time that status quo has been discriminatory against different brains, different ways of learning that could be equally impressive, very talented learners. And it's hasn't been a strength based approach until UDL really taught me about taking that strength based approach. And, you know, UDL came also from that idea about universal design and accessibility starting in the physical world. And now we've brought it into the, the world of the brain, and trying to take down those barriers. And so that similarity of breaking down the barriers is visible in a discrimination lawsuit. If we're talking about visible identities, they are like being black and female, is something most can see on the outside. But the different brains, the learner variability is mostly invisible. So it's just extending that same concept, I think, into the educational realm. Absolutely. Yeah.

Denia Bradshaw 21:33

Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I just, like when I learned more about intersectionality, it was really when I was writing my dissertation. I just was like, whoa, this like really aligns with this.

Lillian Nave 21:45

Yeah, that's, I appreciate you bringing that to my attention and seeing it and really helping me see it, giving me some tools to to talk about it. So speaking of tools, you go into that, and your workshop, this is a really valuable workshop. I'm just telling all your listeners. So talk to Danya. And so how you talk about this, how are both intersectionality and UDL used as tools. And as an approach then for this is the big stuff, changing policies, practices, beliefs, institutions and systems. And I just love how you've connected them. So let's start with intersectionality. And just illumine me because I'm really keen to hear what you have to say.

Denia Bradshaw 22:36

lately. You're so much fun.

Lillian Nave 22:42

We do have a good time. Yeah, we Oh, man.

Denia Bradshaw 22:45

I Gosh, it's so policies, practices, beliefs, institutions and systems. One thing I want to say about policy and institutions and systems specifically, I think policy is policy is law. Right? It's a it's a mandate. And I think it's funny, like in higher education, it's not really funny, but maybe it's funny if you're in higher education, and you can relate. It's like, initiative after initiative, executive order, the accrediting agencies coming in, and it's like you put on a good face, you do your lip service, whatever. I mean, I know that's very not kind, but I'm sure many of us could agree this is what's happening. And I, I think the biggest thing with policy is, I think it just goes back to the beginning of us. You know, chatting is people understanding why it emerged. So why is this policy being put in place? What's happening? Because I think people get tired of policy being pushed on them without understanding of why it's because something's not happening, not meeting compliance, whatever. But I think maybe a different approach with policy is really important. I'm not sure what that looks like. I think it's going to be different in different places. It's going to be different with different colleagues, people who are very inclusive, and there's people who are a lot more reserved, you want to keep doing what they've been doing for and I quote, someone who talked about an instructor or faculty member, why change now I've been doing this for 30 years, like literally, that's what they said. You know, you just get used to doing the same thing. But I think in terms of changing policies, I think leveraging your social capital, this is something we talked about at the session. Just kind of knowing who you can talk to organizing planning. I've noticed that whether it's is reaching faculty and like professional learning or talking to graduate students, whatever it is, it's when it's backed up by research. I think people are more willing to listen and take it in. Even administrators I always hear, you know, oh, there's issues of, you know, persistence and retention, and completion, and they need the numbers to change. And it's like, okay, numbers, numbers, numbers. So this is influential, okay, let's get some numbers and influence you. So I guess extending the practice sharing with colleagues, resources. I think like one of the hardest and most foundational parts of all this that is really important is the beliefs aspect of it. Because if you don't believe in something, and I feel like this ties in Back to the policy, you're not, you don't really want to accept it, it may not be something you want to implement, or utilize, I think to implement change, it can't just be a top down solution. And it can't just be a root up solution, either. And it's also not just vertical, it's horizontal. It's organic. It's ever changing, kind of how the UDL guidelines are changing. It's adaptive, it's flexible. I think that's very necessary. I think people also need to be informed as to why it's happening, what solutions we need, what outcomes we can expect, I think the overview is really important. And helping folks understand why something is necessary to occur. I think to leveraging the community is also important getting their voices heard, making sure they're accounted for. I think that also helps with whether we're changing policies or practices, beliefs, institutions and systems. I think the biggest thing though, is leveraging your social capital, knowing who you can talk to spreading the word

