Dealing with racist incidents: what do beginning teachers learn from schools?

Abstract

This article focuses on how schools respond to racist incidents, and what new teachers learn from their involvement in those processes. It analyses four incidents involving the pupils of four beginning teachers. The article suggests that in each case, schools either partly or wholly avoided addressing the incident, and that this avoidance can be understood in terms of the colour and power evasive discourse, which is the dominant discourse on race in Western societies, and in most schools. One aspect of this discourse is that racism is defined on the basis of individual intentions, not outcomes. The article argues that it may be possible to adopt a more race cognisant approach with student teachers and staff in schools, building on nascent understandings of institutional racism, which shifts the focus to outcomes rather than intentions. The article demonstrates this approach, analysing each incident in terms of its consequences for the learning of the new teacher, and for the promotion of race equality in the school. While the small number of incidents may initially appear heartening, their negative impact on both teacher confidence and children's understanding may be significant. The findings suggest that in the changing context of initial teacher education in England, approaches to supporting both schools and new teachers in this often misunderstood area are much needed, and that one way forward may be to give teachers time and support to critically reflect on and discuss their experiences.Keywords: race, racist incidents, institutional racism, student teachers, beginning teachers, whiteness IntroductionRacism remains an important problem in UK schools. In 2012 the BBC's news website reported that the number of racist incidents logged by schools rose steadily between 2007 and 2010, the year in which the current Coalition Government removed the obligation for schools to keep records (BBC 2012) 1 . In some areas, the number of reported cases increased by 40% in that period. The BBC website reported a leading anti-racism campaign group describing the 88,000cases as 'the tip of the iceberg', since such cases are very often under-reported (BBC 2012). Yet one popular newspaper reported the story of the release of the figures under the headline, '88,000 children branded racists' (Daily Mail, 2012). In taking this stance, the newspaper drew on the dominant discourse on race in British society and elsewhere, which fails to understand the purpose of monitoring such incidents, and sees racism only as extreme and violent acts, rather than a subtle and pervasive feature of our social structures. The headline suggests that the act of logging a racist incident automatically defines the individual involved as 'a racist': racism is only ever understood as personal prejudice. But some of the individual cases quoted in the story suggest another aspect of this discourse: some senior managers in school appeared to have defined any direct reference children made to race as a racist incident. According to this colourblind way of th...

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