Positionality, epistemology, and social justice in the classroom.

• Date: 22 December 2002
• Author: Takacs, David
• Published date: 22 December 2002
• Author: Takacs, David

I had the opportunity to work at an American-owned maquiladora. This journey made me understand the imbalance of power between the first world and the third. More exactly, I had always been part of a marginalized group. I would fit in the platinum category if one compares my marginality to a credit card. That is, I am economically challenged, a woman, of color, who is queer. My parents and older siblings worked in the agricultural fields of Hollister, California, to put food on the table. Why would an economically challenged woman want to research the question, what is the role of maquiladoRAZAtion in the global political economy? There are a few reasons: (1) The World of Academia does not address issues about the worker from the voice of the worker. (2) Education should be a tool to combat oppression. (3) Education should work to empower all people, not only those who can "understand" academic jargon. (4) The only way to truly address issues of the third is to listen to the voice of the oppressed, and it is this voice that needs to hem the worlds of academia. -- Abelina Campos (1)

Introduction: Why Ask Students to Think About Positionality and Epistemology?

HOW DOES YOUR POSITIONALITY BIAS YOUR EPISTEMOLOGY? I HAVE BEEN POSING this question to students, weaving it as a theme throughout my courses. Of course, a resounding chorus of bafflement greets the initial question: How does who you are and where you stand in relation to others shape what you know about the world? A student's search for answers opens up new possibilities for understanding her connections to the world, as the opening quote suggests. As a reflective practitioner of the teaching profession, I constantly grapple with these questions, as well.

To work toward a just world--a world where all have equal access to opportunity--means, as a start, opening up heart and mind to the perspectives of others. We must be able to hear each other and to respect and learn from what we hear. We must understand how we are positioned in relation to others--as dominant/subordinate, marginal/center, empowered/powerless. In The Feminist Classroom, Maher and Tetreault (2001: 164) describe "the idea of positionality, in which people are defined not in terms of fixed identities, but by their location within shifting networks of relationships, which can be analyzed and changed." For those who teach for social justice, the "and changed" part is crucial: understanding positionality means understanding where you stand with respect to power, an essential skill for social change agents. From this understanding, we have a standpoint from which to challenge power and change ourselves.

Few things are more difficult than to see outside the bounds of our own perspective--to be able to identify assumptions that we take as universal truths, but that instead have been crafted by our own unique identity and experiences in the world. We live much of our lives in our own heads, in a reconfirming dialogue with ourselves. Even when we discuss crucial issues with others, much of the dialogue is not dialogue: it is monologue where we work to convince others to understand us or to adopt our view. Simply acknowledging that one's knowledge claims are not universal truths--that one's positionality can bias one's epistemology--is itself a leap for many people, one that can help to make us more open to the world's possibilities. In a recent book on teaching history, Sam Wineburg (2001:24) states, "the narcissist sees the world--both the past and the present--in his own image. Mature historical knowing teaches us to do the opposite: to go beyond our own image, to go beyond our brief life, and to go beyond the fleeting moment in human history into which we have been born. When we develop the skill of understanding how we know what we know, we acquire a key to lifelong learning." But one need not limit our excursions to days gone by: in our classrooms, the present swirls around us, and the voices of this present can lead beyond narcissism and into deeper understanding of the chaotic world that demands our attention and intervention. When we teach students to understand how their positionality in relation to others shapes what they know about the world, we help them sample the rigors and delights of the examined life. When we ask students to learn to think for themselves and to understand themselves as thinkers--rather than telling them what to think and have them recite it back--we help foster habits of introspection, analysis, and open, joyous communication.

Unfortunately, many students come to college without some of the skills we deem necessary to succeed in academic work. In California, the richest state in the richest country the world has ever known, we skulk in the bottom fifth among states in per capita spending on education. The state system has shortchanged many students who live in poorer school districts: crammed into overcrowded classrooms, led by underpaid teachers who labor in crumbling infrastructure, many students do not get the quality education they deserve. To compound the misfortune, some college administrators and professors view these students--often poor, often minority, sometimes bilingual--as "deficits." They pose problems for our teaching; we have to spend lots of money to "compensate" for their "deficiencies."

Asking students to think about how their positionality biases their epistemology helps us to live an assets model of multiculturalism in our classrooms. For example, we can view speaking English as a second language as a deficit. Alternatively, we can focus on that student's assets: she is bilingual, a facile language learner who has much to teach about bridging cultures because of where she has been positioned with respect to a dominant culture. As a simultaneous insider and outsider, she can help native English speakers see things they might have missed about their own language and culture, about their own positions in the world. By respecting the unique life experiences that each student brings into the classroom--by asserting that the broadest possible set of experiences is crucial to helping each of us understand the topic at hand as completely as possible--we empower all students as knowledge makers. We allow each student to assert individualized knowledge that contributes to a collective understanding. Rather than "tolerating" difference, we move to respect difference, as difference helps us understand our own worldview--and thus the world itself--better. From respect, we move to celebration, as we come to cherish how diverse perspectives enable us to experience the world more richly and come to know ourselves more deeply. To understand our own place in the world requires us to listen to and understand those around us.

Connecting positionality to epistemology simultaneously empowers and disempowers individual expertise in the classroom. Students are empowered because they recognize that they have unique claims, to knowledge that others cannot deny. Only I have lived my life; only you have lived yours. This encourages me to listen to you and you to me, as we each have (by definition) a unique perspective. This is not a lapse into navel gazing solipsism. Rather, if this experience works well, through dialogue we are led into doubts about the certainty of the "correctness" of our own position, as we come to learn that our views may be constrained by the narrow range of experiences we have had. We are then more willing, eager, or obliged to talk with others, as we realize we make assumptions based on our own positionality, and that this must, by definition again, bias how we view the world. Only by truly listening to others can I see how I am constrained and how I can become aware of the conceptual shackles imposed by my own id entity and experiences. The feminist scholar Sandra Harding promotes "strong objectivity." Through recognizing and analyzing the cultures in which we are positioned, and that therefore cannot help but mold our worldviews, we take steps to become more aware and even more objective. We can grasp at objectivity only by examining as many subjective perspectives as possible, and we come to know the world more fully by knowing how we know the world.

Working with Positionality/Epistemology...