Antiracism Education? A Study of an Antiracism Workshop in Finland

In doing antiracism education there is a risk that it can in effect reinforce the very racialisation it is supposed to fight against. This paradox becomes a formidable challenge given the ubiquity of race in contemporary ways of knowing and ways of being for both its subjects and its objects: more so in an era of “racism without race,” a neoliberal attempt to move beyond racism without fully coming to terms with racial histories and their accompanying racialising consequences. This study examines the challenges of doing antiracism education within a multiculturalist framework using the case of KYTKE, a non-governmental organisation project in upper-secondary schools in Finland. We argue that when antiracism education fails to critically examine power relations in established traditions and knowledge or when it does not genuinely prioritise knowledge generated through the creative resistance of racialised groups, it can participate in re-inscribing racialised social relations.     

‘I just treat them all the same,really’: teachers,whiteness and (anti) racism in physical education

This paper explores physical educators’ perspectives on race and racism as a first step towards disrupting whiteness and supporting the development of antiracist practice. With close links to sport, a practice centrally implicated in the creation and maintenance of racialised bodies and hierarchies, Physical Education (PE) offers an important context for a study of whiteness and racism in education. Using collective biography we examine physical educators’ narrative stories for what they reveal about the operation of whiteness and racism in PE. Teachers draw on narratives from curricula texts which uphold and reinforce notions of the racialised other, thereby reasserting normative, universal white knowledge. Their pedagogy is underpinned by a colour blind approach where race is ‘not seen’, yet essentialist and cultural discourses of race are nevertheless deployed to position particular racialised and gendered bodies as ‘problems’ in PE. Engagement with antiracism is limited to professional rhetoric within pedagogical practice.     

Children and Place: Stories We Have, Stories We Need

Given existing curricula, instructional and assessment practices, teacher preparation programs, and multicultural education approaches, schools can be unhelpful places for students who are not at least middle class and politically white. Critical theory offers a range of conceptual frameworks for understanding and addressing these injustices but teachers find the ideas difficult to learn or to practice in classrooms. Increased attention to the use of stories is suggested to support individual and collective transformation and growth for teachers, students, and communities.