Anti-racist Education Research Articles

Embracing linguistic diversity: Global Englishes language teaching for anti-racist education

Embracing linguistic diversity: Global Englishes language teaching for anti-racist education

Confessions of racism in anti-racist education: Political, affective and pedagogical concerns

This theoretical paper proposes to expand our understanding of ‘confessions of racism’ in the context of anti-racist education through the lens of ‘affective governmentality’. Confessions of racism are admissions of racism or declarations of privilege that foreground self-criticism and self-purification. The notion of affective governmentality turns attention to how confessions of racism function to normalize psychologized, individualized and depoliticized understandings of racism. Rather than outrightly dismissing confessions of racism though, given their probable persistence in popular and education discourses, an attempt is made here to re-frame them in order to highlight structural racism and inspire transformative action. It is argued that this re-framing could provide students and educators engaged in anti-racist education with a more effective path ahead. The paper concludes by suggesting that confessions of racism are used pedagogically in the classroom to revitalize attention to structural racism and transformative action rather than to foreground self-criticism and self-purification.

Teaching Race in Business Schools: The Challenges and Possibilities of Anti-Racist Education

This article explores anti-racist education in business schools amidst the backlash against critical race theory in an anti-Black world. I conduct an autoethnography of my experiences as a woman of colour and management educator who has attempted to bring critical discussions of race and racism into my classrooms. The article examines the barriers to anti-racist teaching in business schools and shows how they interweave individual/interpersonal, institutional, and ideological domains of power. Through my stories, I offer an account of the ways anti-racist education may be limited when it relies on the efforts of individual academics and reveal the tolls that anti-racist education can take on the educator, especially when they are navigating wider systems that are hostile to racial justice. By interrogating the challenges of anti-racist education, I also reflect on the practices and conditions that make meaningful anti-racist education possible.

Creating an Assignment to Incorporate Antiracist Pedagogy Into an Undergraduate Introductory Nursing Course.

Antiracist pedagogy was incorporated into an undergraduate introductory nursing course using National League for Nursing diversity and inclusion initiatives and academic nurse educator competencies as a framework. This article describes the reflective process and steps taken to select Taylor's memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, as a required text for an introductory nursing course. By incorporating antiracism into an introductory nursing course, educators can assist novice nursing students from diverse groups to envision themselves as nurses, role model allyship for White students, and create a more inclusive teaching environment.

“They bring the topic [of social justice] but stop there”: Nursing students' perceptions of teaching practices that develop awareness and engagement with social justice

BackgroundPedagogical frameworks grounded in social justice, such as decolonizing and anti-racist educational practices, are essential in nursing programs. While scholars have begun to examine nurse educators' conceptualizations of social justice, there remains a lack of knowledge about student perspectives regarding nurse educators' approaches to incorporating social justice in education. ObjectiveTo understand nursing students' perceptions about educational strategies that develop critical awareness and engagement with social justice and positively influence professional practice. DesignA qualitative study informed by Critical Feminist Pedagogy and guided by Interpretive Description methodology. SettingsA school of nursing in Western Canada. ParticipantsTen undergraduate and graduate nursing students recruited through convenience sampling. MethodsStudents participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. A set of questions developed to facilitate data analysis allowed the deconstruction of the data to identify broad-based inductive categories. Contrast and comparison methods were also used. Members of the research team provided analytic insights into the categories, and subsequently, all members discussed the findings and developed the interpretive frame. ResultsStudent participants reported that educational strategies promoting awareness and engagement with social justice need to go beyond superficial engagement and awareness of social justice. Researchers' analysis suggests that cohesiveness between awareness and action in social justice is urgently needed within academia to adopt a decolonizing and anti-racist pedagogy in nursing and better prepare students for professional practice. From the data analysis, teaching strategies that enhance cohesiveness include: embracing personal development, creating community spaces and disrupting knowledge and curriculum hierarchies. ConclusionsUnderstanding students' perceptions and incorporating their suggestions is critical to integrating socially just teaching practices that embrace a learner-centred pedagogy. Our findings offer suggestions for teaching strategies that foster critical awareness and engagement with social justice. Combined, these contribute to our understanding of signature pedagogies in nursing with the intention of increasing the adoption of anti-racist and decolonizing approaches.

