Essay on Intersectionality in Education

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Intersectionality, as espoused by Kimberle Crenshaw, is a theoretical framework that we can use to identify how those with identities that are othered and oppressed by mainstream society are pushed to the intersections of society. The use of an intersectional framework helps us to be able to highlight how those who are othered by the mainstream are left to fend for themselves. They may not be entirely accepted into their communities because of an aspect of their identity and therefore they are left on the intersections and are harmed even more. As class teachers, adopting an intersectional framework will support us in identifying how our children are impacted by social inequalities in society on a macro scale, and on a microscale within the classroom and how to tackle this. The identification of these social inequalities, enables the teacher to begin to ensure these inequalities are challenged and that they are continually reflecting and evaluating the power relations within their classroom and addressing any problem that may occur. Without an intersectional framework such as this, it can lead to these inequalities being exacerbated within the classroom. In this essay, I will be demonstrating how a class teacher’s positive view and adoption of an intersectional framework can greatly improve their relationships and the teaching and learning of their class. I will be presenting my argument through three main areas of study: the grouping of children, the curriculum, and the teacher-student relationship.

Lit Review:

Intersectionality, as a theoretical concept, was first developed by Crenshaw to address the marginalization of Black women in the United States to highlight how Black women are not only oppressed by their ethnicity but also their gender and vice versa. As Crenshaw emphasizes, intersectionality is a lens that we can use to look at the oppressive power relations in society, and where they also collide, interlock, and intersect. Crenshaw demonstrates that focusing on one central point such as; ethnicity, gender, and class also means that the lives of those who are subjected to all of these oppressions are erased. Originating within Black feminist theory activism in groups such as the Combahee River Collective, it has been prominent within theorizing since the late 1980s especially by Women of Colour to examine how people are impacted in regards to gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. These ideas developed by Crenshaw have been adopted throughout academia, to address the impacts on those who are othered by the mainstream and this is why it is so essential within education also. Through the use of an intersectionally informed pedagogy and methodology, we as educators can begin to examine, critique, and reconstruct the power relations of oppression and privilege that are so entrenched within our education system, schools, and classrooms.

I must acknowledge the criticisms of intersectional analysis within academia and its narrow focus on identity. However, I believe that intersectionality is not a simplistic focus on identity but is a framework of analysis to investigate how the power relations within society, which exacerbate social inequalities formulate and shape individual and group identity. Our understanding of ourselves and the world is shaped by how we experience society and how as members of certain groups we are impacted by the power dynamics within our social structures. Through an intersectional framework, we can begin to uncover and spotlight the impact that these experiences have on how we interact with everyday life and begin to draw on connections between people’s experiences of ‘discrimination, marginalization, and privilege within and across different groups’. This as a starting point can begin the process of dismantling the power relations that are underlying throughout our society and beginning to ask the question of who is missing.

As identified in ‘Intersectionality in Education: A Conceptual Aspiration and Research Imperative’ Tefera, Powers, and Fischman emphasize the need for the adoption of an intersectional framework within education to respond to the convoluted way that class, race-ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, disability, citizenship transform our identities and how we interact with society. The diversity strategies used in education research which are mainly simplistic, one-dimensional, and lack nuance need to be transformed into an analytical framework that analyses how the identities of our pupils can be impacted and mitigate these. I believe that an intersectional framework can support class teachers to do this. Unlike many of the broader diversity strategies implemented in institutions, intersectionality is not a moment but a long-standing reflective process in which we dismantle the oppressive power relations within our education system and challenge how we organize our schools and classrooms to account for the ways that oppression shapes the power dynamics and perpetuates inequalities within our classrooms. Intersectionality is an ongoing journey with no end point and must transform and adapt according to how identities are understood within different times and different spaces. Classrooms are a microcosm of the institutionalized social structures which shape identities based on individual’s experiences and how they are interacted with based on their social group. Through a class teacher’s adoption of an intersectional framework, we can begin to tackle the power dynamics within the classroom identify the gaps that focusing on single-category identities leaves, and tackle the erasure that comes from categorizing a person as being within one section of society and not the multiplicity of identities that make them themselves.

There are two central elements within intersectionality as envisaged by Crenshaw and other Critical Race Theory (CRT) activists to be able to actually implement and use an intersectional framework effectively: an empirical basis and a core activist component. CRT activists argue that there must be an empirical basis when using an intersectional approach to better understand the nature of social inequities and the processes that sustain them. They also argue that there must be an active component, in which an intersectional approach must encourage and generate connections between different social groups to challenge and transform the status quo. Therefore, to effectively use an intersectional framework as a class teacher, it cannot only be empirical and based on theory but be implemented actively by supporting and providing spaces for different groups within the school to create coalitions and challenge the status quo. It is also important to clarify here that the African American Policy Form (AAPF) emphasizes the importance of using ‘intersectionality as a tool of analysis and resistance rather than as an academic tactic or fashion’. By creating clear, reachable goals we can begin to adapt our teaching and learning with an intersectional focus and use it as a tool for analysis instead of using the buzzword of intersectionality without the implicit intention of transformative change.

