The Politics of Participation: Who Gets Heard in the Classroom?

Race, Gender, and the Hidden Inequities of Classroom Participation at UBC

Breanna Spence

Despite UBC’s commitments to equity and inclusion, disparities in classroom participation reveal a real disconnect between institutional promises and the lived experiences of students, especially Black women and other women of colour.

In one of my classes on the politics of terrorism, I watched as hands shot up across the room, But none looked like mine. When I did decide to speak (which was not often) it wasn’t just my voice I heard echoing back. It was the silence of being one of the only Black women in the room, yet Again. 

Visible Voices, Invisible Patterns

Over a week-long observation across three of my UBC courses (POLI 378, POLI 375, and FNEL 180) I recorded participation rates in class lectures by gender and race, paying particular attention to how often students volunteered and were chosen to speak up, and more tellingly, who didn’t. What emerged was a familiar pattern in my learning environment in academia: men dominated the class discussions, women spoke far less, and women of colour were nearly absent. 

In every class I observed, I was often the only Black woman who contributed. I later realized that was because, in most cases, I was the only Black woman in the room at all. 

These disparities aren’t just demographic data points; they reveal deeper structural issues in access to higher education and accentuate the barriers to scholarship that perpetuate the question of representation and legitimacy of whose voices are considered credible in academic spaces. When universities like UBC publicly commit ot equity, diversity, and inclusion, it raises a difficult question: how are those commitments reflected in the everyday dynamics of a classroom? The gap between institutional policy and lived experience still remain wide and largely unspoken.

To better understand what those silences actually look like, I turned my data into something tactile. I crocheted a sweater, with each row representing a single instance of participation: dark blue for men, light blue for women, cream for women of colour. And at the very top, near the collar, sat one single black row — representing the only time a Black woman spoke in class that week. Me. 

This data visualization made this it visually clear: the silence in these rooms is not coincidental. It’s patterned. 

We Need More Than a Seat

Fortunately, I was able to meet with students across different disciplines and backgrounds about class participation and a common narrative became clear. Participation isn’t just about confidence or preparation, but about the safety and validation and whether speaking up feels worth the risk. For some, the classroom is a place of possibility. For others, it’s a space where they constantly have to weigh how their words will be received, interpreted, or dismissed.

One third-year political science student, who identifies as a woman of colour, spoke about how her experiences of representation, particularly as a student who likes to engage with the courses by participating as often as she can. She says she feels comfortable in speaking up, but noted that in larger classes, she feels hesitant to push back on dominant narratives, especially when the direction of the class discourse is implicitly steered by a professor with strong ideological views in that specific material/ research of political science discourse. 

“Professors influence what’s considered the ‘correct answer,’” she explained. “In one class, the prof told us students shouldn’t vote in the school election — it felt elitist, and it definitely shaped how other students responded to dissent.”

She also spoke to the unique pressure that comes with being visibly underrepresented in the classroom.

“The Black population isn’t high in Vancouver, so I feel a responsibility to represent my diaspora … there’s this pressure to advocate for my community.”

Even for someone confident in her academic voice, she acknowledged that not all students are given the same room to speak.

For her, real inclusivity doesn’t come from perfectly curated content or tokenistic mentions of global perspectives. It comes from allowing students to challenge what’s being taught and to do so without fear of being misunderstood or dismissed. 

Students walk into a lecture from all different backgrounds, along with diverse knowledge banks. The university and its professors must understand that students are constantly testing their own ideas against what is being said in these learning environments. Feeling comfortable enough to challenge these ideas or contribute to them is the antithesis of learning and is beyond just regurgitating content for 11:59 pm deadlines on Canvas. 

In Theory, In Practice

While students experience the effects of lecture and classroom dynamics, the instructors are also tasked with setting the appropriate tone, often without formal guidance for how this equity actually plays out. Policies like the Inclusion Action Plan and the Statement on Respectful Environment outline some key points and guidelines on how to curate an inclusive learning environment. But on the ground, those commitments are more aspirational rather than actionable. 

UBC’s Inclusion Action Plan encourages the integration of EDI principles into curriculum design and promotes inclusive pedagogy, yet uptake remains optional. There is no university-wide requirement for faculty to attend inclusive teaching training or to regularly reassess their syllabi with diversity in mind. The issue here is that without institutional incentives or accountability mechanisms, inclusive practices become reliant on individual effort. Those efforts can be seemingly unnecessary in classrooms where diversity is barely visible. This is where we begin to see the structural feedback loop: when racial and cultural diversity is absent in the spaces of which scholarship is deliberated on, the university and professors feel little to no urgency to reflect it in their content or engagement strategies. Thus, reflecting the reality of many students' experiences, it becomes clear why they can speak highly of some classes while feeling that in others, their narratives and agency are better left at the door.

This is particularly true of Black students (and especially Black women) who remain one of the most underrepresented demographics at UBC.  According to the university’s most recent Student Diversity Census, just 3.5% of students at UBC Vancouver identify as Black, and even less are women.  The result is a compounding cycle of invisibility, where the absence of Black women in classroom conversations both reflects and reinforces their marginalization. 

Some faculty do make deliberate efforts to create inclusive classrooms by soliciting student feedback and/or incorporating diverse scholarship. But these practices are not standardized, and they rarely come with institutional support. There is no clear protocol for how to respond when students experience tokenization, silence, or erasure; only a general understanding that equity is "important.” An importance that is clearly not reflected in the diversity of student enrollment.

These things matter. They shape how we learn, how we show up in classrooms, and how knowledge travels between us. I began this project to simply track participation, but instead came to name something deeper. This isn’t just about UBC’s gap in representing diverse student voices. It’s about challenging the quiet acceptance of that gap in our disciplines, our pedagogy, and our daily classroom interactions. I would say that equity in education may have started with policy, but its salience begins with listening and making space for those who have too often been spoken over or spoken for.