Race, Education and Educational Leadership in England

An Integrated Analysis

Paul Miller, Christine Callender, Paul Miller, Christine Callender

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350068612
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

In recent years, the issue of race in education in the UK have been submerged in wider discourses of diversity, leading to an invisibility of the quotidian experiences of marginalised peoples in educational institutions. Race, Education and Educational Leadership in England looks at how the experiences of black and ethnic minority (BME) students and academics in education has changed and investigates how the implementation of current policies on race equality are being monitored by the government. The contributors take an integrated approach, looking at issues and themes that occur across all educational phases in England and draw on expertise from within and outside the education system. The editors highlight areas of weakness and good practice in access, curriculum, progression and the lived experience. This book makes a compelling argument for why race equality matters in England's education system.

Part One

Curriculum, attainment and diversity

1

Race and race equality: Whiteness in initial teacher education

Christine Callender

Introduction

There is a paucity of research concerned with teacher educators’ perspectives and understandings of race and race equality in initial teacher education (ITE) in England. This issue is particularly significant given the current shift towards a school-led workforce development model in which schools are increasingly responsible for training newly qualified teachers (NQTs), through, for example, School Centred Initial Teacher Education (SCITT), Teaching Schools, Schools’ Direct and under the auspices of designated powers to award Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). By focusing on the ‘gatekeepers of the profession’ (Wilkins and Lall, 2011) – those with responsibility for strategically leading and managing teacher education courses – this chapter aims to disrupt the gaze of the extant literature to illuminate how initial teacher education is implicated in the production and maintenance of Whiteness and white privilege resulting in the perpetuation of hegemonic discourses about the participation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students in ITE. Specifically, whiteness is considered in the context of ITE by focusing on how senior leaders understand and practice race equality during a period of race salience.

A qualitative methodology utilizing semi-structured interviews with university-based ITE course leaders across England was adopted and asks two main questions: (1) What do teacher educators understand by race and race equality; (2) How do these understandings influence the ways in which they work with and for race and race equality? Drawing on data collected in 2006, the chapter illuminates how, despite the legal requirement to promote race equality, institutional practices did not achieve their intended aims. This has significance not just for BAME students in ITE but also for the ways in which discussions of race are erased and/or censured from the early training experiences of beginner teachers. By locating the research in its historical moment and through making connections to its contemporary context, the chapter illustrates that, in the midst of a national efforts in the ITE sector to increase the number of BAME students, the underlying ideological perspectives of teacher educators were nonetheless imbued with the ‘Tools of Whiteness’ (Picower, 2009). It highlights how in a period of heightened race awareness, where there was a national focus on greater representation of BAME teachers in the form of diversity targets, teacher educators maintained dominant racial hierarchies through the deployment of these tools. At the historical point of relative convergence, teacher educators, whilst sensitized to race equality, espoused a commitment whilst systematically resisting notions of privilege and power. Contemporarily, the chapter points to the recent marketization of ITE and the proliferation of teacher training routes which emphasized ‘teacher quality’, with the inevitable, concomitant effect being that those entering the profession often do so without the opportunity to examine their own prejudices or assumptions. Fundamentally, the chapter argues that there has been little change.

In the current moment race has been erased and silenced, replaced instead by a discourse of meritocracy where only ‘the brightest and the best’ are selected for ITE programmes. Moreover, changes to race equality legislation which now combine race equality under the broader remit of equalities has, in effect, diluted the focus on race overall. An emphasis on teacher quality under the guise of meritocracy has led to fewer BAME entrants to ITE overall in recent years and the creating of what can be described as a ‘mirrortocracy’. In the post-racial era, race is seemingly historicized, a non-existent factor in contemporary discourse where its relevance is questioned despite the racial disparities that exist at various levels of society.

