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Anti-Racist Pedagogy Toolkit: II. Positionality and Biases

"Positionality is the notion that personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world. In this context, gender, race, class, and other aspects of identities are indicators of social and spatial positions and are not fixed, given qualities. Positions act on the knowledge a person has about things, both material and abstract. Consequently, knowledge is the product of a specific position that reflects particular places and spaces.”

Your Social Location

Where you live has impact on your identity and worldview. Consider the experiences of someone living on a mountain compared to another individual living in a valley - the scenery, everyday flora and fauna, and even the weather differs. Each experiences the seasons differently and this will impact how they spend their days, how they dress, what they eat. Perhaps winters are harsh on the mountain and mild in the valley - our individuals will then have different associations with the month of November, perhaps.

Six circles with lines pointing to a central circle that reads "Me"

Similarly, our social locations - or positionalities - shape our worldviews as they "reflect the many intersections of our experience related to race, religion, age, physical size, sexual orientation, social class," etc. (via). Social location impacts our interactions with others, form the assumptions we make, and inform our biases - both conscious and unconscious; positive and negative.

As an instructor, understanding and interrogating your positionality can help you recognize the often unacknowledged influences that shape your curriculum, policies, and teaching practices.

Questions to consider:

  • Is your classroom and online course accessible for students who are differently-abled?
  • Does your curriculum, projects, homework, exams make assumptions about student identities (sexuality, gender, class, nationality, religion)?
  • What religious or cultural holidays and events do you need to take into account when scheduling events?

 

Adapted from Social Location, Positionality & Unconscious Bias by Candy Khan, University of Alberta

  • URL: https://library.cod.edu/ARPtoolkit
  • Last Updated: Sep 15, 2023 2:06 PM
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