Why do the embedded developments in educational policy deigned to reduce attainment differences and inequality in the UK appear to fail? It is a difficult question, but one that Alice Bradbury tackles in her thorough review of the topic and critical response via a critical race framework (2019). She identifies how statements designed to highlight areas for change may also result in negatively identifying the problematic and reductive ways in which a policy frames minorities: individuals are framed as ‘troubled’, ‘under-achieving’ and ‘disadvantaged’ before going on to see them as ‘challenges for schools’ (2019, p.243). This segregates students from peers in the eyes of educators based around essential characteristics that are naturally difficult to apply objectively: how someone defines themselves as disadvantaged or uniquely related to one rather than another cultural or geographical location is never simple nor absolute. The result of a solely policy driven approaches to race inequality in education is a transformation of learners into data and an abstention of discussion of what crucially happens in the classroom.
The TED talk presented by Asif Sadiq (2023) offers a number of insights on this topic, in a persuasive and accessible form, that both recognises the need for policy around race inclusion but also practical and real ways to take the ethos forward into learning scenarios. He offers three resonant points:
- First that that racism and discrimination is real and is born out in empirical evidence (this cannot nor should be ignored even if a policy uses this in an imperfect way).
- Second that tackling race inequality requires a flexible and adaptive approach which means talking, sharing and often using personal narrative structures – essentially being with other people.
- Third and finally, and of import to those wanting to realise his appeal for flexibility and narrative approaches, that talking about race in a learning environment might be difficult, and that this is ok and necessary for the understanding of both oneself and others.
The challenges around responding to policy driven initiatives to race inequality in education can be seen in a further case. In the short film Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke (Orr, 2022) set in Cambridge, a knee-jerk argument is made against policy initiatives in the HE Sector, which seek to address imbalances in student attainment based on race. The false argument is put forward that policy that requires engagement with aspects of equality is naturally opposed to academic freedom of speech. The logical premise for this simply isn’t consistent; it wrongly suggests that the one model oppresses the other rather than in fact being an extension of it. Having the right to discuss difficult topics such as race inequality is a necessary academic freedom, and not an imposition on ‘real academic work’ (written with the most heavily flexed inverted commas). The comments left on the films page sadly echo this reactionary sentiment and prove even further why we need to find more socially, person-centric and classroom-based responses to race inequality in our educational forums, if the promise of policy initiatives are going to find a way of graining real traction and change and avoid becoming a new regime of instrumental management discourse.
References
Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260
Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU
Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online}. Youtube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw
The way you have summarised the resources is extremely clear and addresses some key challenges of tackling racism and attainment gaps within education.
I particularly like the way you have discussed the claim that “wokeness” oppresses freedom of speech and can’t be an extension. It is always painted as one or the other. This particularly resonated with my as I have been reading the journal article ‘Decolonizing the Curriculum? Transformation, Emotion, and Positionality in Teaching’. In this article Sarah Cheang & Shehnaz Suterwalla describe what they call the “and-and model”. They write that this form of teaching model “offers a critical challenge to empiricist methods that present binary either-or ways of thinking. Either-or think- ing clings to hard disciplinary boundaries. Instead and-and opens the potential for inclusive approaches to different ways of learning, know- ing, experiencing history and expressing it, leads to journeys through and to the pluriversal” (Cheang, Suterwalla, 2020 p.882). Describing their experience of decolonising a history of design course they discuss merging history and theory and lived experience to democratise all forms of “knowledge”. They also discuss the challenges of teaching a decolonial course, without centring the atrocities of colonialism which has to be studied. This also feels poignant in relation to the Bradbury article, that forces “minority” students into boxed identities of being ‘disadvantaged’.
From what you’ve mentioned so far about your role in the library’s curation, particularly around different communities and identities, I think the library has a great position to showcase the stories and lived experiences of people from the Global Majority outside of these boxed categories.