4 Power and Identity
Laurie Riggins and Sandra Kuebler
What is Power?
- Associated with people who hold authority and influence over others.
- The capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.
- Instructors have different types of power in a classroom or advising setting, including for example: power to assign grades, power to reward.
- There are five types of teacher power: attractive power, expert power, reward power, coercive power, and position power. Read more.
What is Identity?
- Identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics that define you.
- The set of characteristics by which a person or thing is definitively recognizable or known.
What Role Does Power and Identity Play in Academic Settings?
- It is important to understand and respect that we all have many different identities. Age, gender, religious or spiritual affiliation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status are all examples of identities. No one should ever feel judged or less than because of their associated identities. For a healthy learning environment, all should feel supported and included both in and out of the classroom.
- Based on their role, faculty can carry a level of authority and influence over students. This power of authority and influence should not be misused for any reason, including biases (both conscious and unconscious) regarding an individual’s identity.
Student Comments from the 2019 IU Bloomington STEM Course Climate Survey
“Sometimes I feel like I am overlooked because I am a woman.”
“My professor treats male students better than female students.”
“Really struggled trying to build any kind of connection to professors.”
“I either feel like I am an imposter or wasting people’s time. It has kept me from going to office hours.”
“I missed class for a Jewish holiday and had to advocate for myself…seemed as if my professor expected students to value his class over everything, including holidays.”
“I am unaware if I can say that I am a member of the LGBT community for fear of people in being homophobic.’
Videos
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- Real Talk: Mapping our Identities Through Personal Narrative | Diana Moreno | TEDxUF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uqy_pZxtIY
- Math Learning, Power and Identity; Dr. Gregory Larnell, Univ of Illinois at Chicago
References and resources
- Anderson, P., & Williams, J. (2018). Identity and Difference in Higher Education: Outsiders within: Outsiders within. Routledge. Download from Google Books.
- Evelyne E.M. Meens, Anouke W.E.A. Bakx, Theo A. Klimstra, Jaap J.A. Denissen. 2018. The association of identity and motivation with students’ academic achievement in higher education, Learning and Individual Differences, Volume 64, 54-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2018.04.006.
- Teaching Tolerance’s activities regarding power and identity to open discussion on different identities.
- University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts resources for inclusive teaching has multiple readings on topics related to power, identity, and inclusive teaching.
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