Leveraging Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) to Promote Social Justice through Reflexive Research in Higher Education

Abstract

Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) is a lens we can use to achieve social justice consciousness among privileged identities in academic spaces. CDL, by Melissa Steyn (2014) , consists of ten criteria that reveal how and why specific differences make a difference. Among other things, CDL exposes the workings of power through structures and individual complicity within structures. CDL is about having the capacity to read the complexities of the twenty-first-century world. The article argues that CDL nurtures the development of “critique towards” normalised quotidian language and personal prejudices in research in higher education. Critiquing and interrogating our positionality comes with the literacy of social, political and economic scenarios that play out in our practices. Using the intersections of race, gender, and disability, the article shows how researchers can use Steyn’s ten CDL criteria to acknowledge differences in research in higher education. In this article, the researchers argue that the university, its curriculum, pedagogy, and research methods are contested cultural terrains. The article illustrates how CDL can challenge some limitations of traditional research methods in creating positive social justice outcomes.