lecturer in front of students

Seed project: Ways to deal with racism in teachers education programs

In this seed project within Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in Change, we investigate how racism is understood and negotiated in contemporary teacher education programs and how students are trained to identify and address racism in their forthcoming professional practice.

Project information

Project name
Ways to deal with racism in teachers education programs. A study on racial bias, wicked problems, and anti-racist work in policy and practice
Project manager
Charlotte Silander
Other project members
Jesper Andreasson, Reza Arjmand, Henrik Nilsson, Åsa Trulsson
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University
Financier
Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in change
Timetable
2024–
Subject
Pedagogics and educational sciences (Department of Pedagogy, Faculty of Social Sciences)

More about the project

The Swedish national curriculum explicitly states that diversity and equality are fundamental values for schools across all levels. Teachers must advocate and operationalize these values in their teaching practices and are obliged to confront and combat racism, xenophobia, and discrimination in school contexts. However, teachers often experience challenges and insecurity in recognizing and rectifying racism. At the same time, the scholarly debate indicates that practices continue to be entrenched in racist norms and practices.

The project investigates how racism is understood and negotiated in contemporary teacher education programs and how future teachers are trained to identify and address racism in their forthcoming professional practice. The project intends to explore the overarching philosophy and conceptions underlying the curriculum document and how teachers and other educational actors use and interpret policy.

Further, we will investigate how students, that is future teachers, receive and interpret their education on the relevant subject matter. Through collecting in-depth qualitative data, the project will develop theoretical insights regarding how racism is addressed in teacher education and thereby contribute to knowledge about the intersection of policy and practice. The gained insights is expected to enrich the responsiveness to racism in teacher education programs and form a basis for how teacher education can be developed so that teachers receive training to address racism adequately.

The project is a part of Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in change and includes reseachers from Studies in Curriculum, Teaching and Evaluation (SITE), Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Ethnographic Forum, and Center for cultural sociology.

Staff