Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2019) ‘Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), pp. 589–597. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806.
Clarke, S.O., Coates, W.C. and Jordan, J. (2021) ‘A practical guide for conducting qualitative research in medical education: Part 3–Using software for qualitative analysis’, AEM Education and Training, 5(4), p. e10644. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/aet2.10644.
Finlay, L. (2002) ‘“Outing” the Researcher: The Provenance, Process, and Practice of Reflexivity’, Qualitative Health Research, 12(4), pp. 531–545. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/104973202129120052.
Garibay, J.C. (2015) ‘STEM students’ social agency and views on working for social change: Are STEM disciplines developing socially and civically responsible students?’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(5), pp. 610–632.
Hanington, B. and Martin, B. (2019) Universal Methods of Design, Expanded and Revised: 125 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Expanded and Revised. Beverly, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers.
Lucero, A. (2015) ‘Using Affinity Diagrams to Evaluate Interactive Prototypes’, in J. Abascal et al. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015. Springer, Cham (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp. 231–248. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22668-2_19.
McDonald, J.K. and Michela, E. (2019) ‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy’, Design Studies, 62, pp. 1–35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2019.02.001.
Nonnis, A. (2021) Playful E-textile Sonic Interaction for Socially Engaged and Open-Ended Play Between Autistic Children. PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London. Available at: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/83072.
Ortiz, A.P. et al. (2018) ‘Positionality in Teaching: Implications for Advancing Social Justice’, The Journal of General Education, 67(1), pp. 109–121.
Pahome, D. (2024) ‘Observation sheet – an essential tool for facilitating learning’, Romanian Review of Geographical Education, XII(1–2), pp. 5–16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.23741/RRGE20231.
Rankl, F., Johnson, G.A. and Vindrola-Padros, C. (2021) ‘Examining What We Know in Relation to How We Know It: A Team-Based Reflexivity Model for Rapid Qualitative Health Research’, Qualitative Health Research, 31(7), pp. 1358–1370. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732321998062.
Singh, A. et al. (2025) ‘Exploring Positionality in HCI: Perspectives, Trends, and Challenges’, in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI ’25). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713280.
Tong, A., Sainsbury, P. and Craig, J. (2007) ‘Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ): A 32-Item Checklist for Interviews and Focus Groups’, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(6), pp. 349–357. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzm042.
Vimal, S. (2025) ‘Radar Chart: Unleashing the Power of Comparative Data Visualization’. Available at: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33000.94728.
Wong, B. et al. (2021) ‘Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp. 359–375. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2020.1831441.
The scores from each crit were visualised as radar charts. This suited the small sample size (two groups) and helped to show multiple dimensions of the coding scheme at once (Vimal, 2025). Radar charts also helpfully show shifts in dimensions; the goal was not to maximise all dimensions, but to cover them holistically throughout the course.
Crit #1
Figure 1: Radar chart of scores for Crit #1
The first crit’s focus was to present initial ideas. Previous experience was frequently mentioned: both groups mentioned technologies (e.g., B3: “inspired by Snapchat, Instagram and Google”), readings (e.g., A3: “inspired by the book Design Justice”), and previous projects (e.g., A3: “inspired from last year, we had a project called…”). There was some mention of group dynamics (A2: “similar to all of our ideas”) and Group A gave some mention of characteristics (A1: “[users can] compare… to their own regional influences”), however, did not enact this clearly.
At this stage, the positionality chart was updated to separate mentions of lived experience and inspirations. More fidelity was added to the scoring also to distinguish between passing and clear mentions, shown below.
Figure 2: Version 2 of the Positionality Coding Scheme
Crit #2
Figure 3: Radar chart of scores for Crit #2
This crit’s focus was on bringing the previous ideas together. Inspirations were still prominently mentioned. There was a small increase in emotion (A5: “after I play games they feel like…”) and some mention of assumptions (B3: “I thought that the idea of a journal would…”, A5: “I feel like your personality”); however, these were not used to shape designs.
Intervention
Overall, there was a clear lack of reflection on power, characteristics and emotions throughout. For the next crit, I prompted students with template slides to prompt reflection on power and characteristics (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Slides given as intervention to encourage relflection on characteristics and power.
