Exploring issues of racism with white students through a literature-based course

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore issues of racism with a class of white thirteen/fourteen year-olds through a year's course centred primarily around literature. How would their perceptions and frames of reference shape their responses and to what extent might the texts, which strongly indicted racism, encourage shifts in perspective? Drama, videos providing social context, as well as sessions with visitors, particularly black artists, were important elements. A survey to reveal racist perceptions was administered before and after the project to the whole year group.

Apart from notes taken in class as a participant observer, my data was drawn from students' reading journals, responses to specific passages or items, transcripts of class and small group discussions, and interviews. While in initial conception my intended focus was to have been largely on the interaction between students and texts and their responses to other inputs, my lens rapidly widened to encompass the context of the classroom created by the English teacher. The result was to throw up sharply certain fundamental pedagogical issues for anti-racist teaching.

Although the study was ethnographic and most of the data qualitative, part of the survey of racist perceptions was open to quantitative analysis. Both sets of data suggested the possibility of gender differences in responding to issues of racism. While there was evidence of students opening out to new perceptions, the study details some of the considerable difficulties of developing understanding of, and challenging, racism in a predominantly white context where rcperccption is not matched or reinforced by change in social structure.

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