Grouping:

The United Kingdom has a long history of grouping children within its education system. This has mainly involved separating children based on their ‘ability’ or ‘attainment’ and determining their position in the league table of the class according to their perceived ability from the teacher. The structured grouping of children has been prominent in schools following the 1988 Education Reform Act and continues to be present within the majority of classrooms. According to Dr Alice Bradbury in her lecture at UCL IOE on the 15th of October 2020, teachers’ using grouping by ‘ability’ to allow for the teacher to support children on varying ability as well as ensuring that there is equal progression for both ‘higher’ attainers as well as ‘lower attainer’s. However, as Bradbury emphasizes, the research on grouping demonstrates that the negative aspects of grouping dramatically outweigh any positive elements, especially for the pupils. Bradbury identifies how grouping can impact learners negatively both: emotionally and academically. Research demonstrates that grouping negatively impacts pupils’ self-esteem, self-actualization, perceptions of their academic abilities, and their feelings toward school. Pykett, emphasizes this by highlighting how students ‘quickly learn how the school, local authority or educational establishment perceive, pigeonhole’ and limit the children their aspirations and their future possibilities based on this arbitrary view of ‘ability’. It also simultaneously severely impacts academics by placing limits on children’s learning the teacher deciding that they cannot access specific content instead of adapting it to make it more accessible, while also damaging further attainment for those children in lower groups, as it continues to reproduce a ‘spectrum of attainment’ in which the children are continually reminded they cannot reach, re-inforcing negative self-perceptions and the idea that they cannot while others can.

A key area grouping impacts children is how it can exacerbate social inequalities and the pre-conceived notion of ‘ability’ is impacted by teacher’s racialized, gendered and ableist assumptions and unconscious bias against certain social groups. As Jackson and Povey identify in their work, the allocation of groups is not based solely on the attainment of children but is massively impacted by social factors privileging those with greater cultural power and capital and systematically disadvantaging those who are already worse off in society. Unless, a teacher uses an intersectional approach and actively reflects and addresses the power relations within their classroom and their own unconscious bias and racialized, gendered, ableist, etc assumptions they will continue to perpetuate and reproduce social inequalities within their classrooms. Ability groupings are a clear example of a way this continues to happen, with the largest amount of people in the ‘lower-ability’ groups being from ethnic minorities, having English as an additional language, and being disabled. Disproportionally placing children in groups based on the teacher’s understanding of ‘ability’ and without the teacher’s active role in reflecting on their unconscious bias and prejudices leads to children from oppressed groups being placed in ‘lower-ability groups’ which inadvertently creates a lack of confidence within themselves, and the education system perpetuating negative stereotypes and internalized prejudice in which they are ‘less-able’ because of an or multiple aspects of their identity; their ethnicity, disability, gender, etc. This is identifiable in two certain circumstances: the impact of grouping on Black boys and Black disabled boys students with English as an Additional Language (EAL).

There is a long-entrenched history of Black children being over-represented within lower ablower-abilitygs and seen as requiring special or assisted education. The intersecting oppression of Black boys and Black disabled boys has been continually reproduced through ability groupings within education systems around the world. Klinger highlights how in the US Black students are categorically labeled as having Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) although they are not necessarily diagnosed but based on teacher perception. The process of setting and ability grouping within Western Education systems has continually disproportionately impacted Black students according to Paulette in Gillborn – the boys are in sets from the time they come in and those boys are in the bottom sets. And the bottom set has been written off as boys who are just not going to get anywhere. (p.282). There is a general exception that due to these pupils being placed in the lower ability groups, their futures are pre-determined and their aspirations limited because of their teacher’s arbitrary decision on their ability. The reality that all these boys are Black is not a coincidence, but an example of the impact that these racialized assumptions and unchecked prejudice can disproportionately limit and impact these boy’s futures. Those boys who have SEND and require extra support from their teachers are either placed in the lower sets and accept that their abilities are limited or removed from mainstream provisions and placed in alternative provisions. According to Gibbon Black students are more than twice as likely to be labeled as having these difficulties than their white peers (282). Those who can stay in mainstream provision are placed in bottom sets and do not always receive the support they need, in Gllborn’s work he highlights the case of a boy who because he is dyslexic was placed in the bottom set for everything even though he was an able student who required some focused support. Instead of being given the support he needed, he became de-motivated and apathetic towards school, feeling like the school and therefore, himself gave up on him. In different circumstances, with teachers who had used an intersectional approach and been able to identify how this boy was being oppressed because of his ethnicity and his disability, the teacher decided he was not able based on their racialized assumptions of the abilities of Black boys instead of viewing the child as an individual and individualized support he required to handle his dyslexia. The combination of his ethnicity and his SEND resulted in him being relegated to the lowest teaching group without any possibility of progression, ultimately as shown this damaged him emotionally and academically. Without an intersectional approach, we fail to see how our understandings of identity, both of others and ourselves, are shaped by oppression and biased assumptions that can ultimately severely impact our student’s progress and futures.

If a class teacher adopts an intersectional framework and continues to analyze the power relations within their classroom and reflect on their biased assumptions, they will be able to see how grouping by ability continues to reproduce social inequalities, and the understanding of ‘ability’ is shaped by privilege.

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Essay on Intersectionality in Education

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