‘If it's not hurting it's not working’: teaching teachers about ‘race’

Abstract

This paper considers strategies for engaging teacher education students in the process of critically reflecting upon diversity, ‘race’ and racism. Such engagement is viewed as inevitably challenging, since it questions many cultural, social and often political assumptions. A detailed case study is presented related to a particular curriculum in a particular institution and its impact upon the awareness and commitment of students on a four-year initial teacher education course. The institution was one where students were unlikely to meet ethnic diversity in their school placements and few had encountered it in their own education. The staff nevertheless took the view that an examination of issues and assumptions to do with culture, ‘race’ and ethnicity was essential for intending teachers and used government documentation to legitimate this. A range of teaching and learning approaches were employed and these are briefly described, together with detailed analysis of the students‘ responses – accessed through their written evaluations and through the researcher's contemporary diary. At the end of the four-year course of training a group were individually interviewed at length and they were then followed up by questionnaire three and a half years after graduating.

The paper reports on the hostility and conflict generated from some of the students to this kind of work, despite the tutors’ view that a very facilitative, enabling and non-confrontational approach was their aim. It also makes some tentative suggestions about the characteristics and biographies both of students who found the courses personally difficult and those who accepted and learned from them more easily. This leads to some conclusions about ways of organizing such courses so that they meet their objectives of heightening a critical awareness among teachers.

Keywords:

• Teacher Education
• Anti-RACISM
• Critical Reflection
• Reassessment Of Learning
• Resistance To Learning
• Teaching Style