The issue in context

Despite research into the experience of BAME students entering education, there is little critical analysis of the work of teacher educators related to race and racism in England. This is not just a feature of teacher education. In fact, it can be argued that the higher education sector has struggled to get to grips with the differential degree outcomes of BAME students and the small proportion of students gaining access to Russell Group institutions (Boliver, 2016). These concerns are long-standing, operating as the metaphorical elephant in the room:

Higher education has a dirty little secret: white students get more firsts and 2:1s than black students – and no one even talks about it [ . . . ] we don’t know why this is but we should certainly talk and disagree about it. (Cited in Reisz, 2012)

Several writers report that universities have failed to deliver on race equality (Curtis, 2000; John, 2003; Pilkington, 2009, 2011; Reisz, 2011), despite the legal duty to promote it. According to Back (2004), the higher education sector in England remains ‘hideously white’ both in terms of its student body and its staff. Writing later, Pilkington (2011) reports that higher education institutions (HEIs) are ‘oblivious to inequalities in our midst and the need to ensure that our policies and procedures are evidence based’. Whilst Miller (2016) draws attention to the ways in which racial inequality has impacted upon the recruitment, selection and promotion of BME staff in HEIs and other education settings.

More recently, Bhopal (2018: 93) has argued that ‘racism and racist practices dominate the experiences of black and minority students in higher education’. In an analysis of white privilege in the United Kingdom and United States, Bhopal asserts that:

elite universities are the epitome of the legitimation and reproduction of institutional racism. They continue to play their part in the reproduction and reinforcement of racial and class inequalities. In this system of exclusion, black and minority ethnic students remain marginalised and excluded. Higher education institutions are spaces of white privilege which fail to cater for the experiences of black and minority groups. They employ a rhetoric of inclusion, but one that is rarely evidenced in practice or outcomes. (103)

Bhopal makes an important distinction between acceptable and non-acceptable forms of whiteness, and in so doing illuminates the ways in which class, whiteness and white privilege intersect in powerful ways:

Acceptable forms are those which are marked at the intersection of class, whiteness and white privilege whereas unacceptable forms can be located in the identities of Gypsy and Traveller groups, expressed through ‘a racism that is acceptable towards an unacceptable form of whiteness’. (157)

The performance of whiteness speaks the rhetoric of inclusion whilst simultaneously practising exclusion. Applebaum (2010: 9) asserts that

while the definition of whiteness is difficult to pin down, there is widespread agreement that whiteness is a socially constructed category that is normalized within a system of privilege.

She cites the work of Ruth Frankenberg, who defines whiteness as:

a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second it is a ‘standpoint’, a place from which White people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, ‘Whiteness’ refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. (9)

Whiteness thus operates in different ways. It is unmarked, unrecognized and not consciously acknowledged. At one level whiteness, as Penny McKintosh argues, is the sum of an invisible knapsack of privilege – unearned and unseen by its beneficiaries. Leonardo (2004: 148), on the other hand, states,

whites enjoy privileges largely because they have created a system of domination under which they can thrive as a group. The volumes of writing on the issue of domination testify that the process is complex and multi-causal. But the enactment is quite simple: set up a system that benefits the group, mystify the system, remove the agents of actions from discourse, and when interrogated about it, stifle the discussion with inane comments about the ‘reality’ of the charges being made.

For Hick et al. (2011: 18), ITE is a key starting point for examining race, noting that there ‘remains the need to recognize the reality and persistence of racism in education’. It is important to acknowledge that a number of studies examine the experiences of BAME students in ITE and in teaching in the United Kingdom (McNamara et al., 2010; Carrington et al., 2001; Osler, 1997; Showunmi and Constantine-Simms, 1995). Themes to emerge from this literature include BAME student experience, strategies to improve participation through recruitment and retention and experiences of racism. It is not the purpose to examine these here but instead to use these to emphasize the invisibility of teacher educators’ perspectives and understandings of race in ITE – teacher educators are largely seen in relation to work undertaken in the pedagogical areas of equality and diversity, whilst conversations about race are projected upon BAME bodies or narrated in relation to student experiences.

