Anti-racism in Schools: A question of leadership?

Between 1999 and 2003 a number of principals (n=35) from a range of schools in Western Australia were interviewed to investigate the extent to which the state's Antiracism policy and guidelines for complaint resolution (1998) had impacted on the day-to-day management of schools. These principals overwhelmingly reported that racism was not a problem within their schools. At the same time they constructed racism in terms of individual pathologies and suggested that any racist incidents, should these arise, could be dealt with more than adequately under various school-based behaviour management or anti-bullying policies. There were no real differences in responses over time, nor were there any discernible patterns according to type of school. The findings suggest that the majority of these school managers did not understand the nature and extent of racism and were ill-equipped to deal with the more covert expressions of racism.     

'Having It All' and the Discourse of Equal Opportunity: Reflections on choices and changing perceptions

Schooling has come to be viewed as an important site for the reproduction of gender relations and as a site for intervention and change. This article reports on a longitudinal study that explores the ways in which a group of young women--who had gone to school during an era of 'equal opportunity'--made decisions about their future careers and the ways in which they thought their life-paths would unfold. More than a decade later, the problem of 'having it all' had begun to surface for some of them. Those women who had already become mothers increasingly found that instead of effortlessly being able to combine the demands of small children with the pressures of a challenging job, a more workable option was to put their careers 'on hold'. While these women have demonstrated that they can succeed on male terms, a number of competing discourses, coupled with a workplace culture that enshrined male patterns of participation as the norm, ensured that their work patterns essentially replicated the employment patterns of women of an earlier generation. Certainly, this group of young women are reconciling the expectations of 'equal opportunity' with a quite different reality.     

Students with special educational needs: transitions from primary to secondary school

This article looks at the experiences of young people with Statements of special educational needs prior to and following moves from primary to secondary school. Pam Maras and Emma-Louise Aveling of the University of Greenwich, London, used interviews to develop six qualitative case studies focusing on the transition process. Findings from these case studies reveal that the young people varied in their expectations and needs during the transition to secondary school, and that schools differed in the quality and efficacy of the support systems they provide. Parents' and carers' responses suggest that additional support services were not necessarily the most beneficial way to provide for all of the young people. What did appear to be beneficial was continuity of support throughout the transition to a new school, and the provision of a dedicated space within the school, such as a special needs unit. Several of the young people adapted easily alongside their peers without special educational needs, while others required more structured support. Pam Maras and Emma-Louise Aveling suggest that effective communication between support services, the young person, and their parents can facilitate successful transitions by allowing support to be tailored to individual students' needs.     

Student Teachers' Resistance to Exploring Racism: Reflections on 'doing' border pedagogy

While teachers have a responsibility to teach in a way that is anti-discriminatory and inclusive of all students irrespective of students' gender, 'race'/ethnicity, social class, disability or sexual orientation, in this paper my focus is on 'race' and racism and the ways in which some teacher education students resist examining their own racialised assumptions. Given that 'race' is invariably constructed in terms of the 'Other', it is imperative, as Gillborn (1996, p. 165) has suggested in the British context, for whites to 'reflect critically on their own assumptions and actions as whites'. It is equally imperative in Australia for 'white' researchers and teachers who are committed to anti-racism to turn the gaze inward and to reflect on our own racialised assumptions. Within this context one of the key concerns of this paper is the extent to which teacher education students can be given the freedom to express their views and explore their value positions without however slipping over into perpetuating racist stereotypes.