Pupils' perspectives on racism and differential treatment by teachers: On stragglers, the ill and being deviant

Abstract

While British educational researchers have given considerable attention to issues of racism, little attention has been given to how pupils themselves perceive differential teacher treatment and how such views relate to pupils' claims of teacher racism and racial discrimination. This article employs ethnographic data gathered from one English and two Flemish (Belgian) secondary schools to investigate pupils' perceptions of teachers' differential treatment of pupils. All schools were multiethnic in character and located in inner-city areas. The analysis of the data suggests that three ideal types of pupils were perceived as legitimate recipients of a less or more favourable teacher treatment: the ill, stragglers and deviants. This study illustrates how pupils' claims about teacher racism and racial discrimination relate to conflicts between particular pupils and their teachers over the appropriateness of their status as ill, stragglers or deviants and related role expectations. The final section discusses implications of this study for future research on processes of racism and racial discrimination in educational settings.

Adapting to the System or the Student? Exploring Teacher Adaptations to Disadvantaged Students in an English and a Belgian Secondary School

“…The only thing I have learned this year is to change the way I ask questions: never ask two questions, you ask one thing at a time, otherwise they will definitely get it wrong." This illustrates that teachers adapt their curriculum and pedagogy to the perceived ability of their students (1968), something that was expected by the students in both Riverside and Park Lane school (Stevens 2009). …”

“…In a recent publication (Stevens 2009), which uses data from the same study [1] which underpins this article, Stevens analyzed interview data from 97 students in one English and two Belgian secondary schools to investigate students" views on differential teacher treatment. The findings suggest that the "ideal teacher" not only has to find a balance between "freedom" and "control" (Gannaway 1984, p.192), but also between "equality" and "inequality", or between a strategy where all pupils are treated equally and one where some students are treated less or more favourably.…”

“…Similarly, stragglers are entitled to more preferential treatment because they are considered victims of their social situation, which hampers their success in realizing role expectations. However, these students need to demonstrate a willingness to develop into "healthy" or "normal" pupils and failure to do so can result in their being labelled as deviants (Stevens 2009). …”

The potential determinants of young people's sense of justice: an international study

“…Pupils struggling because of inherent weakness or even a temporary problem like mobility or illness are excepted from equal treatment in the view of other pupils. They are 'permitted' greater teacher concern because they are not to blame, in contrast to those showing lack of willingness or interest (Stevens 2009). Young people appear to distinguish between moral judgements of welfare and rights and justice (such as their effect on others), that have transgressions which are wrong regardless of any laws, and social conventions (such as expectations and norms), that have transgressions which are acceptable if no explicit rules prohibit them (Nucci 2001).…”

Critical realism, agency and sickle cell: case studies of young people with sickle cell disorder at school

“…This is not to deny that stereotypes may be co-constructed through the intersection of, say, gendered relations and racism (Ladson-Billings, 2009), but it does suggest that discriminating between different forms of oppression helps people retain a coherent sense of identity, something young people living with SCD struggle with at school in the face of multiple oppressions (Dyson et al, 2011). Secondly, schools find it challenging to be inclusive of young people with chronic illnesses (Mukherjee et al, 2000), and teacher/pupil response to illness is a key mediator of pupil accounts of racism (Stevens, 2009). Without first suspending judgement on the crucial specific structures at work (and thus avoiding an 7 analysis of racism to be suppressed by the accusation that the phenomenon 'merely' entails colour-blind disability discrimination), we cannot adequately demonstrate the workings of racism in less obvious ways.…”