Racism and Anti-Racism in Elementary Schools (ROAR)
Short description
Racism is today a part of many students' everyday school life and contributes to creating a systematic inequality between students, which is a challenge for many schools to handle. On one hand, there are clear statements in Swedish laws and curricula that schools must work to counter racism (Lgr 22, SFS 2009:567), on the other hand, there is uncertainty among school staff about what racism means and how it can be handled. Previous research on racism and anti-racism in school has mainly concerned explicit racism among teenagers, therefore there is a need to study everyday racism more closely among students of younger ages.
The concept of everyday racism (Essed, 2002) is central to the study. This refers to the often unconscious patterns of everyday actions that create unequal conditions for students in school.
Theoretically, we adopt an empirical openness to the fact that racism can relate to different categories, such as skin color, ethnicity, religion, and unfounded notions of race. In addition, there is an interest in whether and how everyday racism interacts with social class and gender.
The study is conducted through ethnographic data collection at three elementary schools, where we observe and interview students and school staff over 2.5 years, as well as collect texts of significance for the project's themes. The choice of schools is based on demographic variation, which enables analyses of the importance of context for how racism is expressed and responded to in the schools.
Purpose and research questions
The purpose of the project is to contribute with knowledge about how everyday racism emerges and is challenged in elementary school. The project is based on the following research questions:
- How does everyday racism emerge and is challenged in the schools?
- How does everyday racism interact with social class and gender in the schools?
- How does everyday racism emerge and is challenged in different school contexts?
Participating Researchers
Emma Arneback (project leader)