Crit #3
Figure 5: Radar chart of scores for Crit #3
This crit’s focus was to advance the design and to focus on points in the intervention. There was a clear shift to the right-hand side of the radar chart. Both groups made clear mention of characteristics leading to changes in design: A1 noted that “not everything [on TikTok] is a direct response to our intersectionality”; B2 highlighted the need to accommodate “both age and ability”. Power also increased. A1 recognised “input from elders might not be as vast”. B2 mentioned power differences for “the visually impaired, elderly,” though did not connect this to design changes.
Crit #4
This crit’s focus was to summarise and explain the final design. This gave opportunity for me to observe, unprompted, what aspects students leant on from the positionality chart.
Figure 6: Radar Chart of Scores for Crit #4
Characteristics remained prominent and inspirations reappeared. Both groups mentioned characteristics; however, Group B did not enact these into their design, only noting that “there will… be excluded users” (B5). That said, Group B did continue to develop their thinking on power, noting economic factors (B3: “Except from the part on how wealthy they are… [our] design is quite expensive”).
Closing reflections on these findings are found in the presentation slides (blog post link).
References
Vimal, S. (2025) ‘Radar Chart: Unleashing the Power of Comparative Data Visualization’. Available at: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33000.94728.
For each crit, two groups’ presentations were taken from Panopto recordings in class. I then fully anonymised the videos (e.g. removing mentions of students from slides) and stored in UAL’s password-protected one-drive. Each participant was given an ID number starting with A for the first group observed, and B for the second group observed.
An example video of group A’s second crit is shown below.
To help analyse the videos, I used a video annotation tool that can be found online (https://codetta.codes/ux-qual/). The tool does not store the video nor any data online (all data stays in UAL’s one-drive). It allows you to tag points throughout the video (right hand side panel) and then move these around as sticky notes (bottom panel). A screenshot example is shown below.
Figure 1: Example of annotating quotes from video recordings of the crits.
In addition, I would print out the observation sheets and score these for each of the groups. I would score and annotate the grid with any possible updates for the next iteration. An example for Group A Crit #2 is shown below. The full completed sheets can be found here.
Figure 2: A completed positionality chart for Group A’s third crit session.
A full table of the scores for the different groups throughout the crits is as follows:
The changes made across the iterations are discussed throughout my previous blog posts (link, link, link). A summary of the main changes were:
To focus on selecting only willing students to participate, ensuring their comfort and voluntary involvement in the research. Also to reduce burden on myself and have a more realistic timescale (observing only two groups).
To move from an inductive analysis to a more structured, deductive approach by using an observation grid. This ensured that the observation tool includes broad categories to examine reflections on positionality, lessening opportunity for misinterpretation or bias in data collection, nor to single out people for their characteristics.
The info and consent forms make clear the criteria being used (iteration 2) and are framed in a more succinct way (iteration 3).
Following my reflections on research methods for my project (blog post link), I set out to create a teaching observation grid. With the grid, I could look at moments of positionality in a more objective way. It was important to ensure that the chart would include broad categories and ensure that in my analysis I didn’t mistakenly single out people for their characteristics – taking a broad-brush approach.
The goal of the chart is to check my own teaching and ensure that students reflect different aspects of their positionality holistically. A revised research question is thus:
RQ: How can I create a check for myself to ensure that students reflect on their positionality holistically throughout my course’s crits?
To develop the chart, I found five research papers which discussed positionality and the different aspects that it includes. A brief summary of the papers is as follows. Finlay (2002) discusses positionality in relation to the reflexivity required by qualitative researchers and discussed ways that researchers could “out” themselves. This is similar to Rankl, Johnson and Vindrola-Padros (2021) who identified ways to bring forth reflexivity amongst research teams working on collaborative projects. Tong, Sainsbury and Craig (2007) include a checklist which includes positionality-related aspects for encouraging reflexivity in qualitative focus groups. Ortiz et al. (2018) focuses more on ways to encourage students to bring forth their positionality and emphasises the need for teachers to be open and authentic, bringing forth their own stories and reflections on their power, privilege and oppression; this encourages students to also become more comfortable with bringing forth their own lived experience and perspective. Singh et al. (2025) emphasised different aspects of positionality through an analysis of positionality statements included in HCI research, which is the context of my course.