Lillian Nave 27:11

discussion of intersectionality. When I was looking through what you what you do in your workshop, and you talk it, talk about it as a tool for analysis, right? That if you are aware of this concept of intersectionality and use it as a tool to say I'm going to look at it through this lens. It helps me in my UDL work to say, Okay, I have instead of looking at a classroom and say I have some autistic students, I have some neurotypical students, I have some English as a second language, right? Students, I have some rural students, I have some black students, some Asian students, right, okay. But when I also add on that lens of intersectionality, I start to see how each of those learners instead of, let's say, categorizing them, and what am I doing for this section? And what am I doing for that section? It is now looking, I'm looking at students saying, well, they're multiple things. At one time, I have neuro diverse, culturally diverse students, all in the same student. And being mindful of how those overlapping identities may influence their sense of belonging in the classroom, their ability to thrive and be successful. And so, as you say that, that knowledge that intersectionality is a tool that helps me to increase my awareness, my knowledge of how contexts, there's that word, again, that we started out with, that's our theme, right? And these unique, unique intersections are really important in understanding the learner, the learners in my learning environment, and not wanting to have a barrier that, in essence, discriminates against my students without without me knowing. And so that intersectionality is helping me to be aware, to advocate for my students to, I guess, create, I mean, I'm thinking about just in my class, create policies, where students can be successful because they have choice and flexibility that aligns with their with their learner profile, right or their, their their difference. And that really opened my eyes the way you frame intersectionality as a tool, and that lens and putting those two together has I feel like it's supercharges my understanding of, of you UDL and putting it into practice. So again, I was like, Whoa, these slides are on fire. Some good stuff here. Oh, man. Yeah. So and you do you talk about those those lenses? I think I've got a question coming up about that. But it really helps deepen my understanding, I think of UDL. It's, I think a lot of my work is introducing people to the concept. And this is kind of UDL practitioner 2.0 or 7.0. Right, too, you have to first be aware that everyone's different. And then there's a lot more that goes into it not, not only are there different, there's overlapping and intersecting interests, I guess, intersectionalities that, like a Venn diagram, you've got the blue section, blue circle over here, and the yellow section over here. And then the green circle, in the middle is a different, it's just a whole different thing than the blue and the yellow. Yeah. And it has different outcomes. You know, like, I appreciate you quoting the idea about the prism from the Crenshaw, which does, like different colors are going to come come through that. So you are that approach, I think, helps me to see that we need to combine both of those. It's not just the basic UDL, it's really going deeper. That's why I was excited about this. Yeah. And

Denia Bradshaw 31:35

the learning brain as unique as it is. There's a lot of aspects to in terms of, I guess, like aspects of an individual, like one element, a participant brought up at Landmark that I am very aware of given my own experiences and how it's challenged me, because of it is trauma, trauma informed pedagogy, right? We don't know, where students are coming from, we don't know what they've been through. We don't know what intergenerational trauma exists. Yes, it's, there's a lot of factors that can affect how they learn. And again, whether they feel belonging, if someone feels threatened, like we all know, that's gonna activate, you know, not your prefrontal cortex and higher order thinking you're going to feel threatened, it's going to be Fight, Flight freeze, and learning is compromised. So there's just there's so many aspects to it. And it's like, it just feels like the most foundational way to handle this is to just be accepting. Honor all that comes. Even if it's challenging, just reframing it as an opportunity for growth and innovation. I have a video that I wanted to share with participants are there's several but one of them in particular to thinking about outside of the box and innovation that I particularly love is called. It's a TED Talk. It's called Why We Need universal design. And the the I got to the presenter, I almost said speaker, he actually signs the whole TED talk. And I do that in quotes. But he his name is Michael nice Smith. I hope I said his last name correctly. It's a really great video, I highly recommend it. Among the other videos I wanted participants to watch was won by Todd Rose about the end of average. I have a video on us really short, but she does such a beautiful job of just summing up intersectionality by the mind, Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw herself. And then I have a TED Talk that she did. This one is really powerful. Another unique I guess, type of intersections is from this TED talk, she starts the TED Talk, saying, I'm gonna try. I think she's like an experiment. And I And she's like, if you recognize the name, everyone stand up, if you recognize that name, stay standing. And when you stop recognizing names, please sit down. And she starts listing names. And the the first handful of names are names of black men that have been brutally killed by police brutality. And then she starts listing women's names who have been who have undergone the same brutality. And people sit down literally after, like a ton, like The camera like goes to the audience and shows like, if I want to say like 75% 60% of the audience start sitting down. And this is the whole, like that hashtag, say her name. And, and again, an example of, like, the focus. I mean, it's, it's awful and it's wrong. But the focus again being on men and women just be left out. She goes on to describe more about intersectionality, and the end of the video or the end of the TED talk, she has an artist scene, and they're saying all their names, and it's, it's really powerful. It's moving, and it's also painful. But I really, I find that really powerful. And then the last two videos I have in here. One is I'm sure many people have seen this, I feel like it's getting kind of old. I feel like I've seen it in so many different platforms. It's like a race, there's a teacher has a like a line of students on the grass fields. And he's like, if you've ever had to, he gives all these instances if you've never had to, like shut your phone off, because you didn't have enough money that month, advance whatever. And he just does this with a bunch of different examples to kind of describe privilege, to a better understanding of privilege, because I think privilege has a lot to do with all of these concepts as well. And then the last video I have is the unequal opportunity race. And it kind of continues to depict different in a wage kind of showcases different identities benefiting and different identities being discriminated and not benefiting. And I feel like all of that is really important to digest and understand and accept. Because those of us who are in positions where we can do more we can like I said this up the workshop too, I'm like caring is, is this enough. But we also have to take some action, but also in terms of like, you know, being an advocate and activist, it's important to, to kind of watch our care. And I'm not saying turn a blind eye. I don't know how many people are familiar with Tara Brach. She, she's a psychologist and meditation teacher. And I recently listened to her book on Audible. I am an audible subscriber, I think I have every single badge possible from them. But anyway, that's the end of her book, she talks about the importance of you know, doing work, because there's, there's, there's people out there who just I'll give an example from her book, she talks about like, giving meditations and how there was one day she just or she had something going on, and she had to cancel some and reschedule and a close friend of hers, a woman of color went up to her like you don't understand, like how hard this is for me not to be able to come here because this was like her. This is where her cup got filled. She basically was taking care of, oh, gosh, let's see. I think like, I think it was men of color that were homeless, or Gosh, that might need to be edited to because I don't remember. But I guess the point is, in her book, she's like, I acknowledge that I have the privilege and ability to take this away. But this is what refills her to keep doing really hard, difficult work. And she says to like, it's important as social activists to embrace compassion, more so than empathy. And now I'm gonna go back into neuroscience because she says if we, you know, empathize all the time and not utilize our mindfulness or compassion. It so, they found in neuroscience that the areas that activate in the brain when being empathetic, was emotion, self awareness, but also pain. Okay, and with compassion, it stimulates areas of care, nurturing, but it also areas of learning decision making the reward system and it stimulates secretion of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, so if anything, that's a more positive approach. So again, caring is important. And then you know, do mean, the work is important too. But we also have to care for ourselves. Because some of these things that people are going through some of the things happening in the world are just really, really difficult to

