Power and Education

At issue in this discussion is a question of knowledge and how those who work in education use the knowledge at their disposal in practice. How do they, firstly, work with the almost universal consensus that ‘race’ as a biological phenomenon has no inherent substance but that its equally almost universal social acceptance makes it real? Having come to their conclusions, secondly, how do they work educationally with the complexity of the ideological positions surrounding their knowledge? It is argued, that in these questions a particular kind of challenge for the politics of anti-racism arises. This challenge is deeply educational at its core. It talks to how an individual acts in relation to what he/she knows. Towards an engagement with what such a politics is in this contribution this paper seeks to argue that a concept such as ‘race’, and indeed gender, subsists and relies on presumptive agreements about the meanings – the form and substance – attached to looks. The concept depends on the supposedly obvious, the obviousness of likeness. From this it generates the presumption of relatedness. This paper argues that this logic of the look operates as a ‘trope’ of conscription. In engaging with this trope it is important to be clear about how ‘race’ is used descriptively and in social analysis. Two positions are focused upon in this paper to show how the use of ‘race’ in these descriptions and analyses – the knowledge inherent in them – has important educational implications.

In its hasty retreat from a racialized and racist South Africa, democratic South Africa was intent on embracing the newly formed ‘rainbow nation’. It would be a nation free from all forms of oppression, and unshackled by anger and hatred, as made visible in the life of Nelson Mandela – the first president of a non-racial, democratic South Africa. It made sense to open schools to all races, inviting children, once divided along lines of race, ethnicity and cultures, to share a uniform, share a school and learn together. Admissions determined on the basis of race and ethnicity, were considered part of an apartheid past. Given the newly established landscape of desegregated schools, many teachers opted for posts at schools where they were previously not allowed to teach. This meant, for example, that coloured teachers began teaching at White schools, and Black teachers at Indian schools. Although not in the same numbers as learners, teachers began to migrate across racial lines in terms of teaching posts.

This paper draws on research conducted with what the authors refer to as minority group teachers. These are teachers who do not form part of the majority group in the school in terms of race and ethnicity. In exploring the issues of race and ethnicity of minority group teachers at schools, this paper examines how the silence around conversations on race, ethnicity, religion, culture and language – what its authors call the identity of ‘otherness’ – leads to an invisibility that pretends there is no difference. In other words, if the identity of ‘otherness’ is not discussed, it does not exist. Secondly, this paper explores how this invisibility of ‘otherness’ experienced by teachers affects their teaching in diverse classroom settings. Thirdly, in exploring a conception of ‘otherness’, it is not the intention of this paper to advance an argument in defence of deracialized schooling. Instead, it looks for a language that can break the silence around race and racism – one that is not necessarily constituted by race. As such, this paper argues for a language of ‘otherness’ that is constituted by conceptions of infancy, potentiality and becoming – a language that will re-imprint itself on a re-imagined consciousness of post-apartheid citizenship.

This article is about exposing and countering racism through critical pedagogy in the context of a Japanese EAP (English for academic purposes) program. Relevant issues are first raised through: (a) a review of academic work concerning Japanese constructions of language, race and culture commonly found in nihonjinron writings, a genre of literature concerned with depictions of Japanese uniqueness or Japaneseness; and (b) an examination of important historical developments in post-war Japan beginning with its occupation by the Allied forces after the nation’s unconditional surrender, which is conducted with a view to demonstrating how the empowerment of a conservative politics has contributed to discourses that reify Japan as a “monolingual” and “monocultural” nation. Following this, the article focuses on how critical counter-storytelling can be combined with a critical pedagogy aimed at exposing and dialogizing prevailing discourses and practices relating to nihonjinron. The article concludes with a reiteration of the importance of denaturalizing and destabilizing racialized and racist practices extant in socio-educational spaces and a prognosis of what the future may hold with regards to ongoing contestations surrounding Japanese constructions of race and culture.

Learning materials have become significant determinants of quality learning environments for young children. This study presents an example of such learning material in the Finnish context – a children’s book entitled: Bibi muuttaa Suomeen (translated: Bibi Moves to Finland) by Katja Kallio and Maggie Lindholm (2005). The main concern of this article is how the ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Finland vs. Africa) meet or co-exist together in the book, which describes a young girl, Bibi, her life in a ‘traditional’ African village and subsequent move to Finland. The positive intention of the book is to familiarize Finnish children with different cultures and the life of immigrant children. In this study concepts such as ‘Whiteness’, normality and belonging are discussed within a critical approach to intercultural education. The data consist of a focus group interview conducted for student teachers and our own analysis as two experts in the book. The material was analysed with the help of critical discourse analysis and a critical incident approach. The results show that despite good intentions to educate children about immigration and other people in a more positive light, the book serves to maintain the social structure of Finnish society as White, modern and superior to ‘others’ in Africa. It is important that teachers and teacher educators are able to challenge this type of representation of the world and of immigration in children’s books and learning materials.

This study explored college student perceptions of racial and ethnic stereotype-based humor in Hawai’i where humor is salient to the local culture. It has been suggested elsewhere that perceptions may be understood through eliciting a cultural domain or mental category including a set of items that are perceived to belong in the same category. For the present study, 72 students participated in interviews or focus groups to explore characterizations of racial and ethnic stereotype-based humor among university students in Hawai’i. The interviews consisted of generating free lists, rank orders and pile sorts, and were analyzed using ANTHROPAC software to convert textual data into matrices and cluster analyses to interpret the cultural domain. The findings indicated that students’ understanding of local stereotypes and humor aligned with the conceptualization of a social stratification in Hawai’i, because they acknowledged more derogatory stereotypes for certain racial and ethnic populations. As colleges continue to work towards diverse learning environments, humor is likely to be one of the more complex areas to address. Future research may involve a content analysis that examines campus fliers, events and media to understand better the role of the institution in developing and perpetuating existing stereotypes.

Within the classroom milieu a teacher wields considerable power; however, teaching may become overwhelming when the teacher is faced with somewhat diverse learners. Dealing with such in the classroom is a challenging task. This qualitative study aims to explore how teachers confront issues of language and race within mathematics education. It was carried out at one university in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. The participants are mathematics teachers who enrolled as postgraduate mathematics education students at the university. The study was framed using Perkins and Zimmerman’s notion of empowerment theory. Qualitative data were gathered during the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 academic years, from a final sample of 22 postgraduate mathematics education students, and through a questionnaire administered to teachers and semi-structured interview schedules. The corollary findings provide a glimpse of how issues of language and race are confronted within mathematics education in South Africa, and they are important in terms of advancing curriculum and teacher development. Internationally and nationally, the findings have particular resonance and relevance when considering the powerful role that language and race play in mathematics education.

To promote attainment and inclusion, Sweden offers tuition in migrant pupils’ mother tongues as a regular school subject. However, the formulation of learning aims is problematic, and resources allocated to the subject do not correspond to ambitions expressed in steering documents. This case study presents an analysis of the organization of Mother Tongue Studies at a highly diverse urban primary school, based on interviews with teachers and head teachers. The practical organization of Mother Tongue Tuition affects how mother tongue teachers and pupils are perceived, but also potentially provides opportunities for empowerment and educational development. Results indicate that in the investigated case, such opportunities are not exploited, placing mother tongue teachers in a state of continuous structural stress, while limiting the forms their teaching relationships can take. Additionally, scheduling the school subject Mother Tongue Studies at the ‘edgelands' of the school day contributed to further marginalizing languages taught as mother tongue and minimized interaction with class teachers.