Learning Outcomes
Reflect on your racial identity to deepen your understanding of racial identity.
Identify your salient identities to think through how your positionality influences exclusion or inclusion of students in your classroom.
Module 2 Materials
Download a copy of the workbook to record answers to the questions for module 2. Depending on your pace and level of engagement, the module will take approximately 60 minutes to complete. Overall, take as much time as you need for these reflective exercises.
Task: Read about positionality in higher education.
The concept of positionality refers to internal and external characteristics about us that might affect our work. Our positionality is shaped by core identities such as race, age, ability, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and class, and by idiosyncratic characteristics like our lived experiences, education, nationality, personality, or physical appearance. In the domain of academic research, scholars use the concept of positionality to challenge notions of objectivity, and to reflect on the ethical, emotional, and practical consequences of their unique positionality on their work.
As a concept, positionality assumes who we are as a human, and interacts with the work that we do. This means that we can influence our work and that our work can influence us. Take for example Cherry et al. (2010) who reflexively find that their own “consumption identities” affected data collection, analyses, and written work about lifestyle and consumption politics.
In higher education, positionality assumes who we are as individuals and affects who we are as educators. Our positionality affects how we teach, why we teach, what we teach, and our perceptions of and interactions with our students, including their perceptions of and interactions with us. Because positionality can have such a tremendous impact on an educator’s teaching philosophy and pedagogy practices, reflecting on our positionality is a powerful tool for teaching for social justice.
Social Identity Map: A Reflexivity Tool for Practicing Explicit Positionality in Critical Qualitative Research (Jacobson & Mustafa, 2019). Length: 12 pages
Part 1: Map your social identities and reflect on questions.
Task: Read the instructions on how to reflect on your social identities.
Each of us approaches our work from our unique positionality. Our positionality affords us unique insights that can enrich our work as educators and scholars, but it also produces biases that limit our perspectives. Examining our positionality helps us to consider how social positions and power shape our identities and how we view and experience the world.
To explore your positionality and its influence on you as an educator, please refer to the reading, Social Identity Map: A Reflexivity Tool for Practicing Explicit Positionality in Critical Qualitative Research (Jacobson & Mustafa, 2019).
Then, using the instructions, take some time to complete the identity map to examine your salient identities and how they shape your pedagogical practices and student learning. Please click the link to make a copy of the identity map.
Tier 1: Identification of social identities
Instructions: While there are likely many facets that make up your identity (e.g. race, class, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, social class, national origin, first language, relationship status) as a starting point, consider mapping your identity with the categories given in the Tier 1 boxes. Feel free to change some if they are not salient to your identity, with the exception of race, which is critical to exploring our social identities.
Tier 2: How these social identities impact our lives - a first step to interrogating how they impact us as educators
Instructions: To reflect on Tier 2, you might consider how and when this identity confers power and privilege, or marginalization and disadvantage. You could also consider how it shapes your values, interpretation of events, or interactions with others.
Tier 3: Details that are tied to your experience related to this identity
Instructions: Reflect deeply on your experience with this identity, such as associated feelings or behaviors, your approaches to different situations, or your experiences with how others perceive you because of this identity.
Reflect on the following questions:
Which social identities most strongly influence how you view the world, your neighborhood, and the grocery store from which you shop (or a place you frequent often)? Please include race as one of the identities to reflect on this question.
In the classroom, when you interact with your students, which of their identities are typically most salient to you? Why so?
When you look at the identities that most inform your world (question 1) and the students' identities that are most salient to you (question 2), what conclusion(s) are you able to make about your teaching practices?
How could getting to know your students' lived experiences through their social identities change or inform your teaching relationship with them and the learning experience among students?
What are future aspirations for your teaching practice? How do you envision integrating your insights from mapping your social identities into your teaching goals?
Part 2: Put your social identities in action.
Instructions:
Please take a moment and look at the images of telephones.
Group the telephones in ways that make the most sense to you.
Reflect on the following questions:
What characteristics of the telephones guided the way you grouped them?
Which of your social identities influenced the way you grouped the telephones?
How does this exercise bring insight, if at all, to who you are as an educator, your teaching methods, how you perceive your students, and the selection of course materials?
Good work! You finished Module 2.
Image caption: colorful images of Chicanx/Latinx people, sun, and earth, titled the Chicano legacy mosaic at UC San Diego
The following resources may be helpful in case emotions, thoughts, and triggers emerge as a result of reflecting on your social identities, experiences of (un)belonging at UC San Diego or otherwise, and/or classroom experiences.
Contact Faculty and Staff Assistance Program for confidential assistance concerning personal well-being.
Contact Counseling and Psychological Services for confidential counseling and educational services to your department.
Contact Information Technology Services for technology support.
Email Teaching and Learning Commons Engaged Teaching at engagedteaching@ucsd.edu for questions about Empowering the Practice of Reflection for Social Justice Teaching and/or to schedule a confidential consultation to discuss your experience and how to apply it to your teaching.