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6
Initial Teacher Education:
The Practice of Whiteness
Vini Lander
Introduction
This chapter will discuss how initial teacher education – with respect
to preparing and enabling student teachers to teach with confidence,
knowledge and understanding in the ethnically diverse classrooms in
England – receives little attention in the pre-service teacher education
programmes. The chapter will illustrate the current position with respect
to teacher training and education in England regarding race equality, and
will show that there is very little content related to preparing teachers
to understand their own racialised positions as powerful professionals,
within either predominantly White or multiethnic classrooms. There is
almost no education or training to help student teachers to understand
the constructs of race and ethnicity; there is even less attention given to
how student teachers can work with pupils to address racist incidents
and how they can use the curriculum as a vehicle to develop children’s
understanding of multicultural Britain, or how to educate children and
young people beyond the stereotypes rehearsed and promoted in the
media every day.
The chapter draws on the theoretical framework of Whiteness . This
will be delineated using some current research in England, but drawing
predominantly on work in the United States. It will use research regarding
the inadequacy of teacher education to increase understandings of how
it perpetuates Whiteness through the lack of engagement, and at times
sheer reluctance of White educators to understand their own positions
as racialised beings within a context whereby the racialised ‘Other’ is
marginalised in order to maintain an unspoken hierarchy of dominance
and supremacy (Gillborn, 2005, 2008).
93
R. Race et al. (eds.), Advancing Race and Ethnicity in Education
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014
94 Vini Lander
As 2011 receded into history, two events associated with race and
crime made the headlines. One the one hand, the news was permeated
with discussions about the callous killing of an Indian student, Anuj
Bidve, in Salford, Manchester, UK (BBC, 2011a), and it was interesting
to note how the first reports avoided the use of the term racist in favour
of recasting it as a hate crime. At the same time, in December 2011
the judge in the Stephen Lawrence trial summed up the arguments
presented by the defence and the prosecution as a ‘hate crime’ under-
taken twenty years ago for which no one had been convicted at the time
(BBC, 2011b). These two events are visible tips of an iceberg which repre-
sents the failure of our education system, at all levels, to educate about
and against racism – through the failure to develop a ‘racial literacy’
(Skerrett, 2011) with teachers and children. These crimes are not solely
due to the failure of the education system, but due to a collective failure
to develop our racial literacy in a way that moves us on to think about
and tackle the deep-rooted everyday racism in society.
We need to educate our teachers and children alike to be able to under-
stand our multiethnic society based on facts and informed discussions
in classrooms rather than acquiring that understanding from media
headlines. Our failure to do so to date within initial teacher education
(ITE) means teachers are unable to construct robust counterarguments
which can disrupt the barrage of negative headlines about minority
ethnic groups, a barrage which influences children’s understandings of
our society. For example, a teacher recently conveyed how a group of
seven–eight-year-old children watched a film in which a woman was
robbed. According to the teacher, it was clear that the robber in the film
was White. The children were asked to write about the lady, and one
child wrote, ‘She is skint because the Black man nicked her money.’ The
teacher asked the child why they had written this and the child said, ‘I
just thought he was a Black man.’ Apart from this initial question from
the teacher, there was no followup. We have to ask why? Could it be
that this teacher did not know how to follow this up? It may have been
because the teacher did not have the training or the racial literacy with
which to tackle this child’s stereotypical notions of Black men.
It is the responsibility of teacher education, both initial and contin-
uing, to keep race equality on the agenda (regardless of the geograph-
ical location of the school) and to have the courage to move beyond
the three S’s: ‘Saris, Steelbands, Samosas’ (Troyna and Ball, 1985) and,
nowadays, the D for Diwali approach, or ‘Africa Week’, to address and
examine how being White and the discourse of Whiteness are perpetu-
ated through teacher education – education in such a way as to re-centre
Initial Teacher Education 95
the majority narrative and to side-step the legislation (except, at times,
in the cases of overt racism) to allow silent and injurious covert racism
(Gillborn, 2008) to inflict its every-day damage on society as a whole.
