Lecture 1: Diversity, inclusion, intersectionality and social justice
Exam
• Open book (use any sources you want)
• Individual essay
Articles used for this lecture
• Hunt, P. F. (2019). Chapter 10: Inclusive Education as Global Development Policy. In: M. J.
Schuelka, C. J. Johnstone, G. Thomas & A. J. Artiles (eds). The Sage Handbook of Inclusion and
Diversity in education. London: SAGE. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526470430.n12
• Espinoza, O. (2007) Solving the equity–equality conceptual dilemma: a new model for
analysis of the educational process, Educational Research, 49:4, 343-363,
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131880701717198
• Gorski, P. (2016). Rethinking the role of “culture” in educational equity: from cultural
competence to equity literacy. Multicultural Perspectives, 18(4), 221–226.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15210960.2016.1228344
• Celeste, L., Baysu, G., Phalet, K., Meeussen, L., & Kende, J. (2019). Can school diversity
policies reduce belonging and achievement gaps between minority and majority youth?
Multiculturalism, colorblindness, and assimilationism assessed. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 45(11), 1603-1618. https://doi.og/10.1177/0146167219838577
Topic is not neutral (No study content yet)
This topic (diversion and inclusion) is not a neutral topic, because it is closely related to identity,
social justice, activism, etc. This makes it interesting, but also sometimes hard. Can cause
hypersensitivity. Hypersensitivity in both ways: (1)
you can become annoyed by other people who do
not see the issues, but also (2) hypersensitive to
yourself because you may realize you have
said/done things that were not very inclusive. We’re
here to learn, so we have to be mild to ourselves and
to others. A topic like this can point you to your own
blind spots, which can sometimes make you
uncomfortable, but it also means that you’re
learning.
Language shapes our world. The words we use have an effect on how we experience and create our
world. In this course you may feel like you need to use different words or you notice the issue but
don’t know what a good definition of should be.
Who are we?
Example: asking someone’s gender with only the option male and female is not a neutral question.
You are sending the message that you’re weird or different if you don’t fit these boxes. Besides,
putting male on top in the list also sends a message. Everything sends a message. This is a question
that can be asked for example in a school environment to get student data. That is then maybe a
decision a policy maker is making. But it’s not just one policy maker that decided that it’s relevant to
post a question like this. This is dictated by the norms of society that this is a relevant way of dividing
people into 2 groups (male/female).
,If you are for example a researcher or policy maker and you are an intersex person yourself, you will
probably think I’m not going to ask this question. Or maybe if you know a colleague or friend with
such a point of view. So, such personal experiences will make you more sensitive towards this
environment. But of course it’s also important, if you don’t have direct experience with different
types of diversity, it’s good to be aware of it.
This course is not only about diversity in the classroom, but about diversity in the inclusive
classroom. An inclusive classroom means that everybody gets an equal chance; everyone has the
opportunity to learn. But the question is of course: how can you do that then? You can think of many
things to try to be inclusive, but an easy solution is of course to ask people what they need for the
classroom to be inclusive. Someone from this course mentioned that it would help to be able to say
things without getting judged. Sometimes you may realize that you have a judging thought, but
realizing that is judging and then reflection on that might also help instead or responding right away.
Social identity
Social identity markers are features of yourself that say something about your identity. Of course, it
has to do with how others see you and respond to you. It is something that sends a message to other
people and influences how they might see you. It is also context-dependent; for example when there
are diverse study backgrounds in class, it might be relevant to mention which study you have
done/are doing. You might think social identity is about how you see yourself, but you are not living
in isolation, so it also has to do with your social role and appearance in the world (See below).
Question of a student: are social identity markers how other see you or how you see yourself?
Answer: that’s the interesting thing; when you think of identity you might think that it’s something
really about how you see yourself, but you are not living in isolation. So, it also has to do with your
social roles and your appearance in the world. For example religion was not very relevant to mention
in this lecture (students described themselves more based on age, gender, origin, study, etc.).
However, in some contexts it might be relevant to mention. If we talk about religion, you have
religious symbols; then you can decide yourself to show your religion (e.g. necklace with cross, head
scarf, etc.). But you can also of course decide not to show your religion at a certain point. And of
course there are also social identity markers that you cannot hide in a way. Some things are just out
there and maybe you don’t like it or find it relevant, but other people will make it relevant. For
example, if you are studying physics as a female and there are mainly males in class, people may
make your gender relevant while you don’t find it relevant. So, it’s both; it has to do with how you
see yourself, but also how other people see you and what people emphasize.
