Join us for the second seminar in the Colourism and Racism Seminar Series on 9th December at 12.30pm.

Calls for initial teacher education (ITE) in England to better prepare teachers to teach in an ethnically diverse society have been made for decades, with recent events reigniting discussions around this issue. It is a particular area of concern as issues of race, ethnicity and cultural diversity have been removed from mandated initial teacher education policy.

Recommendations such as embedding racial literacy, antiracist practice and/or culturally responsive pedagogy have been made to the ITE sector, and resources are now more readily available to support ITE providers with this, yet there is little evidence of how these have been employed across the country.

Furthermore, numerous ongoing issues, including racialised experiences of minoritised students and teachers in schools, a national curriculum that fails to reflect the diversity of the country and a teacher workforce lacking ethnic diversity, raise the question of whether anything meaningful or effective has been done.

Informed by my research findings I argue that efforts are being made by some ITE providers to do this work despite its omission from mandated policy. However, unless a number of pertinent issues are addressed and resolved, teachers across England will continue to be inadequately prepared to teach in our increasingly ethnically diverse schools and classrooms. These issues, and how to address them, will be the focus of this paper.

Meet the speaker

Saffron Powell is a 3rd year ESRC-funded PhD candidate, guest lecturer and GTA in the Department of Education, Communication and Society. Her primary research areas are race, ethnic diversity, initial teacher education, and education policy. Before pursuing her PhD, she was a secondary science teacher and school middle leader for over 7 years and she has a master’s in Teacher Education from the University of Oxford.Faculty of Social Science & Public PolicySchool of Education, Communication and Society (ECS)