If we cannot educate new teachers to understand and act with knowl-
edge to challenge the dominant discourse of Whiteness through the
curriculum and the resources and approaches they use, then we will still
be paying lip service to race equality in the next century whilst Black
and minority ethnic (BME) children continue to be the victims of overt
and covert racism, as evidenced by racist attacks, by the high number
of BME people in prison, the high numbers of BME pupils excluded
from school, the underachievement of certain BME groups (Gillborn,
2008) and, no doubt, the higher number of BME young people making
up the unemployment statistics in times of recession (Ball et al., 2012;
TUC, 2012).
In the ‘Key Facts about Race in the UK’, the Runnymede Trust (2012)
notes, that since ‘the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, 89 more
people have lost their lives at the hands of racists in the UK; that if you
have an African or Asian surname you need to send twice as many appli-
cations as someone with an English name to get an interview[,] and that
whilst 300 Black Caribbean students attained the appropriately high
grades in their A-Levels to gain entry to Oxford University[,] only one
gained a place’. It seems that despite the everyday assumptions of the
proverbial ‘man or woman in the street’ that race or racism are not issues
in twenty-first century Britain[,] the facts do not support such an asser-
tion. It is these everyday understandings that student teachers bring to
their preparation to become teachers that remain unchallenged and so
new teachers remain uneducated about race and racism in Britain.
The context – teacher education in England
This section provides a brief overview of how initial teacher prepara-
tion has changed in England, and how these changes have impacted
on notions of teacher professionalism, equality and, specifically, the
absence of references to racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. There is
insufficient space to provide an in-depth discussion about this reduction
and erasure, but readers ought to reflect on how this process of erasure
in policy documents that govern initial teacher education has gathered
momentum and met little resistance from the education community.
This is because hand-in-hand with such changes there has been greater
control of student teacher numbers through surveillance via institu-
tional inspections.
96 Vini Lander
The landscape of teacher education in England has changed rapidly
over approximately the last three decades. These changes continue apace
as this chapter is being written. However, the changes in initial teacher
education started to gather momentum with the election of Margaret
Thatcher in 1979. The introduction of the first set of teacher competences
in 1984 (Circular 3/84) and subsequent sets of competences introduced
through government circulars, such as in Circulars 9/92 for secondary
trainee teachers and 14/93 for primary trainee teachers, were designed
to improve trainee teachers’ subject knowledge and understanding. The
changes in the standards that govern teacher education have shifted the
notion of teacher professionalism from the autonomous professional
(one who could make decisions based on professional knowledge and
understanding) to a more technicist model of the teacher – one who
‘can do’ (Furlong et al., 2000). In these changes some key elements have
been lost: specifically, the need to prepare children and their teachers
to be actively engaged in understanding the nature of society around
them and to fulfil high standards through a framework of social justice
and inclusion. The nomenclature has also changed: for example from
initial teacher education to initial teacher training ; from student teacher to
trainee teacher and from teacher educator to teacher trainer . The move from
‘educating’ teachers to one of ‘training’ teachers is widely recognised as
a reductive change (Furlong et al., 2000). Just as the nomenclature has
changed, so has the role of universities in preparing teachers. A student
studying to be a teacher on a postgraduate programme at a university
must spend 24 weeks in school (DfE, 2012a, p. 4) and with the introduc-
tion in England of School Direct (DfE, 2013), the role of universities has
been further reduced. School Direct is likely to produce teacher prac-
titioners for local rather than national or global contexts. Individuals
with a first degree who want to become teachers can now do so through
training in a school environment without the need to engage in any
higher education, thereby becoming the apprentice teacher who will
learn the skills of their trade ‘on the job’. Therefore, if their school is in
a predominantly White area with little ethnic diversity, it is likely that
these trainee teachers (I use this term deliberately) will be insufficiently
prepared for ethnically diverse classrooms and may perpetuate narrow
perspectives in the education they offer children in their classrooms.