The wheel on the picture is called the social identity
wheel. It seems like there are 2 layers, but it’s not that you
need to do special things with the inner circle and the
outer circle. The idea is that there are many different
aspects/facets of your identity that are more or less
important for you; that are giving you a more or less
privileged or unprivileged position. Some things you might
hardly even think about, and others you may. The
different social positions this may lead to are reflected in
things like racism, sexism, or heteronormativity (i.e. the idea that the whole world is heterosexual
and that a normal family has a mom, dad, 2 children, etc.)
,Ableism = that the norm is to have a functioning body. This means that you are not disabled in any
way. For example no ramp to enter a building. Or that websites are not accessible for visually
impaired people. Sometimes these are things that we don’t think about, which also says something
about your privilege.
Question of student: is ableism only about physical impairments or also phycological ones?
Answer: I think in the most common definitions it’s also about phycological impairments. Example:
some people say just come on time, it’s the easiest thing to do, but for some people that is just really
hard.
Intersectionality
You cannot describe yourself in 1 word. There are many aspects that define you. But sometimes, for
unprivileged people, these aspect can work together and make it worse. This is also where Kimberlé
Crenshaw was talking about in her TEDTalk
(https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality). For people who
are disadvantaged, these different social identity markers can work together and make an even more
problematic disadvantaged position. To understand how
that happens, Kimberlé used the word intersectionality.
Intersectionality (comes from intersection, cross roads)
→ you can e.g. look at racism, but then you also miss
other important parts of the problem. For example,
gender may influence how you experience racism. In
research or policy documents people often focus on one
aspect. This is understandable because you feel really
strongly about one thing and want to focus on it, and we definitely should not forget that single
issues may help to understand and to make something important. But in reality people have to deal
with many different factors that play a role in their lives.
So, that’s why this intersectionality perspective is important. It’s hard to really incorporate this in
research etc. We often focus on one or two aspects, because to talk about all diversity in the world
all the time is almost impossible. But it’s good to keep in mind that we should be doing this in a way.
Diversity vs. inclusion
This course has 2 important words in the title: diversity
and inclusion. Diversity is more about representation.
Sometimes diversity is just there and you have to deal with
it (e.g. in class, there are just different students and
teachers), but you can also strive for it (e.g. diversity in
work environment). So, it can be something natural or you
can strive for diversity. But diversity is actually only about
representation. If you are only focusing on diversity, you’re just not there yet. You don’t just want a
diverse group, you want everybody to feel welcome, to join. Therefore, you need inclusion. Inclusion
means involvement; so is everyone you included also really involved? Because if you only look at
diversity you have these issues that risk for example:
➔ Tokenism = you only have 1 or 2 examples of a diverse group. For example, you have one
person from a minority group in your team and think you’re good now, you say now we’re
diverse. But of course, it doesn’t work like that.
, ➔ Celebrative = Almost making people who bring the diversity a little bit exotic and being
celebrating it, but not really taking them serious.
➔ Stereotyping.
So, this idea of inclusion is that you’re really doing things together. Therefore it is important to ask
questions like: is this involvement really reciprocal? How are the power relations? Etc.
Myers said: Diversity is ‘being invited to the party’ and
inclusion is ‘being asked to dance’. But that is still not very
inclusive. Being asked to dance is still quite passive and then
you’re dependent on the person who asks you to dance.
Therefore, Juday reflects on this in his blog post
(https://www.danieljuday.com/blog/2018/1/18/inclusion-
isnt-being-asked-to-dance) and ends up with saying that
maybe it should be that ‘Diversity is going to a part and
inclusion is being member of the party-planning committee.’
You might all think that inclusion makes things better, but then the question of course is: How do you
do that? And then also the question: Do you still want to do that? Because it has consequences for
the status quo and for the way the majority group already did things. And the difficulty starts of
course. People often say ‘sure, we like diversity and inclusion’, but then when you come and say
things and want to change things, suddenly it’s not so nice anymore. So, how do you do that and how
can you thing about that? We will talk about that in the remainder of the course.
Hunt (2019)
The paper of Hunt gives a nice overview and also
a nice illustration of how difficult it is to keep on
thinking about diversity as the super broad thing.
Hunt (2019) is actually making a case for inclusion
for people with intellectual impairments and
physical disabilities. So, his paper, actually a
chapter from a book, is a reflection on how
inclusive education is going right now; how it’s
working out. She said that it’s not implemented so well. That is partly because the Salamanca
Statement is so open and broadly phrased, it’s also easy to have very different ideas on how to
implement this. The Salamanca Statement is a very important and special statement because they
brought together many states/countries from all over the world, and together they said we feel that
inclusion in education is very important and we want to stress how important we find inclusive
education by writing it down in the Salamanca Statement.
