Igniting Educational Imaginaries Through Intersectionality: Lessons Learned From the DIGITAL in a Time of Coronavirus Project

• In Event: Intersectionality in Europe: Examining Oppression and Resistance at the Intersections of Ableism and Other Forms of Isms

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
In this session we advocate intersectionality as an effective counterpoint to the pathologizing and exoticising of the Other, as well as the ‘’commatisation’ of disability, and race, and etc’ (Troyna, 1994, p. 332) that is the inevitable consequence of ‘damage centered research’ (Tuck, 2009, p. 409).
We offer a set of methods and analytical approaches that are intersectional, utilised within the project DIGITAL (Diversifying Inclusion and Growth: Inspiring Technologies for Accessible Learning in a time of coronavirus). The project sought to explore how subjectivities, regimes of practices, strategies and values in schools in the Global South intersect and can inform ontologies and epistemologies in schools of the Global North.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The approaches draw upon Edward Said’s (1993) elaboration of the concepts of contrapuntality and fugue in Western classical music and dos Santos’ Epistemologies of the South (2007). The aim is to enable the identification of erasures, closures, and silences; the representation of intersectional identities, bodies and voices; and the telling of ‘alternative stories by those that are currently marginalized and exiled’ (Chowdry 2007, p. 103). The approaches speak of both oppression and resistance to a hegemonic Eurocentric and dualistic approach to research and analysis (Said 1993), recovering dissonances and voices that are made non-existent in education (Santos, 2004).

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The research utilized qualitative research methods based on interviews with key stakeholders and policy and document analysis. We mobilise the contrapuntal as a metaphor that lets forms of oppression and resistance emerge in their local and global nature, and enables an intersectional ‘polyphony’ of histories and identities (Said, 1993, p.59). This enables us to understand what practices worked, how inclusive and intersectional approaches have been enacted with the resources, abilities and local expertise available and how social relations have been changed and fashioned by these.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Our data sources included interviews with special education teachers and key stakeholders, and document and policy analysis in Italy and England.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
By drawing upon findings from the DIGITAL project, in particular instances of intersectional inclusion in educational contexts in Italy and England, we first problematise how children and families classified as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘digitally marginalised’ were inscribed by racialised and ableist social markers. Second, we show the importance of adopting an intersectional analytical approach when researching the educational inequities that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. By making visible ‘alternative relations that have been obscured by Eurocentric hegemonic dichotomies’ (Santos, 2004, p. 168), we advance some analytical tools to rethink and enact a socially just intersectional approach in educational contexts post-pandemic, valuing practices, knowledges and voices relentlessly made Other.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The paper identifies potential contributions of research to enact the intersectional inclusive education principles that have been inaugurated by Waitoller (2020) and on the possibilities for convivial technologies to provoke new imaginaries in education that have culturally relevant pedagogies and involve local cultures and communities.

Authors

• Julie E. Allan, The University of Birmingham

• Francesca Peruzzo, University of Birmingham