As the standards which govern initial teacher preparation have
evolved from competences to the Teachers’ Standards of 2012, scholars
have traced the reduction in references to social justice and ethnic diver-
sity and a transformation of the notion of equality. Scholars working
in the intersecting areas of race equality and teacher education have
Initial Teacher Education 97
traced the minimal presence, erasure and absence of references to race
and ethnicity within the statutory frameworks, that have come and
gone, governing teacher education. Gaine (1995) noted how the estab-
lishment of CATE (Council of the Accreditation of Teachers Education)
started the central control of teacher education, and also how the criteria
emphasised teachers’ subject knowledge rather than the preparation of
teachers to work in an increasingly ethnically diverse Britain.
The recommendation of the Swann Report (DES, 1985) that student
teachers gain experience in multiracial schools was largely ignored
(Race, 2011). Menter (1989, p. 460) noted how the CATE criteria intro-
duced the technical model of the teacher, whilst removing the ‘educa-
tion disciplines’ of sociology, philosophy and psychology that were the
underpinning conceptual framework of teacher education. These criteria
enabled aspiring teachers to understand how children learned within the
contexts of their own development, their families, schools and society.
Menter (1989) noted how the technicist approach silenced professional
dialogue about racism and sexism, thereby limiting student teachers’
understanding and their ability to challenge the practices which embed
educational inequality.
As the model of the teacher has moved from educator to technicist
teacher, the debate about multicultural education has run apace with
these changes. Multicultural education was seen as a response to the pres-
ence of an increasing Black and minority ethnic population in Britain
(Tomlinson, 2008). The notions of multicultural education prevalent
at the time within schools is, as described by Troyna and Ball (1983),
the three S’s – Saris, Steel Bands and Samosas – and in initial teacher
education (ITE) it was based on, notes Siraj-Blatchford (1993), the prob-
lems faced by schools due to the presence of children and students from
BME groups rather than the evident racism in the schools. Sadly, in my
experience not much has changed; in fact, in ITE there is now even less
done on multicultural education or race equality than in the 1980s. The
‘problem’ of ethnic minorities, or the deficit model of difference, be that
ethnic or linguistic, is still prevalent in the discourse today.
The 1990s heralded the death knell of any multicultural education
within ITE courses, as the whole sector was publicly attacked and pillo-
ried by the political Right wing, which set the agenda for ITE. Gaine
(1995) notes that teaching was cast as a ‘technical skill’ with no space
for theory, and so started the distancing of higher education from
the preparation of teachers. This gap has been growing ever since. As
the gap has widened, the preparation of teachers to understand race,
racism, and issues of equality and inequality have also diminished.
98 Vini Lander
Jones (2000), writing after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, urged that
beginning teachers needed to understand racism, and he noted how ITE
educated (or, rather, trained) teachers to teach in a society within an
assumed cultural homogeneity. He argued that it is no wonder that ITE
fails to develop student teachers’ understanding of key concepts such as,
equality, social justice, equality of opportunity and inequality. This lack
of knowledge renders them ineffectual in their stated goal of achieving
equality of outcomes for their pupils.
Despite initiatives such as Multiverse (Smith, 2012) – a web-based
resource related to ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity to support
teachers, student teachers and teacher educators to understand how to
work in diverse classrooms – the absence of references related to ethnic
diversity are apparent in the current Teachers’ Standards 2012 (DfE,
2012b).
In her analysis of the teaching standards in England from 1983–2012,
Smith (2012, p. 3) notes that
conceptualisations of equality however, tend to be concerned prima-
rily with removing perceived obstacles and providing remedial tools
to educational success. ‘Equality of opportunity’ is premised on indi-
vidualised notions of discrimination which can therefore be over-
come by actions of individuals.
Smith’s analysis of the teaching standards as policy documents related
to the political hue of each successive government provides a timeline
of how the deficit notion of difference has become embedded, how
each set of standards has served to centre an assimilationist agenda and,
thereby, promote White middle class hegemony and maintain the status
quo (Smith, 2012, p. 10).
