Student Teachers’ Resistance to Exploring Racism.

Abstract

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 racialized 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 ‘re act 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 re act on our own racialized 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.