Our first task leading into the Inclusive Practices unit was to write a positionality statement giving both personal and professional context. Something I had never done before and wasn’t really sure how to go about doing. There was a video to watch and a paper to read to aid us in the task, but felt I couldn’t really relate to the content or pull from it the building blocks of how to write my own.
Within the session we were shown the following graphic, which I initially thought ‘ah, that would have been so useful to have seen before to know what to include’.
Reflecting on it a bit more I realised that without this graphic to hand I really had to think about myself, and what is important to me or what I think of with my own positionality; because of this there are several points in this graphic I didn’t touch on – things I suppose to me are less relevant to me in my positionality.
These however are points that could be leading factors in the positionality of my students and colleagues. Things perhaps I don’t immediately consider when first interacting with them (unless they make it explicit). This reminded me and reinforced that anything about anyone can’t be assumed, and as a tutor I need to create a comfortable, empathetic and safe space for my students to be able to share information with me that is important to them and part of their identity.