Lillian Nave 40:12

accept. Yeah,

Denia Bradshaw 40:15

a lot of it is wrong. And it's just, it's just painful. But, again, mindfulness protects us in that way. Feel like I kind of deterred a little?

Lillian Nave 40:30

Well, you bring up a very important concept that this can be very hard work. And UDL, I get the pushback of I can't do all this. This seems like a lot. And I counter that. And I can honestly say, actually, when I have implemented this, it's it's actually made my teaching life easier. I've provided options, it's, it might be just a shifting around of the work, some more work on the design and less work on the kind of flitting around to try to fix a bunch of retrofitting? Yes. So it is, it's some hard work. That may come up at the beginning, some design work, some laying the foundation, so that students understand that it's a place where they can bring their whole selves that you as the facilitator or instructor of record, can explain that you see everybody's differences, that you expect there to be variability and you want to leverage that variability, that's a good thing, rather than trying to hide one's identity. Or hide who they who they are in some way that we can create experiences, educational settings, or experiences that try to take away these barriers so that it isn't as hard for both the learner and the facilitator, teacher, instructor, whatever we're going to be called. And so it takes some of this, like this hard conversation right now, to understand what the stakes can be. And, and each listener here, every person knows their own particular area best. They know what kind of class they have, what kind of situation they have. And it will vary. You might have your first year students, and you might have your grad students. And those are different contexts. So thinking about those contexts. And every time you teach the class, you get more and more experience, not knowing that my learners were accessing so much by their phones, and therefore I needed to make sure it was very mobile friendly, rather than Yeah, and, and low bandwidth for this particular course and time and population, then that makes it much easier, right for the next time. So yeah, so it's hard. It's hard to be thinking about these things. But it also it's like the hard work to make it not only a better outcome, but in essence, easier in the long run or more successful, less hard work on the back end. At least that's what I've found. If if I can spot a barrier and take it down, hey, that's a lot better to do at the beginning of class than it is to try to apologize to try to make amends. Or to deconstruct whatever policies I made that sometimes are the problem I didn't realize were the problem. Yeah. So So you ask a lot of reflection questions. And I wanted to ask you, one of them. You in Your reflection worksheet, I want to know your answer. What sort of do you think overlapping and intersecting identities? Have you observed or vulnerable, most impacted? And just can you give us an example is really what I'm looking for of that, how that intersectionality works, and how you identify what you might do.

Denia Bradshaw 44:25

Okay. I just want to give credit where credit is due really quick. I adopted these questions from the US Human Rights Network. From the Rutgers Center for Women's global leadership, it's literally called framing questions on intersectionality. And I thought they were really I didn't use all of them, but I thought they were really really good, but just FYI, credit words do so what overlapping intersecting identities have I observed to be the most vulnerable or most empty? acted. Um, I feel like this depends

Lillian Nave 45:07

on the context. Yes.

