Teachers' Beliefs, Antiracism and Moral Education: Problems of intersection

Abstract

In this paper we explore potential problems of intersection between teachers' beliefs about the aims of education, a conceptual requirement of antiracism education and moral education. Our objective is to show how the reform of moral education to better accommodate antiracism concerns may depend on paying more attention to how teachers understand this intersection. Based on our analyses of teaching experiences and an exploratory, qualitative study of 20 recently certified teachers, we identify a framework for differentiating three ethical perspectives that teachers often take in articulating and justifying their beliefs about the ideal aims of education. Then, based on our analysis of contemporary programmes of antiracism education, we use illustrative material from our study to identify points of disjuncture that can occur between the aims of such programmes and teachers' beliefs through which those aims are filtered. In particular, we seek to illustrate how the essential political aims of antiracism education that focus on structural relationships between/among social groups can be, in the first instance, occluded by an ethical perspective that centres on the welfare of discrete individuals or, perhaps even more insidiously, reduced to a well-meaning and nice-sounding ethical perspective that focuses on the quality of interaction between/among individuals.