Conference Agenda

Context, Relevance & European/International Dimension

The European Union’s Working Group on Equality and Values in Education and Training (2021–2025) has emphasised that racism-critical self-reflection among school professionals is widely recognised as a key prerequisite for fostering inclusive and equitable educational environments. In its most recent report, the working group highlights inspiring educational practices and teacher training initiatives from countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and France. However, Austria is not yet represented among these examples of good practice in addressing racism in schools (European Commission. Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture., 2023).

Similarly, within German-speaking educational research, Austria has been comparatively slow in systematically addressing racism in schools and has only recently begun to engage more intensively with the topic, particularly within the frameworks of inclusion, global citizenship education, and critical diversity literacy (Mecheril & Melter, 2025). Education systems across Europe are under pressure to uphold equality, respect and democratic values due to the growing influence of right-wing movements.

Beyond explicit or highly visible forms of racist discrimination, little attention has been given to teachers' self-reflection on their own racist attitudes concerning subtle, everyday practices, language use, and implicit mental images. Such microaggressions often operate at hidden and unconscious levels, and can only be addressed when made visible through reflection on one’s own social positioning, privileges and embeddedness within hierarchical and hegemonic school structures (Broden, 2017; Doğmuş, 2024; El-Maawi et al., 2022). This study focuses on how such processes of racism-critical self-reflection are articulated and negotiated in the everyday practices of secondary school professionals.

Research Question / Aim

This study aims to reconstruct the orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection of middle school professionals, and to identify potential avenues for transformative practice in everyday school settings. Through a comparative analysis of narratives from teachers, school social workers and headteachers, the study will explore how professional roles and institutional contexts influence opportunities for racism-critical reflection and action.

Central research question:

How do middle school professionals’ orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection emerge in their narratives of everyday school practice?

Sub-questions:

Which situations and aspects of everyday school practice prompt racism-critical self-reflection among middle school professionals?

How do institutional hierarchies within school staff shape professionals’ possibilities for critical or resistant action?

What orientations towards transformative and inclusive practice can be reconstructed from professionals' narratives?

Theoretical Framework

This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on cultural studies, sociology and educational research. Racism is conceptualised as cultural racism (Balibar, 1990; Rommelspacher, 2009) and understood as a structural phenomenon embedded in postcolonial and decolonial power relations (Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2020). Taking an intersectional perspective, racism is considered one of several interrelated dimensions of inequality that allocate power and privilege within society and educational institutions (Walgenbach, 2012). Theories of hegemony and power (Hall et al., 1994; Reckwitz, 2012) offer an analytical framework to examine how racialised norms and practices become normalised in everyday school contexts.

The study also draws on critical whiteness approaches (Tißberger, 2017) to acknowledge the researcher's socially privileged position and its implications for knowledge production and interpretation.

In the field of education, this study draws on transformative theories of learning (Mezirow, 2006) and research on teacher professionalisation, which highlights self-reflection as a vital foundation for anti-racist practice (Akbaba et al., 2022; Helsper, 2018). Although the aims and dimensions of racism-critical self-reflection have been extensively theorised in existing research, little is known about how such reflection is experienced and negotiated in everyday school practice. To address this, the study engages with scholarship on anti-Muslim racism (Said, 2003) to analyse how religious difference intersects with processes of racialisation in European school settings.

In Europe, and globally, international migration and the refugee crisis are significant areas of debate and tension (European Commission, 2026; Jacobsen & Piekut, 2023). At the beginning of 2026, the European Commission announced the European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy, a five-year strategy outlining the EU’s political objectives on migration, which include more assertive migration diplomacy methods and stronger border control initiatives (European Commission, 2026). Perceived threats from ethnic diversity have resulted in decreased tolerance of difference, fueled by extreme right movements and political parties, have increased tensions, distrust and misinformation in host countries surrounding migration, the development of social unrest and these stricter policy regimes (Borgonovi, 2012; Forcier & Doufour, 2016). Trust has an enormously important social function in helping to establish connections between individuals, groups and cultures that are different from one another and in supporting migrants with social and cultural integration (Borgonovi, 2012; Örkény & Székelyi, 2009). Borgonovi (2012), in comparing levels of trust and tolerance between different European countries, notes that education may help with improving levels of trust and tolerance in highly diverse contexts and there is a need to determine factors that promote trust and tolerance to improve social cohesion. This paper argues that trust is a prerequisite for collective knowing and action and explores innovative approaches to building trust with culturally and linguistically diverse migrant learners.

