Abstract
What is the purpose of education? This question can be answered in a multitude of ways with layers of complex answers arising from a great range of philosophies and approaches to learning and teaching. It is a question that I have continually wondered about as a teacher working with school-aged children and adults alike. More recently, I have had the opportunity to introduce pre-service teachers to the importance and complexity of teaching for diversity and learning. Here, the question became, “What is the purpose of and how does one go about teaching and learning for diversity?” In this class presentation, I strived for a humble stance while posing this very question and discussing difficult topics that require teachers to critically reflect on their identity.
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Notes
- 1.
This study used narrative research around the lived experiences of women of colour teachers. The study was conducted in a large urban centre in Western Canada. There were ten women who participated in this study, all varying in their years of teaching experience, position, and ethnic background. These women self-identified their background and/or descent as South Asian, South East Asian, East Asian, and the diasporic experience of being Indian/African. In the larger study, the forms of racialized identity and Canadian context were examined from a feminist and anti-racist framework.
- 2.
This club was outside of the core curriculum and teaching time and was created for those to voluntarily join in discussing different cultures, languages, and customs of one another.
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Appendix
Appendix
Minoritized (Group)
Building on the term “visible minority,” minoritized refers to a “social group that is devalued in society and given less access to resources” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012, p. 5). The term “minoritized” speaks to the structural and systemic dynamics at play within a society to limit the power and social acceptance of a group within society, whether their numbers increase to provide pockets of “majority” representation. For example, a white teacher working in a school of predominately non-white students is not minoritized, although she/he may feel like a visible minority in that specific place.
Race
I conceptualize race as not being a biologically determined category, but a powerful social construction used to reinforce racialized categories. “Race” in this work refers to the physical identity markers of a person and resides with the “socially constructed system of classifying humans based on phenotypical characteristics (skin colour, hair texture, bone structure)” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012, pp. 22–23). It is a term that is complex, as it intersects with other dynamics of identity markers (e.g. ethnicity). Furthermore, there is a need to acknowledge the perspective of defining race, as to “how one personally identifies versus how one is identified by others (emphasis in original)” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012, p. 24).
Racialized Identity
Refers to the complex interactions of identity markers and perceptions of such as determined by the “race” of an individual and/or minoritized group. Na’ilah Suad Nasir (2011) explains, “In my view, the term ‘racialized identities’ signals my underlying assumptions about the fluidity and social construction of racial boundaries” (p. 4). She continues by stating that it “is an effort to honour the idea that race (and thus racial identities) is not an inherent category but rather is made racial [emphasis in original] through social interaction, positioning, and discourse” (p. 5).
Racism
As a Canadian research study, the term “racism” will also be defined in the Canadian context and is best defined by Sensoy and DiAngelo (2012), who state:
In the United States and Canada, racism refers to White racial and cultural prejudice and discrimination, supported by institutional power and authority, used to the advantage of Whites and the disadvantage of people of Colour. Racism encompasses economic, political, social, and institutional actions and beliefs that perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources, and power between Whites and people of Colour. (p. 187)
Visible Minority/People of Colour
These terms will be used interchangeably in acknowledging the non-dominant racialized groups in Canada. Although “people of colour” is not used in formal policy or legislation, whereas “visible minority” is, the correlation between these terms used to identify people is critical, as it reveals the complexities of not being the dominant group in terms of privileges associated with hegemony (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012).
White/Whiteness
Throughout this chapter, the term “white” and its variations are used in varying ways. In specific examples, I use this term to reference the racialized identity of being white. Sensoy and DiAngelo (2012) explain, “Whiteness refers to the specific dimensions of racism that elevate White people over people of Colour” (p. 119). Furthermore, it is the ongoing perception that “white” is outside of race, which “is one of the most powerful and pervasive manifestations of Whiteness” (p. 119).
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Aujla-Bhullar, S. (2019). Racialized Identity: (In)Visibility and Teaching—A Community of Critical Consciousness. In: Kariwo, M., Asadi, N., El Bouhali, C. (eds) Interrogating Models of Diversity within a Multicultural Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03913-4_3
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