Bryan (2012) examines the Teachers’ Standards 2012 (DfE, 2012b)
with reference to the inclusion of the term ‘fundamental British values’,
found in Part Two, entitled ‘Personal and Professional Conduct.’ There
it states that teachers should not undermine fundamental British values
(BERA Race, Ethnicity and Education Special Interest Group Conference
October 2012). In her critique, Bryan (2012) explains how this phrase is
drawn from the Prevent Strategy, a counter-terrorism policy targeted at
Islamist terrorism. She argues that, not only does the inclusion of this
phrase bestow the role of cultural and moral custodian on the teacher,
but in addition it conceptualises the teacher’s role from a particular
perspective, thus signalling an integration of the teacher into the roles
of custodian and promoter of national values. These values are listed as:
Initial Teacher Education 99
‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and
tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs’ (DfE, 2012b) and as
such are not uniquely British. Thus, the project of teacher as technicist
is also coupled with the conception of the teacher as custodian of British
values and therefore accountable for upholding them. This signals the
beginning of a new concept of who teaches and becomes a teacher.
The assimilationist approach exemplified by the Teachers’ Standards
2012 needs to be considered alongside three other elements:
1. Pupil demographics;
2. Teacher demographics; and
3. The results of the annual Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) survey.
In relation to pupil demographics, the data show that schools in England
are becoming more ethnically diverse. In 2011 over a quarter of pupils
in primary/elementary schools were from minority ethnic backgrounds,
and almost 20 per cent spoke English as an additional language. Yet,
the data for teachers’ ethnicity show that only 6.4 per cent are from
BME backgrounds (DfE, 2011). When the outcomes of the NQT survey
for 2012 (DfE, 2012c) are considered with respect to the two questions
which are related to ethnic and linguistic diversity, respectively:
How good was your training in preparing you to teach learners from
●
minority ethnic backgrounds?
How good was your training to work with learners with English as an
●
additional language?
The responses show that, with respect to the first, only 54 per cent of
primary NQTs felt well prepared or very well prepared to teach learners
from minority ethnic backgrounds; and with respect to the second ques-
tion only 49 per cent felt equally well prepared (DfE, 2012c). In each case,
approximately half of newly qualified teachers felt they were not very
well prepared with respect to working with learners from minority ethnic
backgrounds and those for whom English is an additional language. One
could consider that these statistics attest to the failure of ITE to prepare the
predominantly White classes of student teachers for ethnic and linguis-
tically diverse classrooms, yet the Teachers’ Standards 2012 centre an
assimilationist agenda (Smith, 2012) which seeks to overlook the identity
of minority ethnic pupils in terms of their ethnic, cultural and linguistic
heritage, depicted as barriers to learning which should be swept away. The
process of ITE fails to prepare student teachers to understand how a child’s
100 Vini Lander
ethnic and linguistic heritage is part and parcel of who he or she is, and
how education can help children to be secure in their own identities.
Whiteness
In reflecting on the evolution of the Teachers’ Standards and how, at
each stage, the notions of difference are conceived as obstacles, and how
the role of the teacher as a technicist is to be the agent of assimila-
tion – and when we consider that the majority of the teacher workforce
is White, it is not such a great leap to link the Standards to being a
means of centring Whiteness to ensure it is securely embedded in the
process of preparing future teachers (Gillborn, 2008; DfE, 2012a; Smith,
2012). This section will discuss the notion of Whiteness as a central
organising concept which underpins teacher education policy, curric-
ulum and practice. Whiteness is the concept which exposes how struc-
tural inequalities are built into processes and practices. It is an invisible
component of how policy makers, policy interpreters and recipients
work in both complicit and unknowing ways to advantage one group
whilst disadvantaging others, namely those from BME groups.
There is a long history of studying BME groups and their successes or
failures within the education system (Coard, 1971; Stone, 1981; Gillborn,
2008; Tomlinson, 2008). The notion, ‘difference equals deficit, equals
a problem to be solved’, prevails in the underlying thinking of some
individuals. The ‘problem’ is always perceived to lie with those who
represent the ‘different other’. This conceptualisation is still evident in
the Teachers’ Standards with respect to linguistic diversity, and it deter-
mines some teachers’ responses to the BME pupils in their classrooms.