This paper is based on a larger study from Canada, which had the research objective of developing a more equitable and supportive approach to immigrant education and community building. This paper addresses the research question: what educational approaches support building trust with culturally and linguistically diverse migrant learners? The research project which produced the empirical data upon which this paper is based involved the development and evaluation of a pedagogical approach designed following a strengths-based teaching model. Key findings from the empirical data of this study will be used to answer the research question.

The theoretical framework used to develop the pedagogical approach combined theories on situated solidary building (Nagar & Geiger, 2007; Routledge & Derickson, 2015) and embodied learning as a decolonizing praxis (Ng, 2018). Situated solidarities are built upon ‘partial synergies’ meaning that similarities between individuals are recognized, but the group does not have to be homogenous, because there is a simultaneous recognition and respect for difference (Routledge & Derickson, 2015). This duality is significant for developing trust amongst culturally and linguistically diverse learners, because while trust can be more easily developed when similarities are observed amongst individuals (Borgonovi, 2012), finding ways to work across differences without creating inequalities and marginalization is equally important. Within the theory of situated solidarity building, the complimentary process of radical vulnerability has been explored for how it enhances situated understanding and the building of trust (Habiburahman & Alamgir, 2023; Nagar & Shirazi, 2019). Embodied learning approaches support building trust at a deeper level, by acknowledging the whole person in learning and recognizing the significance of emotion and affective dimensions of learning (Ng, 2018).

Participation in this educational research project was described as a “deep and immersive experience”. Participants were surprised by the levels of trust and bonding that emerged. Trusting one another was identified as essential to developing emotional bonds that supported intercultural learning and knowledge exchange. Radical vulnerability supported mutual understanding and trust. The educational solutions for building trust amongst linguistically and culturally diverse migrant learners shared in this paper are a topic of educational interest that will be particularly relevant to educational researchers, scholars, practitioners and policy makers working in European and international contexts at the nexus of migration, social justice, educational quality and equity.

Previous research shows that racial hierarchies continue to inhabit educational spaces in Finland (Kurki, 2024; Alemanji, 2016) as well as other Nordic countries (Stachurska-Kounta, 2025). Non-white students are aware of their disadvantaged position in society (Kurki, 2024) while white students are privileged to remain ignorant towards racial hierarchies (Peltola & Phoenix, 2022). Although whiteness should not be essentialised as a universal experience (Twine & Gallagher, 2008), white supremacy, as an oppressive power structure, maintains colonial values and positions people who do not fit expectations of whiteness outside the norm (Ahmed, 2007).

The aim of this presentation is to outline the main arguments for the summary of my doctoral thesis. Drawing from three journal articles published as part of my doctoral research (Jones et al., 2025; Jones et al., forthcoming; Jones & Mikander, forthcoming), I explore current challenges for practising antiracism pedagogy in Finland and question how dialogue could be used as a tool to challenge colour-evasiveness (Annamma et al., 2016) and silence around race. The main research questions are:

1. How are the concepts of race, racism and whiteness framed in the empirical materials – expert interviews, teaching guides and discussions with groups of young people?
2. In what ways, and to what extent, could dialogical praxis shape antiracism pedagogy?

In approaching the empirical materials from an antiracism pedagogy perspective, the theoretical framework draws from Franz Fanon’s work on the processes of Othering (1952/2021) as well as Paulo Freire’s and bell hooks’ work on critical pedagogy. More specifically, the Fanonian argument of white supremacy creating “a racist structure” (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 72; see also Fanon 1963/2001), which manifests in processes of Othering across transnational boundaries, functions as the starting point for exploring racialising processes in educational settings. Contemporary educational practice that results in Othering is rooted in the colonial process.

Furthermore, Freire and hooks’ belief that dialogue is foundational for forming critical learning communities that question societal hierarchies has guided the theoretical and methodological thinking for this thesis. Both, Freire (1968/2017) and hooks (1994), perceive dialogue as a tool for questioning hierarchical power structures and building communities with the aim for a more just society. In this thesis, I consider how the critical pedagogy might be applied in Finland today as a moral and political praxis that encourages young people to rethink their perception of societal hierarchies and prepares them for social justice action. Alemanji (2016) argues that antiracism education in Finland requires more participatory methods.

