How to counteract racism in education – A typology of teachers’ anti-racist actions

ABSTRACT

In this article we develop a typology of anti-racist action in education. Using teachers’ practices and experiences, we highlight six approaches on how teachers counter racism in their schools. Each approach entails a different set of actions and aims to address different manifestations of racism. They range from actions that seek to challenge structural racism (the emancipatory, norm-critical and intercultural perspectives), to approaches that engage individualized forms of racism (the relational, democratic and knowledge-focused perspectives). Our analysis makes the complexity of both racism and anti-racism visible. It provides an opportunity to navigate the various types of anti-racist actions, and make conscious decisions regarding what type should be used in relation to different manifestations of racism. The analysis is based on interviews with 27 high-school teachers working in the Swedish educational system.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racist action in education
• typology
• pragmatism
• structural racism
• individual racism

Biographical note

Emma Arneback is an Associate Professor in Education at Örebro University in Sweden and is active within the research fields of Didactics (teaching), Curriculum Theory and Educational Philosophy. Central hubs in her research are change processes initiated in order to create more equal opportunities in educational contexts.

Jan Jämte is a political scientist and senior lecturer in the School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences at Örebro University in Sweden. Jämte’s research focuses on how to counteract racism in education, processes to end school segregation, and create more equal opportunities for students with different backgrounds.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Prof. David Gillborn for inspiring comments on an early draft of this article. We also want to thank our colleagues Andreas Bergh, Tomas Englund, Asgeir Tryggvason and Matilda Wiklund who work with us in the research project How to Counteract Racism in Education. We are also thankful to Sebastian Piepenburg, Frida Dahlin and Gabriel Hällqvist for their assistance with transcribing the interviews, and to the latter for taking part in coding the material. Finally, we are grateful to the 27 teachers who participated in the study – thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The introductory program is for students who do not have adequate marks to attend a vocational or higher education preparatory program. In 2019, 70% of these students had a ‘foreign background’ (SCB), compared to 23% of students in vocational programs and 26% of students in higher education preparatory programs.

2. One of the interviewees was not able to participate in a second interview.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by funds from the Swedish Research Council to the project How to Counteract Racism in Education [grant number 2015-01046].