Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Anti-Racism Framework for Initial Teacher Education / Training
Why do we need a framework for anti-racism in ITE/T?
We began this project to generate new data and evidence for the publication of a freely available and widely disseminated, trusted, accessible and research-informed anti-racism framework for Initial Teacher Education/Training (such as PGCE and SCITT courses) in England. We understood this to be of vital importance to education more broadly given that reference to anti-racism is absent in current policy and hence there is no current guidance for ITE/T providers on anti-racism in ITE/T. This has led to a situation in which the most recent DfE survey, mirroring previous results, revealed that only 53% of newly qualified teachers, six months into their first post, felt well prepared to teach pupils “from all ethnic backgrounds” [sic] (53%) and only 39% felt well prepared to teach pupils with English as an additional language.
And yet there remains continued differential patterns of education access and outcomes for pupils from BAGM (Black Asian Global Majority) heritage as revealed in the government’s own Race Disparity Audit and associated statistics. The way that we educate current and future teachers has a central role in enacting change in the classroom and in curriculum and policy development to break this cycle. We hope, therefore, that the framework will be used to inform policy development.
...unless we interrupt racism in classrooms, we stand no chance of having a just society.
Survey respondent
Overarching values and understandings
- Racism is a real and prevalent feature of our society.
- Racism is about power and oppression.
- Racism has psychological and material effects.
- Racism takes many forms and is constantly being reshaped.
- Racism is visible and elusive; it is overtly and covertly, knowingly and unknowingly enacted; and it is individualised and systemic.
- Racism can be present through omissions, obfuscations and silences.
- Racism interacts with other forms of oppression in intersectional ways.
- Being anti-racist is not the same thing as being non-racist; anti-racism requires vigilant action, prioritisation and embedded practice.
- Being anti-racist means to actively look and see, to describe and understand, and to dismantle racism.
- Educators working with all age groups, in all places are therefore crucial to anti-racism work.
- Teacher educators are of fundamental importance to enabling anti-racist teachers of and for the future.
Professor Vini Lander
Director Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality / Carnegie School Of Education
Vini Lander is Professor of Race and Education and Director of the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality in the Carnegie School of Education.