Denia Bradshaw 45:10

Yeah, like, like my first thought is, I feel like just hidden disability continues to be left out of conversations, I feel like disabilities continues to be about what is you can see with the eye. I also think too, when you think of disability, you think of white male. So I feel like there's a lot of vulnerability with, you know, whether it's variability with this hidden disability or disability and gender identity, sexual orientation obviously, ethnicity the most vulnerable, and then again, like I said, context, like this, maybe not the best example but for me, and not that I was vulnerable, but for example, studying music. Having grown up more on the low socio economic, you know, paradigm I, it was it's it's a privilege to study music, it was a privilege to own an instrument, it was a privilege to have flute lessons. It's expensive to do music. Is it super valuable? Yes. There's so many skills I learned studying music. I have a Bachelor's Master's in music. And there's so many skills, my degrees, just I mean, collaboration, discipline, detail oriented creativity expression. There's I mean, that's just, I'm scratching the surface.

Lillian Nave 47:03

transferrable skills. Oh, yeah. I talk about in our strategic plans and things like that.

Denia Bradshaw 47:09

Yeah. Yeah. But, but getting to study it. Like I was really lucky that my dad, for example, just really valued music because he played trumpet, I think, up until the end of high school before he went to the army, and then my grandmother, who was my real inspiration, I mean, my dad obviously inspired me to but my grandma, I mean, I remember she would play piano for us when I was little. And I, yeah, I wanted actually want it. Okay, this is how much I knew. Money was tough. I wanted to learn the piano in elementary school, just like my grandma Ferris and piano was not offered you either sing in the choir, or you play with band instruments. And I'm like, Okay, I I love playing flute, by the way, but I wanted to do saxophone, like Lisa Simpson or play the French one. And, in literally, this is how much I knew what my limitations were. I asked what was the cheapest? Yeah, and they said, the flute is not the cheapest on a professional level, but at a beginner level, it's the cheapest. Yeah. So I mentioned that because like in that world finances help a lot. It I mean, I feel like racism is so Oh, my God, all the isms are just so terrible. ageism, racism, sexism. I think it depends where you go, were the most vulnerable. Personally, though, I feel like hidden disabilities continues to be left out of the conversation.

Lillian Nave 48:51

Well, I really appreciate that answer. It's really an unfair question. And you're absolutely right. It's dependent on context. And wherever you are all listeners here, it's going to be dependent on where you are. So where I am in semi rural Appalachia is absolutely different than where you are in Los Angeles, California. And, and knowing your context matters. And so it takes time, and probably a couple of times when you teach the course and find out more and more about your students and about the context. But having that lens of intersectionality has been very helpful for me to be able to apply the UDL principles to try to take down as many barriers as possible. So one of the things you also talk about is honoring the learners. unique identities and and I wanted to to ask you, what does it mean to honor the learners learning preferences, identities, backgrounds and experience As we create learning experiences, what does that mean to you? How would you say you go about honoring the learners and their differences?

Denia Bradshaw 50:13

So, I have a lot of this has been a kind of like I've learned as I've gone and experience and observed, but also, I guess, researched. Obviously, experience is probably the best teacher. But I think of my approach being very acid spaced. An example, I'll give a couple like one, one of the our attendees at the workshop mentioned, a student turning in a paper and how some of the reviewers or faculty was like, Oh, this is what's wrong with it, and this and this, and this, and she's like, I totally understood it. I thought, yeah, so so so what if this was incorrect, and this was incorrect, the I understand the idea. And it's, you know, I thought it was wonderful. And I think that's really, that's part of it, is, if you come from an acid, I mean, you're not ignoring like, if it's a class where you have to improve your grammar, like you're not ignoring that, but if part of the prompt was to put in some critical thinking of these different concepts, and you totally, you know, executed that that should be honored. So, I think I, and a lot of this is from my own experience as a student, and again, observing my brothers and other experiences and other observations and things and things that I've read and learned. But for instance, me, my English learner, Spanish was my first language. And I feel like at this point, I've shared this story a lot. But I was really shy as a kid. I didn't feel belonging, I went to kindergarten in Mexico, I didn't learn English. So I was like, six. And I remember in first grade having a teacher that I did not, like, and by did not like, I mean, like, not like I had an attitude, or I was mean to her. I mean, like, I was scared of her. And she didn't, my mom told. And I remember her. And I remember my mom pulling me out of her classroom and taking me to a whole other school. And my mom told us, me and my other brother, I have two younger brothers once a year younger, and then one the youngest youngest is we're about nine years apart. He has he's, I guess, part of my inspiration to you know how, how I'm probably here today with you. He has a hidden disability. But me and my brother, my mom said that they didn't tolerate us much. And she said at the new school they did. And I remember really liking that school. But I mentioned that because no student should ever feel like they are scared of their teacher or they're bullied by their teacher just because they're different.