In reading the papers, I followed a process similar to many qualitative analysis methods, e.g., thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) or affinity diagramming (Lucero, 2015). First, I captured the various aspects of positionality mentioned onto post-it notes, shown in Figure 1. This ranged from considering personal experience, showing vulnerability, focusing on assumptions, as well as protected characteristics and emotion work.
Figure 1: Codes identified from across readings on positionality (Singh et al., 2025; Tong, Sainsbury and Craig, 2007; Ortiz et al., 2018; Rankl, Johnson and Vindrola-Padros, 2021; Finlay, 2002).
To then create the categories for analysis I sorted these into topics, shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Organised codes into topics related to positionality.
These topics were used to create the first coding scheme, shown in Figure 3. The three scoring points were selected inspired by discussions with my tutor, and to emphasise the importance of ensuring that mention of positionality is not just performance but enacted into student work. The example quotes at the initial stage were speculative, but updated with examples based on the student’s own crits throughout the project.
Figure 3: The first iteration of the dimensions of positionality observation chart.
References
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.
Finlay, L. (2002) ‘“Outing” the Researcher: The Provenance, Process, and Practice of Reflexivity’, Qualitative Health Research, 12(4), pp. 531–545. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/104973202129120052.
Lucero, A. (2015) ‘Using Affinity Diagrams to Evaluate Interactive Prototypes’, in J. Abascal et al. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015. Springer, Cham (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp. 231–248. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22668-2_19.
Ortiz, A.P. et al. (2018) ‘Positionality in Teaching: Implications for Advancing Social Justice’, The Journal of General Education, 67(1), pp. 109–121.
Rankl, F., Johnson, G.A. and Vindrola-Padros, C. (2021) ‘Examining What We Know in Relation to How We Know It: A Team-Based Reflexivity Model for Rapid Qualitative Health Research’, Qualitative Health Research, 31(7), pp. 1358–1370. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732321998062.
Singh, A. et al. (2025) ‘Exploring Positionality in HCI: Perspectives, Trends, and Challenges’, in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI ’25). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713280.
Tong, A., Sainsbury, P. and Craig, J. (2007) ‘Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ): A 32-Item Checklist for Interviews and Focus Groups’, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(6), pp. 349–357. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzm042.
My initial project idea was to observe points of positionality-related thinking during weekly crits in my Intro to HCI course (see previous post). I thought this could be done by looking at the of the students’ crit presentations and performing an inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019)
However, one main concern of mine, and raised through developing my ethical action plan (post link), was that this would be too much data and time consuming. I already thought to directly code the videos to avoid transcription time (Clarke, Coates and Jordan, 2021); however, the dataset would still be large and challenging within the module scope.
In researching methods, I thought that an affinity diagramming approach (Lucero, 2015) might be more appropriate; this emphasises identifying video moments with post-it notes as opposed to finding rich themes during immersive reading as in thematic analysis. Or, framing the activity as part of my own diary of teaching observations (Hanington and Martin, 2019)
Following the first group tutorial and planning alongside the ethical action plan, I also learnt about ways to further refine the project.
One idea was to observe only 2 or 3 select groups who volunteer to be part of the research. This means that the students would be those who are happy and would not feel uncomfortable sharing positionality related ideas. A limitation is that they are likely the most confident, keen students, introducing a bias into my findings. However, as a qualitative project in the scope of the module, it seemed okay to simply acknowledge this.
Another key piece of feedback was to use an observation sheet to provide criteria for what I coded. Instead of an inductive approach, a deductive approach would then allow me to be more concrete about which points from students’ critique presentations show positionality-related thinking. This would also be more objective, capturing less of my own interpretation of what constitutes positionality-related thinking. Furthermore, the approach more ethically sound; I would observe moments where people reflect upon and bring forth their own positionality in relation to the design task, and not moments where students just make mention of their characteristics.
Teaching observation forms have been used widely across different settings. Nonnis (2021) created observation forms for teachers to capture moments of social play amongst autistic children. Pahome (2024) developed an observation sheet for students to observe spruce trees. However, whilst widely used, there is little specific guidance on how to design observation sheets, and little tailored to the challenge of identifying positionality-related thinking.