If we stop to examine this idea of the problem being the racialised
‘other’, then we expose an underlying assumption of the ‘other’ as aber-
rant, which assumes there are those who are non-aberrant or ‘normal’.
Bonnett (2000) explains how White identity has been forged through
the conquering, enslavement and domination of people through the
process of colonisation. He traces how groups once thought to be White,
such as Arabs and Chinese, were marginalised and re-categorised as non-
White over the course of time. He describes the development of a ‘hege-
monic European-identified racialised whiteness’ (Bonnett, 2000, p. 17).
It is this group that defines or represents the norm. In contemporary
society this equates to the White middle class. This underlying unspoken
measure of classification needs to be exposed. Whiteness enables us to
turn the spotlight of surveillance from the BME ‘other’ to examining the
hidden operation and exercise of power through Whiteness.
Initial Teacher Education 101
Whiteness is a concept which can be used to expose the inherent
structures that perpetuate systemic racism. Garner (2010) describes
Whiteness as a social and political construct which underpins struc-
tural racism. McIntyre (1997) notes that Whiteness is more than the
racial identity, White, and Harris (cited in Ladson-Billings, 2004, p. 57)
confirms that it is an identity which carries ‘social and material value’.
Whiteness is a racialised discourse which has been established over time
to privilege White people. It maintains their interests and supremacy
and is constructed to advantage White people. Frankenberg (2009,
p. 526) notes that ‘the term “Whiteness” signals the production and
reproduction of dominance rather than subordination, normativity
rather than marginality, and privilege rather than disadvantage’. Marx
(2006, p. 6) grapples with defining Whiteness in her study of six White
pre-service teachers. She concludes that ‘Whiteness is much more than
a racial discourse[, it is] an amalgamation of qualities including cultures,
histories, experiences, discourses and privileges shared by Whites.’
The often-cited article by Peggy McIntosh (1990) in which she deline-
ates 46 privileges which Whites enjoy is now, in the Whiteness litera-
ture, a seminal piece that others have built upon. In discussing White
advantage, Ryde (2009) acknowledges how as a White person she became
aware of the advantages associated with her identity:
Whiteness has become less neutral and more figural for me. It is as if
staring at a blank page I have begun to notice contours and shades
that were not at first apparent. So what have I seen? I have noticed
that I am advantaged by being White in many subtle ways. (Ryde,
2009, p. 36)
Ryde asserts that being White is not seen in as a racialised identity by
the vast majority of White people, and she suggests that therein lie the
roots of the problem.
The link between Whiteness and structural racism is often unclear to
some people. Chubbuck (cited in Yoon, 2012) suggests that Whiteness
is not new and is inseparable from racism. Leonardo (2002) suggests
that Whiteness and the perpetuation of racism run in tandem. He notes
that Whiteness is identified through an inability or unwillingness to
name racism which occurs as a result of the action or inaction of White
people, and this leads to inequality. Leonardo adds that Whiteness is
premised on the notion of ‘othering’ ethnicity and the ‘naturalisation’
of White as the norm, and trying to set aside the historical wrongs of
the past as a means of moving on is an attempt to hide the construction
102 Vini Lander
of dominance. It is the attempt to hide the operations of privilege and
domination that Gillborn (2008) notes is the most dangerous aspect of
Whiteness, as is the obliviousness to this aspect under which most White
people unknowingly operate on a daily basis. Picower (2009) writes
about the tools of Whiteness used daily to perpetuate its centrality. She
outlines emotional responses, such as anger and defensiveness; colour-
blind racism or, as Frankenberg (1993) would term it, a ‘color and power
evasive’ position which maintains the structures of power. The colour-
blind approach can be used to ‘justify inaction through denial, thereby
maintaining the current power structure and preserving the privileges of
the dominant group’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 250). Picower (2009) suggests
that the other tools of Whiteness, such as silence and the promotion of
the ethical, non-racist good self in teachers’ discourses, are used adeptly
to maintain the status quo. Yoon (2012) shows how Whiteness-at-work
within schools in the United States serves to maintain a race-neutral
approach to children’s questions and curiosity about each other’s ethnic-
ities and that of visitors – doing so in such a powerful way that it does
not enable children to talk about ethnicity and difference and, instead,
the discourse is about politeness. Picower (2009) would analyse such
deflections as a need by teachers to maintain and protect Whiteness.
