Exploring intersectionality, educating scholars and teaching in higher education

Awareness of intersectionality needs to inform teaching in higher education; not just explicitly by enlightening students, but through language choices, recognising and responding appropriately to diversity, and ensuring inclusive policies and practices.

While the legal concept of intersectionality prompts us to think in terms of ‘multiple identities’, or ‘multiple discrimination’, this is an unhelpful perspective. Identities and experiences are not layered on top of one another; rather they are intersectional, formed of different elements at the same time, that can’t be separated, as they are not lived or experienced separately. We need to consider the whole individual, and how they experience the world because of who they are.

This presentation will reflect on how an Australian regional university with multiple distributed rural campuses, can use critical reflective experiences and educational strategies for both scholars and students to broaden minds and create contexts for inclusion.

By examining the messages we generate about gender equity and equality, intersectionality and the possibilities for women as students and as professionals living in the world, we explore the organisational cultural change, practices and actions undertaken. Share our journey and strategies for firstly educating academics surrounding intersectionality, inclusion and unconscious bias; and how this then flows to the choice and use of pedagogy and technologies to create contexts for inclusion in the context of Charles Sturt University.