'Racism it's part of my everyday life': Black and minority ethnic pupils' experiences in a predominantly white school

Body cremated. Ina Lockwood - wifehttps://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-ch-register-vol25/1389/thumbnail.jp

Introduction to fundamental British values

The introduction to this special issue outlines the current context related to the imperative within the Teachers' Standards (2012) in England 'not to undermine findamental British values' (FBV). The introduction problematises the imposition of this standard in terms of teacher identity and the invasion of professional and pedagogic spaces by the securitisation agenda. The introduction also highlights the contributions of each paper in this special issue to the academic debate on the teaching of fundamental British values in schools and within teacher education. We are very grateful to the authors who contributed articles for this special issue and who worked to very tight timescales to submit and revise their work as the debate on fundamental British values moved at a rapid pace from 2012 until the present time. I would like to thank my co-editors Sally Elton-Chalcraft and Lynn Revell for their support and hard work in helping me to compile this special issue

Resisting whiteness: anti‐racist leadership and professional learning in majority white senior leadership teams in English schools

Many Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs) are engaging in professional development to nurture explicitly anti-racist practice. Teachers' knowledge gaps about racism, its traumatic, lasting impact and how racism is generated through schooling persist within a cloak of silence. This small-scale study explores interview data from senior leaders in English schools, questioning legacies of colour-evasion and breaking silences to understand the role ‘race’ plays in their schools, appearing exigent due to Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements and the inescapable reality of racism seen in George Floyd's horrific murder. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as theoretical tools, we explore negotiations and challenges of leading anti-racist work in systems favouring whiteness as the norm. Findings show senior leaders undertaking the Anti-Racist School Award (ARSA) and/or Race, Identity and School Leadership (RISL) programme are novice ‘race’ practitioners, despite their seniority, wrestling to recognise whiteness and to connect their own ‘race’(d) identities to role-enactment and policy. They must negotiate and make the case for anti-racist leadership to colleagues trained not to notice, and mitigate wider external systems operationalising whiteness, blocking the development of anti-racist practice. We examine resistances to anti-racist work in English school systems that (re)centre whiteness

Reading ‘Fundamental British Values’ Through Children’s Gothic: Imperialism, History, Pedagogy

This paper reads the U.K. Government’s “fundamental British values” project alongside two children’s Gothic novels, Coram Boy (2000) by Jamila Gavin and City of Ghosts (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as “fundamental British values” (FBV), making it a requirement for U.K. schools to promote these values. Many critics have shown that the root of FBV lies in Islamophobia and imperialist nostalgia and suggested that the promotion of “British” values in school will exclude minority groups already under siege from racist elements in contemporary Britain. Other critics argue that the promotion of FBV reduces opportunities to explore issues of belonging, belief, and nationhood in the classroom. This article argues that the Gothic fictions of Jamila Gavin and Bali Rai offer a space in which to critically examine British history (and so, its values) in a way that is acutely relevant to these education contexts. Coram Boy and City of Ghosts use the Gothic to interrogate aspects of British history elided by the FBV project. That is, they point to Britain’s imperial and colonial history and offer a rejoinder to the Government’s insistence that “British Values” equate to democracy, respect for the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance of those from different faiths and religions. Furthermore, Gavin’s and Rai’s use of the Gothic creates a space in which the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in FBV can be explored. However, their “gothicized” histories of Britain do not render the idea of shared values invalid. The diversity and interconnectedness of the characters offer an alternative version of identity to the patronising and arrogant FBV project, which is aimed at promoting a national identity based on sameness and assimilation. Rai and Gavin look to Britain’s past through the lens of the Gothic not only to refute nationalism and racism, but also to offer a productive alternative that gestures towards a more cosmopolitan vision of identity