ABSTRACT
Our chapter focuses on the importance of approaching educational praxis from an intersectional perspective. After years of classrooms experience within the Spanish education system and discussing inclusion, one of the conclusions we draw is precisely that gender, racial and ethnic inequalities continue to have a major impact on implementation of inclusive education. We start from this hypothesis in order to address the systemic root causes of these inequalities and implement our work with teachers and students. A very high percentage of our students are racialised, migrant or migrantised. Intersectionality allows us to work with teachers and students in what we call the path of IDA, that is, the path to identify, dismantle and act against violences. The intersectional approach is a way of understanding and analysing the complexity of the world from the different inequalities and social categories that people fall into. The different social, cultural, educational, political and economic inequalities suffered by students intersect moments and situations in their lives, generating discrimination and exclusion or experiences and situations of privilege. Institutions and social norms prevailing in them, such as the educational system, reproduce and maintain these experiences of privilege and discrimination instead of offering the educational reflections and tools to dismantle them. Hence, the importance of approaching the analysis from the perspective of intersectionality, given that ‘these factors and systems influence and condition their experiences, which are developed and configured in unequal social and educational contexts’. The notion of intersectionality situates teachers and students in the structures (capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism-racism) that define and cause the inequalities, discrimination, exclusion and violence to which many people are subjected to, or conversely, how these structures provoke experiences and situations of privilege. An intersectional approach to educational practice can prevent situations of racial discrimination in education, reduce school drop-out rates among migrant or racialised students, ensure the continuity of certain educational pathways to higher education for these same students (the recognition they receive and what is expected of them) or the implementation by teachers of an anti-racist curriculum.