The deflections, the protective discourses of goodness and innocence,
serve some White teachers well since it helps to keep them unsullied
by debates about race, ethnicity and racism, thereby maintaining a
false innocence which perpetuates the symbolic violence of structural
racism and inequality for those racialised as ‘other’ in their classrooms.
Rodriguez (2009) would classify this stance, not as innocence, but as
ignorant, because she asserts that in choosing not to know about, or
engage in, exposing the power of Whiteness in the maintenance of
structural racism, these people choose to be ignorant: racism is thus
perpetuated by this ignorance. Rodriguez thereby exposes the harm that
ignorant deflections, silences and inactions ultimately inflict on chil-
dren. Whiteness enables us to see White people as a racialised group
which benefits from the hidden and neutral conceptions of being White
and benefit from the invisible operations of Whiteness which serve to
reproduce structural racism.
The Practice of Whiteness in ITE
The ways in which Whiteness is embedded in the process of preparing
to teach in ethnically diverse classrooms requires careful documentation
and tracking in order to reveal its invisible operations. It is worth noting
Initial Teacher Education 103
that the responses NQTs make to the question ‘How good was your
training in preparing you to teach learners from minority ethnic back-
grounds?’ has always been one of the questions that returned the lowest
positive rates, and even NQTs in multiethnic London did not report to
be 100 per cent prepared to teach learners from minority ethnic back-
grounds. For Primary NQTs the Teaching Agency (2012c, p. 19) notes:
In the case of the minority ethnic backgrounds question; NQTs trained
by London based providers rated this aspect of their training higher
than NQTs trained by providers based in the south west government
office region (68 per cent of very good and good responses compared
with 38 per cent of very good and good responses). There were similar
variations in the responses to the English as an additional language
question with 61 per cent of NQTs trained by providers based in
London compared with 39 per cent of NQTs trained by providers
based in the south west region, rating their training as very good or
good.
The evidence shows that at least a third of NQTs in London did not feel
very well prepared with respect to teaching pupils from minority ethnic
groups. So, at least one-third of new teachers feel inadequately prepared
to teach the portion of the pupil population which is increasing rapidly.
Why should that be?
Student teachers and Whiteness
Research has shown that White postgraduate secondary student
teachers represented a spectrum of views with respect to their training
to teach BME students and to deal with racist incidences (Bhopal et al.,
2009; Lander, 2011b). The students voiced feelings which ranged from
naïve conceptions of race and ethnicity to guilt, anger and inadequacy
in the face of the incidents they had to deal with in schools. Those
who voiced naïve conceptions of ethnicity had little or ‘no exposure’
(or contact with) people from ethnically diverse backgrounds; their
naivety was shown in the vocabulary they used to refer to BME chil-
dren, terms such as ‘pupils from other cultures’, or the outdated and
unaccepted term ‘coloured’. One used the language of colour blind-
ness, stressing that he ‘almost has to stop and think to work out who
they were because it just didn’t stand out’. In another extract, Sebastian
notes that he would need to be aware of BME pupils in order to look out
for bullying to make sure the child ‘has not got problems with the other
104 Vini Lander
pupils’ (Lander, 2011b, p. 357). It is interesting to note that this student
teacher associates ethnicity as a problem which attracts bullying or is
otherwise problematic. The data did not show whether this concep-
tion was one which Sebastian had formed as part of his preparation to
teach, it would be unlikely since this interview occurred three months
after the start of his teacher education programme. Deficit notions of
BME pupils and colour blindness prevailed in the interviews with the
naïve students.
