Case Study 4
Investigating Student Learning Related to Antiracism

Large urban schools in Canada tend to be racially and ethnically diverse. At staff meetings, a teacher specializing in English literature and drama articulated the importance of emphasizing antiracism within the school. As part of her daily reflection on her teaching practices, the teacher has been keeping notes on this topic in her teaching journal for the past four years. From these, she has identified classroom strategies, class assignments, and curricular resources that she feels contribute to students’ emerging awareness of, and commitments to antiracism. She has presented about her experiences as a teacher working on the topic of antiracism education at professional development conferences and is currently writing a paper on this topic. She now believes that the topic of antiracism education could also provide the focus for the research project she needs to complete as part of the requirements for her Master of Education degree, and which could then be disseminated at district-wide professional development events (and other venues) in the future.

To investigate the topic beyond what she has already noted in her teaching journal, the teacher reviews relevant literature and consults with colleagues and experts to better understand elements of racism in school settings, and the range of attitudes expressed by students and parents. She also considers different methodologies used in qualitative research in education. She envisions a multi-phased, qualitative project that would involve in-depth, open-ended interviews with Grade 8 students who are approximately 14 years old and their parents/guardians about their attitudes towards diversity in the classroom and strategies to counter racism. She develops a research proposal for the project wherein the interviews with students and their parents/guardians follow a conversational path that allows each individual to explore his/her ideas and to respond to open-ended questions. The teacher also intends to document classroom activities (e.g., copying students’ journals; video recording in-class role-plays) as part of her data set.

The interview questions, classroom-based data sources, and the design of the overall project are expected to evolve as data are gathered. As the study unfolds, the teacher will continue to review relevant literature and consult with colleagues and experts as she makes decisions about the research design, classroom strategies, and interview questions and assesses potential contributions of her research to understandings about and practices of antiracism. Because the teacher proposes to recruit her own students as participants in her research as a way to sensitize them to attitudes and behaviour related to racism, she knows she will need to develop a strategy for including some students as participants in the research while ensuring that all students are involved in the classroom activities. Her data analysis will examine the themes that emerge in the interviews and the records of classroom activities. These themes will be the focus of her research. In addition to traditional forms of dissemination for the results of the project (e.g., her M.Ed. thesis, conference presentations, research papers), the teacher also plans to write a play that incorporates some of the antiracism techniques she finds to be particularly useful to the interviewees; emergent results from the interviews and other data will guide the design of the play. She expects that this play could be performed at one of the school’s public assemblies using student actors (not necessarily research participants).