The Invisible Carework of Anti-racist Pedagogy: The Experiences of Graduate Student Teaching Assistants

In this essay, we discuss our experience as graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in a first-year writing program with an explicitly anti-racist pedagogy. The growing literature on critical pedagogy focuses on the instructor-undergraduate student dynamic but does not address the necessary role of GTAs in implementing anti-racist pedagogy. We use feminist theory to contend that care is an inherent component of anti-racist pedagogy and that GTAs are integral actors in providing that care. We highlight the indispensable role of GTAs in navigating the complexities of larger classes as anti-racist pedagogy is scaled up beyond the individual classroom and instructor. We conclude by providing three possible solutions to address this challenge.

Feeling a little uneasy: A comparative discourse analysis of White and BIPOC college students’ reflective writing about systemic racism

AbstractThis critical discourse analysis compares the ways in which White and BIPOC college students discuss their experiences of an educational intervention meant to promote better understanding of systemic racism. We analyzed reflective writing produced by 11 White psychology students from a private liberal arts college in the eastern United States and 17 BIPOC students from a Human Services program at a public university in the western United States. White students engaged in whiteness discourse that distanced themselves from the realities of systemic racism and/or relieved the cognitive dissonance associated with the self‐ and group‐image threat related to learning about systemic racism. In so doing, they unwittingly upheld white supremacy. BIPOC students, in contrast, engaged an antiracist discourse that employed critiques of the social systems that produce systemic racism and destabilized dominant colorblind narratives, often by drawing on lived experience. From the Critical Race Theory perspective that the centrality of lived experience is a legitimate lens through which to analyze racial subordination, we discuss the importance of attending to the action orientation and constructed nature of discourse in antiracist education.

“The Air Is Being Sucked Out of the Room”: Experiences of Social Work Students of Color with Antiracism Education in the Classroom and Practicum

Abstract This study explores the experiences of social work students of color (SOC) and their antiracism education within a school of social work at a public university. Twenty-one SOC participated in focus groups where they described their experiences with antiracism education. Several key themes were identified: (a) finding community through affinity groups, (b) SOC interactions with White students, (c) differentiating internalized racism and anti-Black racism, (d) the impact of White instructors and the lack of mentors and supervisors of color, (e) microaggressions and incidents of racism, and (f) taking up space. As this is an exploratory study, authors make recommendations for social work schools to pilot in the future. These recommendations include assessing White students’ skill level with antiracism education and practice before placing them in classes with SOC, assessing faculty’s skill set with antiracist teaching and providing ongoing support, creating sustained affinity spaces for SOC as a way to booster wellness, designing and piloting antiracist outcomes for social work students, and developing simulation-based learning with simulated patients as a tool to measure antiracist practice competencies.

Friendship pedagogies as technologies of power: deploying friendship to foster participation of racially minoritized students in Danish education

ABSTRACT This article explores how friendship relations have been used in approaches to the participation of racially minoritized students in Danish schools from the 1970s until the present day. Using Foucault’s concept of technologies of power we approach friendship as a pedagogical technology. This allows us to examine how friendship is implied in school pedagogies and to identify the problems such pedagogies of friendship claim to address. Based on an analysis of literature targeting education professionals, we examine the rationales behind professionals’ use of friendship as a pedagogy and how these have changed over time. Our analysis reveals a shift in friendship pedagogies: conceived as a means to facilitate language acquisition in the 1970s and as a preventive measure against racism in the 1980s, they have evolved into technologies for achieving ‘cultural sameness’. The article concludes with a discussion of the potentials of friendship pedagogies in antiracist education.

“It makes you nervous when you start talking about racism”: Shining light on teacher educators’ experiences of anti-racist pedagogy in Australian teacher education

ABSTRACT Teacher educators have a significant responsibility in promoting anti-racist pedagogy and guiding preservice teachers to engage in critical self-examination regarding dominant narratives. However, many teacher education programmes fall short of adequately equipping aspiring teachers for diverse classrooms as they often perpetuate a predominantly white system and curricula. Informed by Critical Pedagogy and underpinned by a lens of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, this paper discusses the experiences of teacher educators facilitating anti-racist pedagogy within teacher education programmes at Australian universities. Semi-structured interviews were held with 23 experienced teacher educators employed at universities across Australia. Data reveal teacher educators’ efforts to promote anti-racist pedagogy are fraught with challenges when attempting to break the silence surrounding racism, with support for anti-racist pedagogy inconsistent amongst colleagues and within institutional structures. Teacher educators who actively embrace anti-racist pedagogy require resilience and a strong dedication to ongoing critical reflection. The findings have relevance for teacher education efforts not only in Australia, but also in countries where teacher education programmes continue to be predominantly centred on whiteness.