Thus, for the next step of my research, I need to look more closely into the literature on positionality, to create some working criteria of what “positionality-related” thinking is, and to operationalise it in my context.
References
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2019) ‘Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), pp. 589–597. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806.
Clarke, S.O., Coates, W.C. and Jordan, J. (2021) ‘A practical guide for conducting qualitative research in medical education: Part 3–Using software for qualitative analysis’, AEM Education and Training, 5(4), p. e10644. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/aet2.10644.
Hanington, B. and Martin, B. (2019) Universal Methods of Design, Expanded and Revised: 125 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Expanded and Revised. Beverly, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers.
Lucero, A. (2015) ‘Using Affinity Diagrams to Evaluate Interactive Prototypes’, in J. Abascal et al. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015. Springer, Cham (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp. 231–248. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22668-2_19.
Nonnis, A. (2021) Playful E-textile Sonic Interaction for Socially Engaged and Open-Ended Play Between Autistic Children. PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London. Available at: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/83072.
Pahome, D. (2024) ‘Observation sheet – an essential tool for facilitating learning’, Romanian Review of Geographical Education, XII(1–2), pp. 5–16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.23741/RRGE20231.
Working Project Title: Exploring Positionality-related Thinking on Technology Use in First-year Interaction Design Crits
In previous PGCert units, I found that first-year Computer Science students on the Intro to Human-Computer Interaction course presented ideas in crits that were technology-centred (McDonald and Michela, 2019; blog post link). This is reinforced by the hard-science thinking which dominates computer science (Garibay, 2015; Wong et al., 2021) – less personal and pluralistic reflections tend to happen in this style of work.
As a lecturer and throughout the PGCert, I’ve learnt that I’m passionate about students identifying what they like to do, understanding why this is so, to ultimately inform their pathways through and after the degree. Yet, I find that students often do not bring forth more personal ideas, nor reflect upon how their lived experience and background inform their thinking.
My initial action research project idea is thus to explore how positionality-related thinking occurs in crits. The working research question is: How does positionality-related thinking occur when encouraged in first-year HCI crits?
The teaching context is: students are tasked with designing a visual journaling app. Users of the app need to be encouraged to reflect on their use of a technology (students’ choice) and how their intersectional identities impact this technology use. The assessment brief is introduced to students on the 27th of Oct. The weekly crits are to run on: 10th Nov; 17th Nov; (break week from crits); 1st Dec; and 8th Dec. Each crit is guided, with students completing template slides.
There are ~20 students. The crit style is ‘traditional’ in that they present at the front of the room, to the class (the motivation to start building this essential skill with the students early in the course).
My initial idea is to use the Panopto recordings of the students’ presentations (which occur in classes anyway, so are unobtrusive on the teaching, making sure the teaching doesn’t directly change in a way that makes students feel like they are being researched on). I want to identify points of positionality-related thinking with the students in their critiques. This would then lead to recommendations for how and when students felt they were comfortable bringing forth their positionality, which other teachers could try themselves.
References
Garibay, J.C. (2015) ‘STEM students’ social agency and views on working for social change: Are STEM disciplines developing socially and civically responsible students?’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(5), pp. 610–632.
McDonald, J.K. and Michela, E. (2019) ‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy’, Design Studies, 62, pp. 1–35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2019.02.001.
Wong, B. et al. (2021) ‘Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp. 359–375. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2020.1831441.
This blog reports the development of an intervention which encourages positionality-related thinking in Computer Science (CS) students. The hope is that through developing their own positionality and self-reflecting, a plurality (Sturdee et al., 2021) of students’ experiences can be brought forth to the classroom. This would support inclusive practice by ensuring that all people’s voices are heard regardless of their intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989).
My own positionality is that, as every student will have a unique background informed by their own combination of disabilities, faith, religion, belief, and race, encouraging students to speak to their own personal experience will allow for more meaningful sharing of ideas within the class. This is a challenge where CS as a discipline often reinforces hard-science techniques that categories the world into measurable outcomes and attempts to generalize from homogenous samples (Garibay, 2015; Wong et al., 2021).
