Investigating Debates Around Racism in Sport to Facilitate Perspective Transformation in the Secondary English Classroom

Abstract

The English classroom is a space in which issues of social justice can be explored through texts, using a critical literacy approach. Indigenous Australians have been subject to racist policies throughout postcolonial Australian history, and racist attitudes toward Australia's original inhabitants prevail. This article suggests that racism in the Australian Football League online discourse community can be addressed in the English classroom, as social media texts in this area provide rich illustration of the prevailing antisocial attitudes thriving both in this community and the broader Australian community. Informed by both critical literacy and transformative learning theory (TLT), this article proposes a learning experience to facilitate perspective transformation in a secondary classroom. This experience draws on TLT to construct an experience incorporating introspection, stimulating awareness, reflection, and action. This experience is proposed in the hope that reticence to directly challenge antisocial views in the classroom may be overcome.

A Scoping Review of Research on Online Hate and Sport

“…Publications in the fields of marketing and business focused on internal solutions from and for sports organisations and social media platforms (e.g., O’Hallarn et al, 2018; O’Hallarn et al, 2019; Sveinson & Hoeber, 2020) while others in humanities fields such as sociology and communications framed their arguments more in relation to policy makers and/or the wider society. Examples of these varied approaches included calls for more rigorous and nuanced training for media professionals with regard to racism (Kilvington, 2021b), the need for sports teams to provide social media education and training to players (Kilvington & Price, 2019; Sanderson et al, 2020), recommendations for sports authorities to engage with fan groups on fighting stereotypes and prejudice (Millward, 2008), the need for greater transparency in social media censorship guidelines (Matamoros-Fernandez, 2017), calls for the introduction of anti-racist workshops into secondary education that are rooted in sports-based case studies (Merga & Booth, 2017) and appeals for sporting organisations to take a more active role in maintaining the mental health of athletes (Oshiro et al, 2020). Many also raised important ethical and societal implications about the proliferation of online hate in sport whose recommendations to organisations were of an advisory status.…”