I particularly focus on critical approaches to race from the perspective of whiteness – how might antiracism pedagogy look like in a context where the ideology of white supremacy dominates in educational settings. The work of Fanon, Freire and hooks mostly centres around working with people who experience oppression. However, they all believed that those with (white) privilege become dehumanised by their own oppressive actions and position in society should they not stand up for justice, highlighting the importance of critical education to change oppressive systems.

Questions of power and oppression are often intersectional (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2020). Antiracism should be perceived as a practice that is not limited to race but questions all power structures, such as gender and class (Alemanji, 2016; see also hooks, 1994). In this thesis, the argument centres around how overcoming silence around racial hierarchies might look like in practice in Finland, but the empirical discussion includes intersectional analysis when appropriate. Although the context of the research is on education in Finland, its theoretical framework and methodology add to the international conversation that recognises racism as a continuous barrier for educational equity.

Black African international students are already telling us how power operates in higher education. This paper asks whether education research is equipped and willing to listen. It does not position Black African international students (BAIS) as vulnerable populations needing support, nor as case studies through which broader governance failures can be illustrated. Instead, it positions them as the site where power becomes visible. Universities across Europe claim cosmopolitan identities: welcoming, diverse, internationally minded. Yet for BAIS in Scottish higher education, these ideals coexist with hostile immigration regimes, racialised institutional cultures, colonial legacies, and governance structures that reproduce the inequalities they claim to address. Power operates quietly through policy, institutional norms, and societal narratives about belonging, but it becomes visible when examined through the experiences of those who live within its contradictions.

This paper asks: how do BAIS, as people who live inside these contradictions daily, understand and diagnose the governance systems that shape their higher education experiences? And what does their positional knowledge reveal about the deeper structures of power that a policy focused analysis alone cannot capture? This question emerges from a growing recognition that governance of international students cannot be understood through policy as neutral instrument operating independently; it is embedded within and shaped by colonial legacies, racialised knowledge systems, media narratives, and institutional cultures (Bhambra et al., 2018). Together, these constitute the cosmopolitan trap: universities pursue internationalisation while governance systems simultaneously reproduce racialised and colonial precarity. BAIS do not simply experience this trap; they expose it, revealing the gap between institutional claims and lived realities.

Theoretically, the research draws on Critical Race Theory, postcolonial scholarship, and Black feminist thought, not as an assemblage of frameworks but as tools performing specific analytic work. Critical Race Theory examines how race operates structurally in institutions claiming neutrality or meritocracy. Postcolonial scholarship traces the historical governance of African students from Commonwealth diplomacy to contemporary hostile environment measures, showing the persistence of colonial power in mobility regimes and knowledge systems (Bhambra, 2014; Mbembe, 2016). Black feminist thought, particularly Patricia Hill Collins’ work on the matrix of domination (Collins, 2000, 2019), provides the conceptual foundation for treating BAIS not as research subjects but as situated knowledge producers. Those navigating intersecting systems of power, race, class, nationality, and mobility develop epistemic privilege, revealing structural contradictions that dominant perspectives cannot see.

The research is situated within the poly-crisis framing of Morin and Kern (1999), in which entangled crises compound rather than operate independently. For BAIS in Scottish universities, hostile immigration policies, colonial legacies, racialised institutional cultures, media narratives about African mobility, and students’ identity negotiations interact to produce compounded effects. BAIS experiences are not peripheral to the poly-crisis; they are a site where it becomes visible. The cosmopolitan trap marks the convergence of these entangled crises and exposes the contradiction between institutional rhetoric and governance practice.

This paper contributes to the conference theme of Knowing and Acting by asking: whose knowledge counts? Understanding power in higher education governance, particularly during a poly-crisis, requires listening to those for whom power is lived and not just abstract. By centring BAIS as epistemic authorities, the paper argues that understanding the poly-crisis in higher education requires expanding what counts as valid knowledge. This move is not only epistemological; it is methodological and political. It insists that those positioned as subjects of governance are often better positioned to diagnose it than those who administer it (Hall & Tandon, 2017; Timmis et al., 2024). BAIS are not waiting to be studied; they are already interpreting the system. This paper takes that seriously.