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How Did We Get Here? Identity, Intersectionality, and Allyship in Online Learning

When we set out to design our online learning modules, we knew we wanted to do more than just deliver essential content - we wanted to create a space where difference is seen, valued, and engaged-with thoughtfully.  We wanted to create an experience for learners that would help embed the content, not as abstract ideas, but as lived realities that shape everyday engagement, whether in therapeutic practice, education, family life, or socially. Our approach acknowledges identity, intersectionality, language, culture, representation, and disability. The content has been developing over decades, morphing from informal conversations, to university lectures, international conferences, and advocacy at the coal face. 

Eventually it made sense to put something more accessible and sustainable together, and to reach a wider audience. We’ve spent the last three years piloting, consulting, tweaking, writing, filming, editing, learning, and getting feedback from as many sources as possible. These 5 modules of 15+ hours of content is the result of that long journey. We don’t claim to speak for all Deaf and hard-of-hearing people and we are conscious not to describe deafness in totalising ways. Instead, our modules reflect an ongoing dialogue and partnership grounded in mutual respect, complementary expertise, and a shared commitment to inclusive learning. 

Identity as a Dynamic and Relational Concept

One of the central ideas guiding our work is that identity is shaped by many things, and it is both a social and a deeply personal experience. Deaf identity, for example, is often framed in group terms based on community, culture, shared language, values, and norms around communication and expression. But just as important are the individual variations within these shared experiences. 

No two Deaf people experience Deafness in the same way, and other identities, (or aspects of identity) may have more salience at different times (for example, Muslim, female, queer, disabled). That tension between group belonging and individual uniqueness exists across all identities—whether related to gender, race, class, age, education, or disability. In our content, we try to hold space for both positions by acknowledging the commonalities that create shared understanding, while allowing room for nuance, contradiction, and personal truth. 

Intersectionality: Lived Lives Are Not One-Dimensional

Not unlike Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of “the danger of a single story”. We design our content with the recognition that no single aspect of identity tells the whole story. A Deaf woman of colour will experience both audism and racism in ways that are not simply additive, but deeply entangled. A hearing therapist who is also a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) brings a very different perspective as does a late-deafened clinician or a hearing interpreter.

To reflect this, we incorporate stories and perspectives from researchers and clinicians who are Deaf, deaf, hard of hearing, CODA, and hearing allies. We also curate lived-experience video content produced by a diverse range of Deaf and hard-of-hearing people—across age, gender, language, education, profession, and geography. This multiplicity of contributions helps resist the risk of creating "single story" narratives that erase difference, and reproduce colonising ideas about Deafness, access, health, mental health, or therapy. Every chapter of every module comes with a list of our curated content, our references, and ideas for extending learning.

Bilingual, Bicultural Approaches in Action

It’s often said that intercultural engagement is difficult; it requires us to step outside of our comfort zone, stretch ourselves cognitively, emotionally, and linguistically. This stretch can be a barrier to engagement and learning. Our hope is that by delivering content cross-culturally, that stretch is a little more supported, and the process of cross-cultural communication is modelled in real-time, providing a genuine experiential learning experience. 

Our partnership is bicultural and bilingual. Sigrid is bilingual but presents in Auslan; Louise has conversational signing skills but presents in English. Our module design reflects this. Videos are produced in both Auslan and spoken English (and optional captions), with attention paid to visual access, pacing, and cultural resonance. This isn’t just an accessibility feature—it’s a pedagogical choice grounded in the belief that learning is richest when it’s cross-cultural and can honour multiple knowledge systems and perspectives. This partnership allows us to co-create content that invites conversation between both communities, rather than speaking about one from the vantage point of the other.  We plan to write more on this.

Allyship as Practice, Not Just Position

Our collaboration is also a form of allyship, and modelling our allyship is a form of advocacy. For us, this means recognising power imbalances between Deaf and hearing worlds, D/deaf and hearing people, and between therapists and clients. It means making room for Deaf-led content, acknowledging the limits of our own experiences, and being open to feedback and correction. We don’t position ourselves as experts on Deafness or on education or mental health. Rather, we offer our own lived and professional experiences in dialogue with wider perspectives. 

Our aim is not to teach one "correct" way to work with,  or be with,  Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. We want to spark reflection, deepen cultural humility, and encourage teachers, parents, therapists and the wider community to remain curious, responsive, and self-aware.

We’ve tried to be broadly inclusive by drawing on a range of lived experiences. But when you consider that one sixth of the global population experiences some form of hearing loss, that’s more than a billion stories! So, we made the decision to present material from English speaking perspectives and we’ve included content in ASL, NZSL, BSL, and IS. 

Importantly, and respectfully, we also recognise two specific areas that we’ve only very briefly introduced. We felt that the lived experience of Australian First Nations people and D/deaf-blind people were outside of our own lived experience, so we’ve provided information on more culturally appropriate and specialised training in these areas. 

Privileging the Alliance

Our emphasis on allyship as a foundation for education, aligns with the research into therapeutic outcomes. Despite the existence of over 400 models of therapy and dozens of studies on therapist skills and characteristics, four decades of research consistently shows that the strongest predictor of good therapy outcomes is the quality of the therapeutic alliance. And, most importantly, that the best judge of the alliance is the client’s perspective. 

We hope our modules reflect this philosophy by emphasising the perspectives of Deaf and hard-of-hearing people and the importance of developing respectful working relationships across a range of settings. The modules offer ideas and conversations about recognising audism, barriers to access, invisible workloads and working to minimise power imbalances as steps towards improving not just therapeutic alliances but also family, social and cross-cultural alliances between Deaf and hearing worlds.

Closing Thoughts

In Australia, there is a serious lack of understanding about the complexity of deafness and hearing loss, and this has detrimental effects on social, educational and health outcomes for Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. This needs to change. We hope that our modules will make a difference and contribute to greater language access, and more educational and employment opportunities, resulting in more Deaf and hard-of-hearing teachers, health workers, and more representation in diverse work settings. 

We see inclusive learning as holding ‘imperatives’ lightly, acknowledging complexity and ambiguity, resisting simplification, and recognising that all knowledge evolves and changes. We hope to include the learners in our education alliance by encouraging questioning and reflexive thinking and by leaving room for personal discovery and curiosity.

Sources

Flückiger, C., Re, A., Wampold, B., & Horvath, A. (2018). The alliance in adult psychotherapy: a meta-analytic synthesis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 316-340. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000172

Martin, D., Garske, J., & Davis, M. (2000). Relation of the therapeutic alliance with outcome and other variables: a meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68(3), 438-450. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.68.3.438 

Terry, J. and Rance, J. (2023). Systems that support hearing families with deaf children: a scoping review. Plos One, 18(11), e0288771. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288771 

Wampold, B. (2015). The great psychotherapy debate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203582015 

Moges, R. (2020). “from white deaf people’s adversity to black deaf gain”: a proposal for a new lens of black deaf educational history. Jcscore, 6(1), 68-99. https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2642-2387.2020.6.1.68-99 

https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/the-danger-of-a-single-story-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie