Positionality and Identity in Capstones: Renegotiating the self though teaching and learning

This chapter argues that fostering inclusive and transformative capstone experiences—where students learn and faculty advance their scholarship—requires understanding the interplay of various identities and social positions in the learning context, as opposed to simply adopting a rhetoric of diversity and inclusion. In higher education, diversity is generally viewed as a characteristic of the student body or a state to be pursued, camouflaging the fact that social identities are a set of power relationships that both structure social interaction—such as capstone experiences—and that are themselves restructured through social interaction (Ahonen et al., 2013). Further, the conception of diversity in institutions of higher education functions in a White-centering logic (Mayorga-Gallo, 2019) that neglects the intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) of identities operating within and between individuals in the university context. That is, “diversity” is viewed as people and cultures who do not read as or conform to practices of White, able-bodied, cisgender norms. Given the authors’ locations in different parts of the Anglophone world, this notion of “underrepresented” is conceived variously, such as people of color in the US; Aboriginal people and people of color in Canada; and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) in the UK. In every case, these racialized identities are the foreground for discussions of diversity and social stratification in their multiplex natures. Our research responds to McIlwaine & Bunge’s (2019) call for “exploration of students’ identities and agency, especially their ‘dutiful aspirational capital’” alongside consideration of “the ‘institutional habitus’ of departments and universities and where they are situated geographically.”