Thinking about this term in relation to my own experience, I believe some institutions find subtle ways to bypass it. I previously worked as a homeroom teacher at a private international school in Lebanon. At the time, I wore the hijab, as did several other teachers at the school. When I tried to recommend a former classmate for an open teaching position, the first question I was asked by the administration was not about her education or qualifications, but whether she wore a hijab. They explained that while they wanted to hire someone with my level of experience, hiring too many hijab-wearing women would project an "Islamic image" and potentially hurt enrollment from non-Muslim families. While the school hired based on merit to a certain extent, they still compromised those standards to prioritize their business interests and institutional "branding" as a school.

Connecting this to my experience within the Lebanese context, we actually have a centralized national framework (heavily corrupt), but the hiring in public schools is completely driven by religious and sectarian motivations instead. What surprises me is the difference in scale. Canada’s divide happens across massive provinces and territories, but Lebanon's rigid separation is within tiny neighborhoods, like hiring Eastern Orthodox teachers in certain parts of Beirut or Shia teachers in Dahiah. Ultimately, I think both setups show the same problem it doesn't matter if the split is by region or centralized by government, the people in power will always find a way to rig the hiring process to favor their own group.

When teacher training programs push this idea that a "good" teacher has to fit a specific white, middle-class mold, it can shape and alter teacher identity. I connect this to what Stein et al. say about the challenges in higher education, because it means the bias starts before anyone even gets a job. It sets up thiscycle where universities shape who feels like they belong in the profession, and then those same people graduate, move up into leadership, and become the gatekeepers. Since they’re the ones in charge of hiring, they just keep picking people who look and think like them.

This made me think of Lebanon’s parliament where seats are strictly divided by sect/religion, and whether Canadian schools should just allocate teaching roles based on a neighborhood’s demographics. Matching the community makes sense, but could definitely backfire by trapping BIPOC educators in specific areas instead of fixing systemic bias everywhere. We see this exact trap in Lebanese politics, where groups who were once considered a minority have outgrown the label but are still boxed within it by rigid structures.

This connects perfectly to why we need to explicitly teach these skills during university pre-service programs. Unearthing our biases isn't something we can just figure out alone; it’s a formal skill that has to be taught and practiced in communion with others. Ultimately, if we don't train future teachers and leaders how to engage in these heavy conversations from the start, can we expect administrators to magically unmask the biases that dictate who they let into the profession having not taught how?

The article lays out several great solutions to increase diversity, like alternative pathways to teaching and targeted mentorship for BIPOC leaders. While these ideas are valid and definitely effective, I don't see how we can sustain them without official mandates or legislated policy. The colonial mindset is just too deep in both our personal and professional lives to fade away on its own by some optional initiatives. Without real laws that force open cracks in the current system, it’s hard to imagine seeing any real, immediate change; especially at the decentralized level of Canada.

• Sum up: Gramsci argues that ruling class power is not maintained primarily through force (police, military), but through cultural control. By shaping institutions such as schools, churches, and media, elites normalize their values until they become “common sense.” He defines this process as Cultural Hegemony.
• Personal Thoughts: Reflecting on the above, I come from a country that is extremely sectarian and where people of power have been holding on to their "chairs" for decades. Each sect has its own news channel, newspaper, schooling culture, history textbook... These sectarian elites, religious institutions, and media networks form a powerful historic bloc. As a nation, I do see us as broken; trying to dismantle it all and replace the sectarian culture with a secular one feels utopian.

I think AI literacy or awareness needs to be more popular than it currently is. There is this burden on us as individuals to be vigilant of AI yet it has been embraced so quickly across several aspects of life. AI literacy needs to be a priority.

There exists cultures and communities around the world that barely have any form of interaction with "the outside world", so my question would be whether AI can represent or share any information on a culture (even though stereotypical as seen with blacks or the previous example on Indonesians) that academia/ researchers have failed to document?

How would positionality fit into the context of AI? If we were to reach to a point in time where AI would be able to state its positionality, would it make its output more valid or lead to a better sense of accountability?

Though Zuckerman ends in an optimistic note, I feel as though his optimism is idealistic. The pace at which AI is growing makes it difficult to catch up. Moreover, given the vast cultures of the world and the fast paced challenging times we are living, will people really stop and create their own LLM unique to their own culture/roots?

Reading this section while thinking of Haraway's notion of situated knowledge makes me think whether LLMs can be thought of having situated knowledge. Is its knowledge situated within the WEIRD population?

Comparing Selwyn's work to Richardson's, Richardson wants to liberate the writer, disrupt "cultural scripts," through deeply personal "writing-stories," Selwyn represents the institutional gatekeeper, enforcing boundaries, metrics, and systemic accountability.

Richardson’s View of power is Writer-Centric. Richardson argues that writing about your own life is a political act of resistance. It turns a "private struggle into a politically recognized collective identity."

Selwyn’s View of pwer is Journal-Centric: Selwyn explicitly shifts the power away from the writer's personal meaning and onto the audience and the market. He explicitly states that successful articles must show awareness of "what their primary audiences are, and their value to these audiences."

The two authors have completely opposing views on what makes a piece of writing "important."

Selwyn: Wants the "wider picture."

Richardson: Richardson’s 9th point, emphasizes that writing-stories make you hyper-aware of the tiny details. For Richardson, zooming in on the local, deeply personal narrative is how you uncover truth.

Selwyn feels like he is pushing a bland way of writing, He notes that just because a topic is trendy (like Twitter or AI) or has a "wow factor," it isn't enough. The writing must conform to the institutionalized language of social science.

Richardson sees that exact traditional academic style as an "entrenched cultural script" designed to suppress the researcher’s authentic voice. She supports genres like poetry, drama, and personal narrative precisely because they break the bland, traditional mold of journal articles.

I think both are essential when approaching research writing. You need Richardson to give you the courage to embrace your identity and to trust your situated knowledge, and to write honestly about personal struggles and how they position you as a researcher.

But you also need Selwyn to help you protect that writing. The checklist he provided warns us not to get lost in the details and make sure our work connects to the bigger picture

What deep social, educational, or learning theories underpin your work?

You need to think carefully about the broader theoretical foundations. Readers should know how research sits within academic work that already exists.

You cannot just passively summarize old sources (regurgitating the literature). You must actively review it to expose gaps, silences, and contradictions.

Why should a sociologist who doesn't care about technology care about your paper? (e.g., Because your tech paper is actually a paper about identity or social class).

How does your work speak to policymakers, curriculum designers, or national/global investments?

For example, connecting classroom data to larger conversations about social justice, universal rights to education, or 21st-century skills...

How is your research relevant to practice or aspects of the 'real world'?:

How does your study hook into broader, current priorities in education?

For example, instead of just researching an app, show how it impacts broader systemic trends like student personalization or parental engagement.

Academic research, according to Selwyn, should look past the "wow factor" of the shiny new technology (whether it's interactive whiteboards, Twitter, or AI) and focus on the social complexities and the bigger picture of education, power, and society.

At this point he shares 4 strands to address the "So What?"

Selwyn notes a massive trend where authors end up confusing evaluation with doing academic research.

By saying that he starts every project by thinking about why anyone else would care, he is shifting the entire value of the work away from the author's lived reality and placing it solely on the audience or reader of academia.

His views seem to oppose the approach taken by Richardson, where writing about private struggle can turn into a politically recognized collective identity.