The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) shared their analysis of research on planning and delivering anti-racist education. Their Introduction to Anti-Racist Curriculum Development brings this research together.
Planning for Anti-Racist Education:
- A range of activities and learning is offered consistently over time, rather than as a one off session.
- Learning activities are designed to focus on cooperation. Children and young people who might not usually play or engage with one another are given the opportunity to work together.
- Content is carefully selected to include the work, voices and experiences of Minority Ethnic thinkers, writers and educators.
- Care is taken that content ensures that learners feel respected and included.
- Learners are engaged with planning where appropriate to ensure that wellbeing is prioritised. For example, when planning a lesson on racial equality, it might be helpful to speak privately to Minority Ethnic learners in advance to ensure that they are familiar with the content and feel comfortable with it.
- Learners are encouraged to reflect on how their learning can have a subsequent positive impact in the school community and beyond
Delivery of Anti-Racist Education
- Clear messages in favour of equality are provided to learners. These are simple and repeated consistently.
- Learners are supported to express their opinions through thoughtful processes which include elaboration and reflection.
- Learners are encouraged and supported to understand their individual role in challenging racism. This includes helping them to develop the tools to analyse and respond to racism and to identify how racism exists within Scottish society, including institutions.
- Learners are encouraged to explore how each of us is a unique individual and no one belongs to just ‘one group’ i.e. race, sexual orientation, gender etc.
- Learners are supported to consider their own view of themselves as moral and decent and to contrast that with the unfairness of prejudice and racial discrimination. This is with the acknowledgement that everyone holds biases and that we can always continue to work on this.
- Racial prejudice is carefully and consistently challenged whenever encountered.
- The presentation of negative information is avoided e.g. playing ‘devil’s advocate’, myth-busting which nevertheless repeats myths and prejudice based statements.
- Acting with empathy and viewing the world from the perspective of others are consistently modelled and supported.
- Activities and content that demonstrate the reality of racial discrimination are balanced with those which motivate learners to act for racial justice. Being actively anti-racist should be presented as the norm.
- Learners should have opportunities to reflect on their relationship with power in society. This encourages learners from majority groups to realise that their lived experience is not universal and ensures that racialised learners feel seen. Keeping the voices of the most marginalised at the centre of this work is fundamental.
- All of the above can be supported by community engagement and expert support from community organisations wherever possible.
- All of the above should be supported by robust and well communicated policies for responding to incidents of racism.