Beyond Initial Removal: Lasting Impacts of Discriminatory Content Moderation to Marginalized Creators on Instagram

Recent work has demonstrated how content moderation practices on social media may unfairly affect marginalized individuals, for example by censoring women's bodies and misidentifying reclaimed terms as hate speech. This study documents and explores the direct experiences of marginalized creators who have been impacted by discriminatory content moderation on Instagram. Collaborating with our participants for over a year, we contribute five co-constructed narratives of discriminatory content moderation from advocates in trauma-informed care, LGBTQ+ sex education, anti-racism education, and beauty and body politics. In sharing these detailed personal accounts, not only do we shed light on their experiences with being blocked, banned, or deleted unfairly, but we delve deeper into the lasting impacts of these experiences to their livelihoods and mental health. Reflecting on their stories, we observe that content moderation on social media is deeply entangled with the situated experiences of offline discrimination. As such, we document how each participant experiences moderation through the lens of their often intersectional identities. Using participatory research methods, we collectively strategize ways to learn from these individual accounts and resist discriminatory content moderation, as well as imagine possibilities for repair and accountability.

American Academy of Neurology Anti-racism Education Pilot Program: A Single Academic Center Experience (P9-7.005)

American Academy of Neurology Anti-racism Education Pilot Program: A Single Academic Center Experience (P9-7.005)

The Colonialism and Stereotypes Based on Race and Religion: Representation of Papua in Indonesian Elementary Textbook School

Implementing anti-racist pedagogy in Islamic schools, particularly for Muslim teachers, involves unique challenges. Their behaviour is closely scrutinized, making it crucial to emphasize positive Islamic behaviour, including antiracism efforts, to contribute to a more just society. This research explained the root of racism and equality in Islam. In addition, this research add explanation on how Islamic education has significant role as well as antiracism paedagogy through school text book. School textbooks are effective media for conveying educational messages or values to children. Besides being made as an educational medium, books are also deliberately designed to represent the ideal interests according to their creator, especially books published by the state. The content can undoubtedly describe what is suitable for each country. Through school textbooks, we can look at the state's perspective on ethnicity critically. Based on this, this study will describe the representation of an ethnic group, especially the Papuan ethnic group. This research is not only limited to the study of texts but will try to do interdiscussion with the existing social context. By using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) this research will provide a complete picture of how the text is formed and what discourses are present in the formation of the text. The text in this study consisted of 2 related types, namely picture text and narrative text. In addition, this research is necessary because the findings will provide an overview of the content of school textbooks related to how regional representation is described. This is important to note as one of the instruments to build contemporary Indonesian identity especially in the national and Islamic education sector.

Rethinking critical thinking, diversity and Indigenous awareness from a Blackfoot perspective

ABSTRACT Through this article, I critique the notion of critical thinking as it is mobilized in our education systems as an entry point for challenging the equity, diversity and inclusion lens that typifies professional development approaches which will illuminate why other approaches are needed. Using my own lived experiences as an Indigenous woman, I provide clarity on the concept of Indigenous relationality and the potential it has an alternate pathway for the embodiment of antiracist education that draws on Blackfoot ontological responsibilities and constructions of what it means to be a fully relational human being as understood from Blackfoot ways of knowing.

A Collaborative Approach to Antiracist Pedagogy

This cowritten Reflections essay describes an upper-division seminar for honours and master’s students that brought together established antiracist pedagogical principles (for example, decentering Britain) with a commitment to hands-on, in-class collaboration. This collaborative dimension buoyed the class’s capacity to encounter both the challenges and insights that the antiracist framework brought to the fore. In a course that sought to engage with Romantic poetry of “labour and longing” in the age of transatlantic slavery, working together became both an object of study and a learning practice. The coauthored nature of this essay therefore advances, beyond the end of term, the importance of listening and learning from one another in the pursuit of more inclusive, wide-ranging, and (very often) discomforting learning environments, even as such environments can only ever be imperfect.