There were student teachers who, through their own appraisal,
thought they were better disposed towards aspects of ethnic diversity,
which ability they attributed to their world experiences, such as living
in London or travelling abroad. However, Stuart appeared as a rabbit in
the headlights, startled and shocked by the racism he encountered in
school from pupils and teaching assistants. He encapsulates the posi-
tion that Whiteness is naturalised and neutral, explaining his shock by
stating ‘everyone likes to believe they are neutral and not racist’ (Lander,
2011b, p. 359). The idea that he as a White male is neutral indicates that
this is a ‘norm’ by which he thinks others also operate and inadvert-
ently judge others, which Gillborn (2008) asserts is the cause of passive
racism.
In interviews with other student teachers in this cohort, some felt
guilty upon recognising their positions as novice teachers who are put
into situations in school where they are unable to question practices
which lead to disadvantageous outcomes for BME children. For example,
Steven described how two African [his term] boys who were new arrivals
in England and to the school, who spoke little or no English, were
placed in his lower-group English class. He recounts how the school
policy of placing in lower groups pupils who had English as an addi-
tional language made him feel ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘guilty’ because
they were placed in the ‘wrong group for the wrong reasons’ (Lander,
2011b, p. 361). Steven felt guilty that these two Black boys were placed
in a group with poor indigenous learning, behaviour and language role
models and, as such, the school policy would, he felt, lead to inevitable
underachievement for these youngsters.
Other students had a strong sense of their own political positioning.
and Sean was vociferous in noting that most student teachers would
pay ‘lip service to racism’ and hide behind their ‘pc shield’ (pc meaning
politically correct) with respect to discussions about racism (Lander,
2011b, p. 361). In deploying the term ‘pc’ Sean indicates that some
teachers want to act in a politically correct (pc) manner, but that behind
the shield they act and talk in ways which are not pc. The wonderful,
Initial Teacher Education 105
visual metaphor of a shield to hide behind, which relates to Picower’s
(2009) tools of Whiteness in the maintenance of the ethical good self,
is apparent in anti-racist utterances on the surface, but Whiteness, as
the dominant discourse, remains undisturbed, embedded and hidden
behind the ‘pc shield’.
Teacher educators and Whiteness
In my unpublished doctoral thesis (Lander, 2011a), which examined the
Whiteness of teacher educators, a similar spectrum of perspectives is
evident. The narratives of some White teacher educators illustrate their
lack of knowledge and experience related to race, ethnicity and racism.
The narratives show how this lack of knowledge compounds their
embedded Whiteness, which is evident in the language they used to
respond to questions about improving student teachers’ understanding
of race equality. Whiteness was revealed in a range of strategies or moves
to maintain it through the tools of Whiteness (Picower, 2009), such as
protection, colour blindness, denial, deflection, innocence, niceness
and ignorance.
The tutors appeared to want to protect students from understanding
topics such as race, ethnicity or racism and tutors made excuses about
why these aspects did not feature on the ITE curriculum or in students’
practice. Some tutors felt that the White student teachers had a lot to
do in learning to become teachers and did not need to be burdened by
additional issues, or they were good people and feared getting things
wrong when trying to deal with racism. There were others who drew on
the neo-liberal discourse of treating them as individuals, where equality
is achieved through removing a barrier for individual children (Smith,
2012) to the rather insidious notion that their own ethnicity is divorced
from their teacher self, which hints at a neutrality that teachers should
possess.
In making excuses for the student teachers one respondent described
the students as ‘not straying too far from the garden gate’, to indicate
they attended their local university and could not be expected to have
engaged with race, ethnicity and racism because the university is sited
in a predominantly White area of England (Lander, 2011a). So, implying
firstly, the students could not be expected to know about these things.
Secondly, why would they want to know about them? And, thirdly,
what use would it be anyway since most of them would teach in schools
within the locality? In this phrase there is validation of maintaining the
status quo through the dominant discourse of Whiteness. Tutors were
106 Vini Lander
divided about the ITE curriculum on offer, with some noting they do too
much; one said, ‘We do enough without making a song and dance of it’,
and others said there was not enough courseworkon these aspects.
Other tutors mentioned that teachers in school were not sufficiently
knowledgeable or experienced to support student teachers’ under-
standing about racism or aspects of ethnicity and, since most of the ITE
occurs in schools, there seemed to an air of absolution in this statement.