Few studies in the United Kingdom have explored the perspective of teacher educators, particularly those with responsibility for leadership and management of ITE courses and curricula. Where teacher educators’ views are sought, research has concluded that, although teacher educators are well versed in race equality issues, they may not be well placed to bring about change within their institutions, suggesting ‘there is a need for greater knowledge of teacher educators’ understanding of issues of race; and how race and race equality are embedded into teacher education’ (Hick et al., 2011: 6). Hick et al. make an important observation that not only speaks to the application of knowledge of race but also to teacher educators’ personal understanding/experience of race – a factor that has had little empirical coverage in the literature. Bhopal, Harris and Rhamie (2009) make a similar point, albeit more explicitly, noting that teacher educators play a pivotal role in disrupting normative assumptions of race but may lack knowledge and expertise in these issues (see also Galman, Pica-Smith and Rosenberger, 2010). The significance of teacher educators is highlighted by Ryan and Dixson (2006: 181), who also refer to the critical role of teacher educators’ pedagogy in shaping their own and their student’s understanding of race in the United States. Similarly, Bhopal and Rhamie (2013) point to the need for increased practical support and training for beginner teachers in order to improve understanding of and responses to issues of race in the classroom.

Maylor (2014: 178) has also commented on the role of teacher educators and the critical role they play in ensuring that beginner teachers develop an understanding of race and racism, arguing that they should be afforded opportunities to examine their own attitudes and assumptions:

If pre-service teachers are to become more critically aware of the limited parameters of their thinking Johnson, Lachuk and Mosley suggest that teacher educators should engage pre-service teachers in ‘continual opportunities for dialogue and storytelling’ (2012: 327, cited in Maylor 2014) about themselves, their internalised ideologies, the influence of White privilege and power and issues concerning ‘race’ and racism (including their own; King, 2007).

The practical task of engaging in critical conversations about race, however, is far more complex. Discussions of race in ITE are often regarded as ‘scary’ and met with a deafening silence or are derailed (Lander, 2011). Picower (2009), describing the strategies used by predominantly white students to avoid (or evade) engagement in conversations and/or explorations about race and racism, refers to this practice as the ‘tools of whiteness’. In her study of pre-service teachers, she states that

participants responded to challenges to these understandings by relying on a set of ‘tools of Whiteness’ designed to protect and maintain dominant and stereotypical understandings of race – tools that were emotional, ideological, and performative. (197)

The ‘tools’ support the maintenance of hegemonic stories and are comprised of three types. Picower describes these as emotional tools, which are based on feelings and function so as to ‘obfuscate the concepts being introduced’; ideological tools, which represent beliefs that protect hegemonic stories; and performative tools of whiteness, which relate to behaviours that are consistent with hegemonic understandings.

The study (methodology and design)

The present study draws on interviews which examine race from the perspective of the ‘gatekeepers of the profession’ (Wilkins and Lall, 2011) – those with responsibility for strategically managing teacher education courses. By focusing on teacher educators’ practice, it disrupts the gaze of the extant literature in the United Kingdom on race/race equality in ITE and illuminates how Whiteness is deployed to perpetuate hegemonic (and often negatively oriented) discourses about race/racism. In the words of Leonardo (2009: 107), this chapter attempts to ‘make race visible’ by ‘making whiteness visible’.

The original study (Callender, Robinson and Robertson, 2006) set out to understand teacher educators’ understandings of race and the ways in which this influenced their approach to the programmatic functions of ITE. It was particularly interested in how these actions impacted upon the outcomes of BAME students. The study evaluated the extent to which the institutions explicitly undertook monitoring and tracking of various aspects of ITE provision (e.g. recruitment and retention, academic performance, practice-based aspects of training and appointment to a teaching post) but also drew on interview data with programme and course leaders. It is the latter which is the focus of this chapter. The research is conducted within an interpretative paradigm and employs critical race theory (CRT) as an analytical lens. Participating institutions were drawn from universities across England. Collectively, the institutions differed greatly in terms of demography. Initially, twenty HEIs were invited to participate, of these ten were included in phase one of the study. In phase two this was reduced to six as four of the institutions withdrew due to Office for Standards in Education, Children Services and Skills (Ofsted) inspections. In each institution the key members of staff with...