2. Context
The teaching context is brainstorming sessions. I’ve run these for 2nd year and MSc CS students at the CCI. The sessions involve students generating ideas to evaluate their experiences of a technology. The general process I’ve been using follows Lucero (2015), visualized in Figure 1. The utility of the intervention is that it can increase diversity of student perspectives and allow them to bring their own individualism to course discussions.
Figure 1: The brainstorming process adapted from Lucero (2015) for my teaching.
3. Intervention Iteration 1
3.1 Inclusive Learning Literature
Inclusivity in my teaching context is crucial to ensure that all voices and perspectives are brought forth. Students often do not contribute equally to the group work contexts of my teaching (link), meaning individuals can dominate the discussion and direction of the activity.
CS is also a male dominated discipline. Whilst groups such as the QMUL Women+ of Stem Society (2025) have built communities to support women in CS, often males dominate discussion in classes (Holden, 1993). This is reflected in my own teaching practice (link).
CS students are also stereotypically introverted (Pocius, 1991). Allowing these students to better understand their professional themselves and feel confident bringing forth ideas in group discussions is thus crucial.
Education literature suggests methods for more comprehensive student. Engaging students in storytelling and inviting stories from their own personal perspectives (Unin and Bearing, 2016; Medaille and Usinger, 2019) can help CS students better connect with tasks as they offer their own, diverse, lived experiences. Holden (1993) suggests using groups of mostly boys or mostly girls to increase fruitful. However, I think this poses a risk of creating an alienation effect (Mann, 2001) and reinforcing gender imbalances. Writing-tasks that give space for students to articulate their thinking before engaging in discussion can also support participation (Medaille and Usinger, 2019); for example, the think-pair-share method (Kaddoura, 2013) gives student’s space to consider ideas.
3.2 Intervention Design
Based on the literature in the previous section, I extended the brainstorming approach in Figure 1. The update is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The first iteration of my teaching intervention.
The key decisions were to: frame the task as interested in student’s own perspectives, to allow self-selection of groups cf. Holden (1993), to give space for students to prepare ideas before speaking cf. Kaddoura (2013), and to offer a route for feedback outside of class if students do not want to speak publicly.
3.3 Reflection on Intervention
Upon reflection, there were limitations to the intervention that I wanted to build on. I felt that the intervention was simplistic; whilst likely to make a marginal difference, there were deeper questions on how to capture and bring forth personal perspectives from students. In particular, the instruction to “frame the task as being interested in student’s own perspectives, experiences and voices” was open-ended; discussion with my peers revealed that there would likely need to be more direction given for students to introspectively identify and bring forth their ideas.
I also felt that the intervention require students to be motivated to spark their introspection and reflection (Slovak et al., 2023), without myself giving reflective prompts. As CS is dominated by hard-science methods (Garibay, 2015; Wong et al., 2021), often these more open-ended and qualitative brainstorming activities are met with little enthusiasm. Indeed, students have commented to me in feedback sessions that they want to be doing more “serious” and “technical” activities e.g. coding. This is despite this holding back their more unique pluralistic perspectives, which I want to harness for a more inclusive practice.
The feedback from PGCert tutors highlighted a couple of new literature resources, as follows. Grieve et al. (2021) highlight that presentations can negatively impact student experience, with greater supported needed in showing students how to give presentations. In the current intervention, there is an assumption that students already understand how present. Bayeck’s (2022) research emphasizes how positionality shifts based on interactions between people in groups. This made me reflect on how people’s positionality might shift in the group contexts of my own courses.
4. Intervention Iteration 2
Through reflection on the first iteration of my intervention, the following main limitations stood out to me: i) the task lacked clear guidance for students to articulate their personal perspectives and positionality, ii) the task assumed presentation skills without providing adequate support, and iii) overlooked how students’ positionality shifts within group dynamics. I further wanted to try to better support student’s reflection on their positionalities in a way that fit with the epistemological hard-science bias of CS.
4.1 Inclusive Learning Literature
To address the need to scaffold student’s in articulating their positionality, I explored more literature. Ashcroft, Severes and Martinez-Perez (2025) contributed cards with reflective prompts to help researchers in considering intersectionality and positionality. However, many of their prompts were focused on how to incorporate reflexivity into research paper writing or system designs – not supporting reflection-on-self per se.