In fact, with training through School Direct sited largely in one school,
the Whiteness evident within ITE in universities currently will remain
undisturbed without a trace of any ripples through this narrow school-
based model.
Colour blindness was believed by a number of tutors to be a virtuous
position. They talked about a ‘common humanity’, and said that ethnicity
was only associated with external phenotypic features such as hair or
skin colour, which were immaterial to learning. Some tutors talked of
ethnicity as an impediment and, therefore, the goal of a teacher and
schools was to make ‘those pupils invisible’. The colour-blind approach is
used in the tutors’ narratives to ‘justify inaction through denial, thereby
maintaining the current power structure and preserving the privileges of
the dominant group’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 250). Frankenberg (1993) and
Anderson (2010) argue that colour blindness is just a means of denying
ethnic identity and, in doing so, centring what is considered by some
people to be the norm or White identity, so at each turn it becomes a
privileged status to preserve.
Tutors who classified themselves as having some knowledge and
experience about topics such as race, ethnicity and racism talked about
other tutors who drew on notions of the teacher as saviour (Marx,
2006) in helping BME children overcome obstacles to their learning
associated with either language or ethnicity. One tutor talked about the
‘goodness of primary teachers’, when an incident involving a Muslim
student teacher being failed on placement was discussed, adding, ‘I
would be horrified to think that [they] would want somehow to estab-
lish a typical group of survivors.’ Another tutor believed a racist incident
on her course had been ‘blown up out of all proportion’. Deflection
often involved drawing on or acting ethically or casting ethnicity as
a label and the danger of using labels. This was a means of nullifying
the debate about ethnicity and racism. However, later in the interview
the respondent who did not like labels refers to herself being White
working class, thereby illustrating how Whiteness creates, maintains
and is oblivious to the contradictions that emerge in the struggle to
centre it as a dominant discourse.
Initial Teacher Education 107
Other ways in which Whiteness operates is the recruitment and reten-
tion of BME teachers to ITE. Writers such as Carrington and Tomlin
(2000), Flintoff et al. (2008) and Wilkins and Lall (2010) have shown
how BME trainee teachers in a range of geographical settings and across
a range of primary and secondary ITE courses have to negotiate the
racism of pupils, teachers and schools to survive, or not, on school place-
ments and to pass their courses. It is not surprising, then, that only 6 per
cent of teachers are from BME groups, since their struggle to succeed is
against overt racism and institutional racism as it manifests itself in the
dominant discourse of Whiteness in ITE.
Ways forward
There are ways in which teacher educators can work against the grain
of Whiteness within policy and practice. Whilst the Teachers’ Standards
2012 are statutory, most ITE providers construct the ITE curriculum
(albeit within a finite number of weeks) within the institutions. The
curriculum offered to aspiring teachers can be constructed to support
teacher candidates’ starting points with reference to race and ethnicity
through dedicated lectures, seminars and activities which challenge ster-
eotypes, constructions of otherness and internalised racism, and to be
critically reflective about the curriculum and resources they offer chil-
dren in schools. I work with a team of tutors who endeavour to offer
these challenges to all student teachers; we work through dedicated
sessions on equality and diversity. All students have to attend the eight
sessions (15 hours) in three years on an undergraduate ITE course. Whilst
I recognise this is insufficient in developing depth of understanding, it
is the first step in mobilising our commitment to race equality and inte-
grating aspects of it within the ITE curriculum. This change has only
been possible through the dedication and expertise of a small number of
ITE tutors and a senior manager with the power to enact changes within
the curriculum. These tutors have devised and delivered the units of
learning through large-cohort sessions which are not conducive to devel-
oping individual understandings nor do they promote discussion. The
evaluation of these sessions by students is predictably varied, but one
comment which I consider to be a validation of our attempts (although
I am not sure it was meant as such) read: ‘There’s too much equality and
diversity.’ Let us hope there will be even more and that more teacher
educators have the courage of their convictions to overcome the policy
imperatives to shake the embedded prevalent Whiteness in ITE rather
than hide behind their ‘pc shields’ (Lander, 2011b).
108 Vini Lander
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