Inspiration session for International Bachelor teachers: Social Identity Wheel

In order to meet the need for practical tools focused on diversity and inclusion in the International Bachelors, Marieke van Schaik and Hubertie Kroon will conduct a workshop on Social Identity on June 9, 2022. Social Identity stems from intersectionality: “a framework for conceptualizing a person, group of people, or social problem as affected by a number of discriminations and disadvantages. It takes into account people's overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of prejudices they face”.

In the workshop we will work with the Social Identity Wheel. An activity you can do with your students, to encourage students to identify social identities and reflect on the various ways those identities become visible or more keenly felt at different times, and how those identities impact the ways others perceive or treat them. The goals of the activity:

1. To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. The classroom and the university can be highlighted as a context as a way to approach questions on barriers to inclusion.
2. To illuminate how privilege operates to normalize some identities over others. For example, a student who speaks English as their first language can reflect on why they rarely need to think about their language as an aspect of their identity while some of their peers may identify language as the aspect of their identity they feel most keenly in the classroom.
3. To sensitize students to their shared identities with their classmates as well as the diversity of identities in the classroom, building community and encouraging empathy.