Concepts of Flat Geometry for an anti-racist education in the 1nd Grade of Education Medium

Este trabalho objetivou-se na promoção da formação humanizadora com possibilidades do ensino dos conhecimentos básicos de Geometria relacionados à temática dos penteados, da cultura afro-brasileira e de sua história, na intenção de melhorar os resultados e proporcionar o ensino mais dinâmico da Matemática com a Aprendizagem Baseada em Projetos. Com os fundamentos da Pedagogia histórico-crítica, foi possível desenvolver o contexto histórico e cultural dos estudantes e possibilitar o direcionamento na promoção de uma educação antirracista. O tema surgiu da observação dos penteados e trançados que alguns estudantes gostam de fazer nos cabelos e estes foram associados aos conceitos trabalhados com 69 estudantes em turmas da 1ª série do Ensino Médio de uma escola da rede estadual de ensino do Estado de Alagoas. Diante da proposta, trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa com enfoque em pesquisa-formação multirreferencial. Como resultados, foi identificado maior engajamento dos praticantes e uma melhoria nos rendimentos quando comparados aos rendimentos anteriores à proposta; tal aspecto foi verificado por meio da análise dos dados obtidos nas narrativas e nas produções dos praticantes culturais que permitiram a construção do conhecimento em todo o processo.

What’s With All This Race Talk Anyway? A Literature Review on Antiracist Education

This article reviews the developing literature on antiracist education and the emerging frameworks for recognizing racism in educational spaces. Much of the literature draws on Critical Race Theory as the underlying framework to conceptualize race and racism. Many scholars emphasize the need for antiracist practices in K-12 education. There was, however significant research evidence that suggested a gap between antiracist pedagogy and knowledge and the actual implementation into everyday teaching practices. The review also found evidence of suggested strategies and frameworks teacher education programs and school division professional development should do to help aid the implementation of antiracist education in schools and classrooms. Evidently, the review points to the importance for faculty to self-reflect on their experiences with race. I conclude with an invitation to recognize and understand how to can show up as an antiracist educator, today, tomorrow and for the future. Keywords: race, racism, antiracist education, critical race theory, racialized students

Critical whiteness theory and social work education: turning the lens inward

ABSTRACT The social work profession adheres to the values of social justice and equity, yet extensive literature suggests that anti-racism education in social work has room for growth. Research demonstrates that social work practitioners and educators often fail to recognize (1) how structural oppression creates racial inequities and (2) how social workers maintain and reproduce hegemonic power structures. Critical whiteness theory (CWT) seeks to reveal the invisible role of whiteness in constructing racial inequities. As a subject area, critical whiteness studies emerged in the late 1990s as an expansion of critical race theory. A variety of disciplines have incorporated critical whiteness studies as a framework for anti-racism education; however, CWT remains relatively absent from the social work literature. This paper proposes the incorporation of CWT in social work education as a tool to facilitate critical self-reflexivity and combat structural racism within the profession. Engaging with the concepts of white normativity, white ignorance, and white complicity allows social work educators and students to acknowledge and interrogate the formative ways in which social work pedagogy maintains and reproduces white supremacy.

Transatlantic Connections in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Anti-Racist Pedagogies, Community Engagement, and Professional Development in a Canada-Mali Collaboration

Transatlantic Connections in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Anti-Racist Pedagogies, Community Engagement, and Professional Development in a Canada-Mali Collaboration

Anti-Racist Social Work Education: “Ready or Not, Here I Come, You Can’t Hide...”

ABSTRACT The 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) definitively identifies anti-racism as a necessary component of social work education. This change supports an effort to ensure that coming generations of social workers are more than culturally competent, but rather actively anti-racist in their practice across the micro, mezzo, and macro spectrum. While some social work programs have already embraced anti-racist education, many still have significant work to do. The fact remains that every accredited school will be required to make this shift to stay in compliance with CSWE accreditation once the newly ratified EPAS comes into effect. Although changes are expected of social work schools/programs, guidance on how to make such changes has been scarce. This paper provides an overview of what is meant by anti-racist social work education and why it is important, inclusive of emphasizing the difference between rhetoric and praxis. Based on a narrative review of the literature related to social work schools/programs in the U.S. and Canada that began incorporating anti-racism prior to EPAS 2022, suggestions for encouraging strategies within both the implicit and explicit curricula that align with anti-racist social work education are offered.