Teaching for intersectionality: insights from a relational cultural perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to consider the use of relational cultural theory (RCT) as an underlying, processual orientation for teaching with those who are living and learning at the intersection of multiple, marginalised identities. Design/methodology/approach The concept of intersectionality is defined, and key characteristics of intersectional approaches are described. The criticality of teaching for intersectionality-related social justice goals involving inclusion, engagement, mattering, empowerment and critical inquiry as foundations for critical praxis is identified. Consideration is given to the viability of RCT as an underlying orientation for teaching with students who live and learn at the intersection of multiple, marginalised identities. Findings RCT is consonant with key characteristics of intersectional approaches, including rejection of essentialist perspectives; recognising the roles of power in creating, maintaining and legitimising interlocking marginalisations; retaining race as a critical point of intersectional analysis and practice; recognising the validity of insights obtained from non-dominant standpoints; and working to fulfill social justice goals. Practical guidelines from RCT that support social justice goals include facilitating student voice within a context of radical respect; use of “disruptive empathy”; attending to particular experiences within the context of systemic power dynamics; using co-active “power with” versus “power over” students; relying on mutuality and fluid expertise; and reframing student resistance. Research limitations/implications This paper provides a foundational overview of the history, nature and uses of RCT as an underlying processual orientation when teaching across diverse academic disciplines for students who live and learn at the intersection of multiple marginalised identities. Detailed case studies involving the application of RCT, including those involving teacher self-reflection would be useful. Practical implications Guidelines are provided for the practical application of RCT when teaching for intersectionality across diverse academic disciplines. Social implications RCT supports the intersectionality-related social justice goals of inclusion, engagement, mattering, empowerment and critical inquiry as foundations for critical praxis. Originality/value Intersectional pedagogies have been associated with positive attitudinal, intentional and behavioural outcomes. However, despite some notable exceptions, intersectional pedagogies are still absent in most academic disciplines. This paper provides practical guidance on the use of RCT as an underlying processual orientation when teaching for intersectionality across diverse academic disciplines.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".