Below, I respond to recurrent themes in the filmed testimony of three people, examining their diverse experiences of disability and intersecting identities. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1990) developed ‘intersectionality’ to explain that occupying multiple marginalised identities compounds oppression. Intersectional praxis in education aims to address disability both in terms of structural barriers and welfare (Sépulchre, 2023).
Film one stresses physical needs and accessibility. It draws a parallel between historic racist segregation and contemporary ‘segregation by design’. This is echoed in film three, while film two highlights educational barriers. These are also foregrounded in research (Lukkien et al. 2024).
I have planned off-site visits to accommodate a student with mobility difficulties, but now consider travel to off-site activities, the organisation of the classroom and the wider opportunities I can make accessible. I will consider how to mitigate student isolation by intervening in group dynamics and will ‘enmesh’ disability across course material (Loutzenheiser and Erevelles, 2019, p. 384), rather than segregating the topic.
Films one and three highlight that inclusivity benefits everyone, hinting at the social construction of disability as problematic (Oliver, 1990). Film three notes the need for planning to accommodate neurodiversity. My lecture content is accessible online before sessions to benefit all students but I newly consider who is able to participate, how far and how this can be extended.
Film two notes the impact of government policies on the participant’s profession and motherhood, but not explicitly her deafness. This highlights that one identity can be viewed as a ‘master status’ (Hughes, 1945; Goffman, 1990 [1963]) but this is context dependent (Bayeck, 2022). This, and reflection on my positionality, prompt me to ‘broaden…[my] understanding of…[student] holistic experiences’, while considering how they view me and the power imbalance in the relationship (Lukkien et al. 2024, p. 715).
Film two highlights the deaf participant’s struggle to communicate, while film three notes difficulty in interpreting communication in relation to recent ‘out’ queer status and neurodivergence. The point of intersection between the duress of queer positioning and neurodiversity, potentially compounds stress, isolation and confusion.
In response, I aim for clear verbal, written and visual communication and to allow space for students to compose their thoughts. I will sensitively monitor student comprehension and encourage participation, divining inadvertent exclusions with fresh awareness of visible and hidden needs.
Film one highlighted the positive impact of Paralympian visibility, although research has problematised this (Goggin, G and Newell, C., 2000). It noted that the intersecting visibility of Black and disabled identities as targets for abuse. This stresses a position that is ‘both physically and culturally marginalized’ (Crenshaw, 1990, p. 1250). In film two, deafness is less visible, while film three’s participant noted he can ‘pass’ as neurotypical and cisgendered. His self-description as ‘probably not neurotypical’, parallels queer status in its medicalisation and expectations that individuals can understand and explain their identity. Film two critiques this inducement to explain, which amounts to an additional labour akin to that expressed by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017) in relation to race. While gender is accounted for in UAL statistics, the significance of sexuality and heterosexism remains invisible (fig. 1).
I taught a mature student who used a hearing aid and they/them pronouns, but left the MA, ostensibly because of funding. Their disability, age and gender identity did not obviously signal multiplying disadvantage to me, but I am now conscious that such factors could be at play. This is contextualised by research that points to lower degree outcomes and withdrawal associated with disabled students (Shaw, 2024, p. 830), which is born out by UAL retention data (fig. 2). Data fails to acknowledge a gender identity between the binary, which is exclusionary in classification systems that are ‘both material and symbolic’ (Bowker and Star, 1999, p. 286) (fig. 3). Multiple intersecting minority identities can be the ‘location of oppression’ but this is ‘not fully captured by…hegemonic system[s]’ (Hernández-Sacra et al., 2018, p. 287) (figs. 1, 2, 3).
Fig. 1. UAL Student Data Profiles
Fig. 2. UAL Disability Retention
Fig. 3 UAL Gender Retention
References
Film 1 Ade Adepitan interviewed by Nick Webborn
https://youtu.be/KAsxndpgagU?si=9AN4JdzPDdTNsNwS
Film 2 Christine Sun Kim: “Friends and Strangers”
Film 3 Chay Brown, Co-Founder, Director of Operations and Director for Healthcare at Transactual
Bayeck, R. Y. (2022) Positionality: the interplay of space, context and identity, Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21 pp.1-9
Bowker, G. C. and Star, S. L. (1999) Sorting things out: classification and its consequences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Crenshaw, K. (1991) Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color, Stanford Law Review, 43(6) pp. 1241-1299
Eddo-Lodge, R. (2017) Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race. London: Bloomsbury
Goffman, E. (1990 [1963]) Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Penguin
Goggin, G. and Newell, C. (2000) Crippling Paralympics? Media, disability and olympism, Media International Australia, 97(1) pp. 71-83
Hernández-Saca, D. I., Gutmann Kahn, L. and Cannon, M. A. (2018) Intersectionality dis/ability research: how dis/ability research in education engages intersectionality to uncover the multidimentional construction of dis/abled experiences. Review of Research in Education. 42(March) pp. 286-311
Hughes, E.C. (1945) Dilemmas and contradictions of status. American Journal of Sociology, 50 pp. 353–359
Loutzebnheiser, L. W. and Erevelles, N. (2019) “What’s disability got to do with it?”: Crippin’ Educational Studies at the intersections, Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 55(4) pp. 375-386.
Lukkien, T., Chauhan, T. and Otaye-Ebede, L. (2024) Addressing the diversity principle – practice gap in Western higher education institutions: a systematic review on intersectionality, British Educational Research Journal, 51(2) pp. 705-736
Oliver, M. (1990) The social construction of the disability problem. In, The Politics of Disablement: Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State. London: Palgrave. pp 78-94
Sépulchre, M. (2023) Intersectional praxis and disability in Higher Education, Social Inclusion, 11(4) pp. 362-372
Shaw, A. (2024) Inclusion of disabled Higher Education students: why are we not there yet?, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(6) pp. 820-838
Hi Paul,
I like how you broke down your key findings and reflected this in your past and current teaching practice. I felt the way you were able to discuss Ade Adepitan comments on race and disability and bring in the reference to Chay Brown’s discussion of “passing” was really well done. You have so many amazing references that I would like to know more about, I really appreciate your keeping to the word count but can tell you have a lot more knowledge and information you could share and I look forward to learning from/with you.
Thanks so much Laura-Beth. I always seem to have a lot to say! From comments in our workshops I think trying to manage such complex and wide discussions in the short blog posts is a challenge for many of us. In relation to this, I also got a lot out of hearing your perspectives in the group tutorial, which I’m sure could have gone on much longer. My research interests are related to queer subjectivity and visual culture, so this informs a lot of how I approach the topics, including the issue of passing, as you note. Thank you for your kind words!
The unit and your insights and those from the rest of the group make me think even harder about identity intersections, barriers and how we can overcome them. As an HPL who often has to deliver material provided by colleagues and has limited contact with students and in some cases, where attendance is poor, I have been learning a lot from everyone about ways to manage the classroom and enact some of our learning from the PGcert.