This workshop recognizes that in education many minoritised groups experience similar forms of oppression, e.g. lack of visibility within the curriculum, lack of training amongst staff to meet their needs and a hostile political and media climate.
Furthermore, intersectional approaches already highlight how many individuals experience oppression based on multiple social identities (e.g. Crenshaw, 1989). However, much good practice around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) exists and initiatives which aims to embed EDI throughout the curriculum (for example; Moncrieffe, 2020; DePalma and Atkinson, 2009) are being taught and developed in an increasing number of schools. Accordingly, this workshop aims to create a space to interrogate wider systems of oppression and foster a critical consciousness (Freire, 2017) around how wider systems of oppression (racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism and cisgenderism) can be challenged.
Drawing upon an Appreciative Inquiry model, which focuses on what is working well and asks how can we get more of it? This workshop aims to bring together educational practitioners to explore how we can develop teaching training, provision and support for EDI provision.
Participants will be asked to reflect in small groups around elements of best practice in embedding EDI initiatives. The workshop will then explore the 4D’s of Appreciative Inquiry (Cockell and McArthur-Blair, 2012); Discovery (what gives life?), Dream (what might be?), Design (how can it be?) and Destiny (what will be?) as a positive, rather than combative, framework for exploring EDI education. One of the benefits of this approach is that it engages in a ‘pedagogy of hope’ (Freire, 2004) which privileges possibilities rather than problems.