A resource that stood out to me was The Positionality Wheel (Noel and Paiva, 2021). It presents an “activity created to help designers and researchers reflect on their identities and their teams’ composition before starting their work” (pg. 67). It contains 12 prompts that help people to write their own positionality statements. It is shown in Figure 3. I can immediately see how this could help students to think about a variety of facets – from race, gender and age, to class and education. I was also excited that it was designed for group work, as it could help with gleaming how people’s positionality was based on other’s group dynamics cf. Bayeck (2022). The challenge here is how to ensure that use of this tool is later reflected upon in the brainstorming context, which is more systems related.
Figure 3: Noel and Paiva’s (2021) Positionality Wheel. Figure taken from the paper.
I also considered how a more CS-styled activity migh help people build their positionality. I reflected on how algorithms in technology learn about us – from targeted adverts and curated Instagram feeds (Thompson, 2018), to AI models such as ChatGPT which mimic our ways of speaking (Farah, 2025). An idea for an activity which was developed in discussion with PGCert tutors and peers, was to have students create “digital selves” – writing their positionality in code as computer algorithms. However, I felt that this was best suited to a more longitudinal assessment, than in the single brainstorming sessions. Similarly, autobiographical design (Neustaedter and Sengers, 2012), where students can reflect on themselves and integrate this into their products, I thought would be well suited to helping students develop their positionality with technology. However, I felt this approach would require more time and didn’t suit the brainstorming context.
4.2 Intervention Design
Based on the literature above, I refined the brainstorming practice further, shown in Figure 4. The key additions were to incorporate the positionality wheel task at the start (to prime students) and end (to apply the wheel to the rest of the brainstorming activity). I also added that presenting tips would be sent out before the lecture, to give students information on how best to do this, as recommended in Grieve et al. (2021).
Figure 4: The second iteration of my intervention.
5. Action
I propose that the intervention could form the basis for my brainstorming sessions. For my teaching practice, this would help students to think more critically on their own positionality and perspectives. The hope is that students would learn more about themselves and each other. This could also nurture their intrinsic motivation to engage in learning, as the task are more directly related to their own interests. Furthermore, I hope that it could foster students comfort in recognising their own unique backgrounds, and in bringing forth these experiences.
6. Evaluation
From this process, I learnt that it is important to give space for students to foster ideas. I also recognized that specific guidance is both important to ensure that students have structure to be able to engage in deeper reflection, and to connect with themselves and bring forward their perspectives and critiques.
If I were to implement the activity, I would need to assess the types of information that students bring forth on their own personal perspectives and try to capture how their self-reflection and positionality changes within the group working context.
I also hope to explore the ideas which are more in line with the type of activity CS students tend to ask for such as to code their own positionality as algorithms. However, I think these would be better suited to an intervention that I could integrate throughout my courses.
7. Conclusion
My key takeaway is that inclusive interventions require structured scaffolding – such as the Positionality Wheel, reflective writing tasks, and alternative feedback mechanisms –to support students in articulating their own perspectives. This process has informed my practice by demonstrating how thoughtfully designed activities can foster positionality-related thinking, and could be consider within the epistemological constraints of CS.
References
Ashcroft, A., Severes, B. and Martinez-Perez, M. (2025) ‘Suggested Prompts for Reflexivity: Navigating Intersectionality in HCI and CSCW Research’, Interacting with Computers, p. iwaf007. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwaf007.
Bayeck, R.Y. (2022) ‘Positionality: The Interplay of Space, Context and Identity’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21, p. 16094069221114745. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221114745.
Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), pp. 139–167.
Farah, L. (2025) ‘Shifting Personas: Exploring AI embodiment and emotional manipulation’, in Proceedings of EVA London 2025 (EVA 2025). London, UK. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2025.47.
Garibay, J.C. (2015) ‘STEM students’ social agency and views on working for social change: Are STEM disciplines developing socially and civically responsible students?’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(5), pp. 610–632.
Grieve, R. et al. (2021) ‘Student fears of oral presentations and public speaking in higher education: a qualitative survey’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(9), pp. 1281–1293. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2021.1948509.
Holden, C. (1993) ‘Giving Girls a Chance: patterns of talk in co‐operative group work’, Gender and Education, 5(2), pp. 179–189. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0954025930050205.