Lillian Nave 53:06

Same for in higher ed to

Denia Bradshaw 53:07

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I've always taken that approach. I mean, every now and then I've slipped I remember. Like, I used to have taught so many flute lessons. But I remember those, you're just on your toes. It's like, well, this learner benefits from this type of direction or guidance, this learner benefits from that. I remember using one approach that worked really well for one student with another. And then I saw tears coming down and I'm like, Oh, nope, that's not the way. This is also, I'm learning, right? I'm like, okay, cool. I just really, so nowadays, I just really gauge the temperature, I really gauge how they respond. And I really take that all into account. I try to do that too, in larger settings, whether it's a workshop or a classroom, in a lecture, I don't like lecture, I try not to call it lecture, but we just always call it a lecture. But just like really embracing people, getting to know them, letting them know that their voices are important that their their ideas matter. Because honestly, half of the time I do these things or even with my flute students, I'm I'm the one benefiting the most because I'm learning a lot. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I really see it as a collaboration. Yeah, I might be guiding you. Yeah, it might be the person you're paying or I'm quote unquote, the expert. Even though I really believe that whole growth mindset. I'm constantly going to be a life. I'm going I am a lifelong learner. I'm always adapting and learning. But I think that I try that that seems to be working. It seems to build connection connections and develop relationships. And I think that's so important to create relationships. Yeah, I That's my approach for now. Again, learning As I go seeking learning from others and what they're doing, and just kind of like taking all the goodies and just like, can your goodness rub off on me? Great.

Lillian Nave 55:12

I appreciate you said asset base that that idea of a strength based approach is so important, it is exactly the opposite of these intersectionalities that cause discrimination, right? So these are the, that's looking at somebody and saying, These are the things that kind of set you apart in a bad way or that because of the system that we're in, have made it more difficult for you to be you or for you to be successful. And if we can work within, we have to work within that system sometimes, right? So if we can work within any system to be asset based, strength based talent focused, what can you do? How can you demonstrate it? Bring me your superpowers, you know, and let's make that work for the common good. That's, to me, that's like the idea that's bringing this together, that it's flipping it flipping. Like disability, you've mentioned a lot the hidden disabilities, that's something I'm really interested in. The idea now that's coming in, I'm working on I've got somebody lined up to talk about disability cultural centers, reframing those negatives as positives, and getting everybody else on board. So, so that the community sees those as positives that sees there's a flexibility in how we can do things and how we can bring everybody along to the greater good of all people, rather than a system or a structure or paradigm that excludes it, because it's not flexible enough, or we haven't thought enough about it. So yeah,

Denia Bradshaw 57:01

that's one thing I really, really, really, really, really, really, really love. Really, really, about UDL is the goal being to foster expert learners, it's all about the learner. It's not a checklist of things you do. It's not compliance. It's it's about the student, which is why we're here. Yes. And

Lillian Nave 57:24

oh, boy, we don't want to forget that. No. So okay, my last question is sort of an aspirational question. A dreamy one. But how do you think this combination of both of these lenses really UDL and the understanding awareness of intersectionality can influence beliefs and practices in higher ed, in the wider world? This is my dream question.

Denia Bradshaw 57:57

How we could influence and think, Well, they both affirm each other. They honor various identities. They both acknowledge that the barriers have nothing to do with the person. It's the system. It's the practice, it's an institution, it's the belief it's an intentional, it anticipates diversity, and variability. It respects it. Gosh, it's like that's also that's like my biggest thing I'm grappling with to like, how the language? I think, for me, is the link having the appropriate toolbox and language to have these conversations with people that don't understand or see what I'm or see what we're trying to do or why we're trying to do it. Oh, that's just good teaching. Oh, that's actually racist, or that, you know, again, back to the misunderstanding and lack of awareness. Gosh, it's a tough one. I yeah, I think combining them will help a lot. I think UDL has been I think UDL as it evolves needs to have that element of intersectionality. And a lot of it too has, again, emerged or it was coined by a legal scholar, this was because of court cases and law. And in you know, like, kind of how it was unjust, and why like, why would that happen? Like, why would it get wiped? Like specifically the one the ruling with General Motors. I find that just so crazy. I find it crazy to that ADA was passed when I was a toddler. Like, this should have been done a long, long, long time ago.

