Becoming an anti-racist teacher: countering racism in education

Abstract

This article focuses on the who of anti-racism education by examining who the teachers are that are doing anti-racist work and what experiences influenced them to counter racism in their education practices. Taking a pragmatic approach, I use data on racism and anti-racism in schools from interviews with 27 upper secondary school teachers in Sweden to capture notions of becoming. To that end, I present five types of experiences: 1) personal experiences of racism, 2) personal experiences of other forms of oppression, 3) political socialisation, 4) encounters with anti-racism in education, and 5) experiences of racism in the professional teaching context. This plurality of experiences offers different paths to becoming an anti-racist teacher and emphasises the need to situate questions of anti-racist education in the day-to-day struggle of teachers’ lives.