Kaddoura, M. (2013) ‘Think pair share: A teaching learning strategy to enhance students’ critical thinking.’, Educational research quarterly, 36(4), pp. 3–24.
Lucero, A. (2015) ‘Using Affinity Diagrams to Evaluate Interactive Prototypes’, in J. Abascal et al. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015. Springer, Cham (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp. 231–248. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22668-2_19.
Mann, S. (2001) ‘Alternative perspectives on the student experience: alienation and engagement’, Studies in Higher Education, 26(1), pp. 7–19.
Medaille, A. and Usinger, J. (2019) ‘Engaging Quiet Students in the College Classroom’, College Teaching, 67(2), pp. 130–137. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2019.1579701.
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In this blog, I reflect on resources relating to race and higher education.
UAL’s anti-racism action plan (Purnell and Patel, 2021) sparked my reflection on performativity, and on how anti-racism is “evidenced” by universities. The plan says it will create “measurable commitments” and deliver change in its “data”. My view is that issues relating to racism in university teaching are far more complex than the simplistic stories that numbers can paint – especially when considering theories of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and the matrix of domination (Collins, 1990). It is apparent that universities’ reports on awarding gaps are flawed – underrepresenting many people’s diverse characteristics as well as those unwilling to disclose their information. The UAL plan also introduces student-facing workshops and events, which can easily be counted to show that the university has acted. However, this stops anti-racism being more thoroughly integrated into everyday work life – instead becoming a one-time consideration.
I had similar thoughts when reviewing the Telegraph’s report: “The charity turning UK universities woke” (Orr, 2022). It critiques AdvanceHE’s Athena SWAN and equality charters by interviewing students and experts from Cambridge. It argues that AdvanceHE’s guidelines are unhelpful, leading to trainings that push a particular ideology. To support this, the interviewer speaks with a recent Cambridge PhD, who says that a cambridge-published report found just one racism report per year to HR (over the short period of five years). This ignores i) the bias of the institution itself publishing the report, ii) systemic HR challenges that block complaints, and iii) broader cultural issues that discourage people from reporting in the first place.
Despite interviews with students who say AdvanceHE-influenced ideas helped them better understand and engage with others, the interviewer frames it as an attack on free speech. In one interview, an interviewee notes that, given the diversity at universities, it can be hard to fit in – a genuine point about the plurality of perspectives on campus. The interviewer uses this to suggest people can’t express their views (although, no one had noted that they can’t). The interviewee then mentions changing “hello ladies and gentlemen” to “hello everybody” in their teaching – the point where the clip cuts off. This minor, voluntary shift in language to me brings more students into discussions: not posing a threat to free expression.
This brings me to my reflection on a video clip of students doing a privilege walk (Channel 4, 2020). Its benefit and drawback is that it makes alienation visible. This is useful for sparking reflection in students (see Mann, 2001; Demirdiş, 2021; and my earlier blog link). However, as a pedagogic technique, care is needed to ensure this exposure doesn’t have harmful effects. Many anti-diversity rhetorics tap into white guilt which leads to white defensiveness (Levine-Rasky, 2000). People often react angrily to guilt, doubling down rather than considering how to change. This emotional reaction may help to explain the popularity of free speech arguments used against universities.
For teaching, I’d thus love to explore more how to invite reflection on race throughout courses and better manage emotional discussions. Any recommendations welcome!
References
Channel 4 (2020) ‘The School That Tried to End Racism’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg.
Collins, P.H. (1990) ‘Black feminist thought in the matrix of domination’, Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 138(1990), pp. 221–238.
Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), pp. 139–167.
Demirdiş, M. (2021) ‘Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments’, in. Available at: https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:252019494.
Levine-Rasky, C. (2000) ‘The practice of whiteness among teacher candidates’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 10(3), pp. 263–284.
Mann, S. (2001) ‘Alternative perspectives on the student experience: alienation and engagement’, Studies in Higher Education, 26(1), pp. 7–19.
Orr, J. (2022) ‘Revealed: The Charity Turning UK Universities Woke’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU.
Purnell, J. and Patel, N. (2021) ‘UAL Anti-racism Action Plan Summary’. University of the Arts London. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf.