Lillian Nave 1:00:20

Yeah. And it has the world has changed so much. And you know, think of the 70s. I was born during that decade, but that you couldn't, as a woman have a credit card, you had to have a man's permission, a husband or something. And I mean, we look at other countries right now who don't let women drive, right. And we're like how barbaric like this what is going on. And we don't have to look too far back to see that we have made some rapid changes. And it was completely foreign to, I would say the general public or the majority. And now that is unthinkable that we wouldn't let a woman have her own credit card or bank account, right without a man's permission. And with, but I mean, it is I dream about this, as we're moving forward, I see so many wonderful possibilities for success for all of our different students, that everybody has a chance in higher education, if they want it. I as a college professor, I'm also the first to say college isn't for everybody, it doesn't have to be. But if you want, you have a place. And it can be. It can be for you, we do have to tweak some things, we have to overhaul some things. But the more we understand about ourselves and our students think the more we can adapt and change, and create a world that has the strengths based talent focused love of the individual, and want to see that individuals succeed. And know that they can bring, I know my students can bring more than that I could even imagine. And they've shown and proven that to me time and time again. And it excites me to think about Wow, let's dig even deeper than we have, let's add these two lenses together. And I really think it can open up a world where we are destroying these barriers that we we didn't even we couldn't see before until we put those two lenses together. And then we can make it better.

Denia Bradshaw 1:02:37

And also to I mean, like we're born into this world, right, but a lot of the these isms. We weren't born believing that stuff. These are no social constructs conditioning. It's a lot of unlearning, right? It's yeah. I just That's so like, crazy to me. Like we like nobody's born, not liking someone different. Yeah, it's taught.

Lillian Nave 1:03:17

Yeah, yes. And we end our systems are taught and so much that we don't realize has been baked into the system. And yeah, the more I'm in the UDL space, and the more I'm in the kind of neurodiversity space to the more I'm able to uncover about those. There's things that I didn't realize I had gone along with. And you know, like the first time I like I don't have to time a test what? Like, who told me I always had to time a test. I mean, there was that written? Was that a law? I mean, that's just the basic that's like, the lowest rung there of my UDL ideas coming in there. But it's a thing like I never questioned it before. I never questioned it. And now I'm questioning those things. And so this helps me to go deeper into the things that I question about, what what barriers Am I putting up? What system Am I creating for my students? And how can I create a system where success is the real answer for all of my students, not the other things that is, is not learning like sorting and judging and all those other things that have happened in the last hundreds of years in education, I guess. Anyway, it's just it's still pretty new to me that I get excited about these things that we can make a change. Yeah, we can. Yeah, we can do this. We can do this.

Denia Bradshaw 1:04:52

Yes, we can. Oh, man, I'm like open to any conversation on how Continue doing this. I just know right now, like, as I've mentioned, I'm at this foundational part of just needing to, or knowing that people just need to understand no one's malicious at heart. Not saying people are malicious period, I think when you really get to know someone, you, you just unpack the, I guess, as Bernie Brown would say, the armor comes off. Yeah, the armor where you wanted to protect yourself or whatever, it comes off, and it's, we're, yeah, you need each other. We're interdependent on one another in this world,

Lillian Nave 1:05:43

we do. And I think you're, you know, the workshop that I saw you put together I think is really, really helpful. And I think if faculty, if folks in higher ed, have a chance to go through that, you know, going through UDL and intersectionality, and have some time, I really love the way you include a lot of reflection in that workshop, and have people take the time to do that early design work, collect some of that hard work in the beginning, it makes the class so much better, it makes the experience easier in the end, that you're defusing all of these possible roadblocks ahead of time. And so, you know, I will have all of your contact information if people want to say, hey, we need this, we'd love to talk to you and have this at our university. You can zoom in on up or, or whatever, but that whatever you can do, but I found it super valuable. I wanted to have folks hear about these two things and kind of it's not UDL 1.0 It's, I don't know, UDL 7.0 Or maybe, I don't know, it's it's the deep thinking that we need to be doing. And for a successful outcome, I should say. So thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Denia Bradshaw 1:07:08

Thank you, and thank you for your podcast. And this is so I mean, when I dove deep into the Udo, I found this and I was like I struck.

Lillian Nave 1:07:21

I'm glad it's a helpful resource. And that's what it's for. Again, I started the podcast to bring up the chatter. So if more people know more people can know that there are ways to increase success, make successful learners and take down the barriers that have kept some really amazing students from being successful. So let's let's keep it up. Thank you so much. You can follow the Think UDL podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to find out when new episodes will be released. And also see transcripts and additional materials at the think udl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor, Texthelp Texthelp is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools. Texthelp and its people are working towards a world where difference, disability or language are no longer barriers to learning and succeeding, with over 50 million users worldwide. The Texthelp suite of products include Read and Write equates to an orbit note, which work alongside existing platforms such as Microsoft Office and G Suite, enabling them to be integrated quickly into any classroom or workspace with ease. Texthelp has changed the lives of millions worldwide, and strives to impact the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030. Additional support for the podcast is made possible by Appalachian State University where if you call it Appalachian, I'll throw in Appalachia. The music on the podcast was performed by the Odyssey quartet comprised of Rex Shepherd, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez an I am your host, Lillian Nave. Thank you for joining us on The think UDL podcast

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UDL and Intersectionality with Denia Bradshaw

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This episode centers on the emergence and history of both Universal Design for Learning and the concept of Intersectionality. We will define these terms and discuss similarities and connections between the two, taking particular aim at what has been overlooked and what to do now. We will discuss why using both of these lenses matters...

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 Intersectionality | Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed & Arun Verma | The Learning Scientists

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 Intersectionality | Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed & Arun Verma | The Learning Scientists

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This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel, MD. David is the CEO and co-founder of Recently iDoRecall embarked on an ambitious project that led to our becoming an OpenStax EdTech Ally Partner. We hired subject-matter expert educators to create comprehensive sets of linked flashcards for most of the OpenStax textbooks. We have made these flashcard sets available for 100% free use by you, your students, and your schools. We are also offering educators, just like you, the opportunity to obtain a free iDoRecall educator's license that will enable you to monitor your students' engagement and metrics as they use the OpenStax flashcards to learn and remember what they learn Please For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page Further resources for this episode: . fill out this form if you are interested in this free license (that we usually sell). iDoRecall.com. iDoRecall is a unique spaced repetition flashcard app that enables you to create flashcards linked to the relevant location in your learning materials, where you just learned something, and you want to ensure that you'll remember it.
In Episode 68, Carolina interviews Dr Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed (@Zayba_G) and Dr Arun Verma (@drarunverma) to learn more about the concept of intersectionality. Zayba is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Psychology at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow and founder of the Race and Equality Network (RaEN). Arun is a leader in advising on implementing intersectionality, equity, and diversity in various contexts. In this episode, they share why it is important to raise awareness for intersectionality in any context, and specifically in education. They discuss challenges and opportunities of acknowledging and even embracing intersectionality in the classroom - and share many tips for teachers and students on how to proactively create "intersectional educational spaces" that provide room for diversity and learning. The first step is recognizing that intersectionality exists and educating oneself about what it is. This episode is a good starting point. Enjoy!

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Episode 68: Intersectionality with Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed and Arun Verma - The Learning Scientists

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This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel, MD. David is the CEO and co-founder of iDoRecall.com . iDoRecall is a unique spaced repetition flashcard app that enables you to create flashcards linked to the relevant loca

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Intersectionality, Power, and Pedagogy | Clarissa Sorensen | Teaching in Higher Ed

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Intersectionality, Power, and Pedagogy | Clarissa Sorensen | Teaching in Higher Ed

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Intersectionality, Power, and Pedagogy, with Clarissa Sorensen Unruh – Teaching in Higher Ed

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Clarissa Sorensen Unruh shares about intersectionality, power, and pedagogy on episode 522 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

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Decolonised Education: An Introduction | Lwazi Lushaba | REAL TALKSA

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Decolonised Education: An Introduction | Lwazi Lushaba | REAL TALKSA

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DECOLONISED EDUCATION EXPLAINED IN SIMPLE TERMS

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Teaching About Intersectionality | Academy 4 Social Civics

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Teaching About Intersectionality | Academy 4 Social Civics

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Academy 4 Social Civics - Educating the Civic Leaders of Tomorrow

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Teaching About Intersectionality - Academy 4 Social Civics

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Introduction Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how the intersections of different aspects of identity create unique experiences of discrimination and marginalization. Kimberlé Crenshaw first conceptualized the theory of intersectionality in her 1989 paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Intersectionality unites

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The Coloniality of Gender | María Lugones

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The Coloniality of Gender | María Lugones

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The Coloniality of Gender was published in Feminisms in Movement on page 35.

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Decolonial and Antiracist Teacher Education Practice: Challenges and Alternatives | Ryuko Kubota & Suhanthie Motha | The Modern Language Journal

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Decolonial and Antiracist Teacher Education Practice: Challenges and Alternatives | Ryuko Kubota & Suhanthie Motha | The Modern Language Journal

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Intersectionality, Decolonization, and Educating for Critical Consciousness | Jennifer Gale de Saxe and Bonnie-Estelle Trotter-Simons | Journal of Thought

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Intersectionality, Decolonization, and Educating for Critical Consciousness | Jennifer Gale de Saxe and Bonnie-Estelle Trotter-Simons | Journal of Thought

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Bringing intersectionality and (De)Coloniality into dialogue: Theoretical insights and political pathways for decolonizing higher education | Michalinos Zembylas | Social Sciences & Humanities Open

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Bringing intersectionality and (De)Coloniality into dialogue: Theoretical insights and political pathways for decolonizing higher education | Michalinos Zembylas | Social Sciences & Humanities Open

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A Decolonial Pedagogy for Teaching Intersectionality | Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education | Juan Velásquez Atehortúa

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A Decolonial Pedagogy for Teaching Intersectionality | Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education | Juan Velásquez Atehortúa

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Authors Juan Velásquez Atehortúa University of Gothenburg

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A decolonial pedagogy for teaching intersectionality | Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE)

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This article discusses a “pragmatic toolkit” for decolonizing a course by intersectionality combining key notions in literature in decolonial education with four components extracted from the works of Orlando Fals-Borda and Paulo Freire by Joao Mota Neto (2018). As a kind of toolkit for decolonial change, the article first combines the role of being a subversive scholar to address “injuries of coloniality” that places the discipline as part of a landscape of power in the context of a gender studies BA-course. Repairing these injuries of coloniality demanded curriculum changes, to restore the disobedient epistemology inherent in the concept of intersectionality. Second, in so doing, the pragmatic toolkit provided a participatory frame for exchanges of knowledge in a classroom composed of multiple identities, which then aimed to promote diversity and difference. Third, this orientation made a frame suitable for searching for other epistemic coordinates, exploring for example politics of emotion to erase barriers toward potential others, and including literature on coalitional politics. And fourth, revisiting the “telluric origins” of feminist research helped the students reinvent power through writing critical reflections that awaked their “interest in social action” to contest racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, and speciesism.

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Taking Intersectionality Seriously: Teaching Challenges and Practices in the Classroom | Margaux Maurel | Journal of Management Education

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Taking Intersectionality Seriously: Teaching Challenges and Practices in the Classroom | Margaux Maurel | Journal of Management Education

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Intersectional Pedagogy | Denver University

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Intersectional Pedagogy | Denver University

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Intersectional Pedagogy emerges from Intersectionality, a formal theoretical framework developed by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, American civil rights advocate and leading critical race theory scholar. Intersectionality starts from the premise that people live multiple, layered identities derived from social relations, history and structures of power (AWID 2004). It recognizes that people are members of more than one community at a time, and can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression (e.g. a professor may be a respected academic yet experience racism as an underrepresented racial and ethnic woman). Intersectionality requires that we focus on how identity, equality, and power intersect in complex and dynamic ways.

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Teaching at the Intersections | Learning for Justice

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Teaching at the Intersections | Learning for Justice

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Skip to main content

Nicole: An Intersectional Case Study

Ninth-grader Nicole is a mature, creative, hardworking student who gets along well with others. But she's always late for school, frequently misses her first-period class and rarely submits homework in any classes. Needless to say, her grades are suffering. Nicole's teachers know very little about her life. When they look at her, they see an African-American student who isn't doing well. They also see a typical example of the deep racial disparities that exist within absenteeism and dropout rates nationwide.

But a teacher who took the time to peel back the layers of Nicole's identity would see another characteristic-her socio-economic status-and a more nuanced understanding would emerge. Nicole isn't just a black student; she's also a girl from a low-income family who bears the responsibility of taking care of her two younger siblings. To fully and adequately support Nicole, an educator must see her situation through an intersectional lens: recognizing that race-, gender- and class-related circumstances are contributing to her achievement issues.

Legal scholar and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality in 1989, explains.

"We know, if we have a gender lens, that girls are more likely to have to engage in caretaking activities," she says. "They're the ones who often have to pick up the slack when mothers are unable to, either because of work or other circumstances. The girls are the ones who prepare the siblings for school, make sure they get to the bus on time, pick them up from school. That might make it difficult for them to get to school on time, contributing to their truancy and ultimately leading to them dropping out."

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Honor and teach about your students' multiple identities.

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This guide aims to raise awareness, guide learning, and support the use of culturally sensitive terms and phrases that center the voices and perspectives of those who are often marginalized or stereotyped.

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Educators Ungagged: Teaching Truth in the Era of Racial Backlash | Intersectionality Matters!

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Educators Ungagged: Teaching Truth in the Era of Racial Backlash | Intersectionality Matters!

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42. Educators Ungagged: Teaching Truth in the Era of Racial Backlash

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bell hooks on Interlocking Systems of Domination

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bell hooks on Interlocking Systems of Domination

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bell hooks on interlocking systems of domination

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Intersectionality Re-Rooted | Episode 5 | Collected

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Intersectionality Re-Rooted | Episode 5 | Collected

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The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

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Episode 202: Intersectionality | Keeping It 101

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Episode 202: Intersectionality | Keeping It 101

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's introduction to Religion Podcast

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e202 — Keeping It 101: A Killjoy’s introduction to Religion Podcast

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Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color | Kimberle Crenshaw | Stanford Law Review

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Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color | Kimberle Crenshaw | Stanford Law Review

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Kimberlé Crenshaw: The Urgency of Intersectionality | TED 

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Kimberlé Crenshaw: The Urgency of Intersectionality | TED 

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Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality

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Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both.

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‘Intersectionality’ Has Become a Hot-Button Topic in Recent Years. Here’s What it Means | CNN

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‘Intersectionality’ Has Become a Hot-Button Topic in Recent Years. Here’s What it Means | CNN