Name/Title to go here

Respecting Difference:Race, Faith and Culture for teacher

educators in HE

Heidi Safia Mirza

Professor of Race, Faith and Culture

Goldsmiths CollegeUniversity of London

Access and ‘cultural capital’

• Ken was advised not to apply to the high status university for his (PGCE) because ‘African Caribbean students had difficulty getting in’

Recruitment

Equalities and positive action

• Dave said it would be unfair to accept Sam since they couldn’t give him the time and support he needed to bring him up to the level expected

• Linda however stressed that the different routes that ethnic minority students come through enrich the course

Retention

Gendered religious racism

‘Muslim Women make poor teachers ...they are too passive and acquiescent to teach effectively .

The tutor insisted this was an accurate assessment of all Muslim women teachers

he admitted was harder on Kalila for this reason

progression

Creating ‘safe spaces’

• Simon said ‘ black boys were underachieving as, ‘they are just not suited to academic work...the same genes that affect your IQ affect your skin colour.’

• Another white female teacher agreed because ‘why are 100 metres runners black and all the swimmers white?’

• Simon felt he was being picked on when he was just being honest.

Towards a critical pedagogy for HE educators• What do we mean by ‘equality’

for students in challenging ‘multicultural’ situations?

• What are our principles of professional and academic engagement and how do arrive at them?

• What social, political and cultural change do we want to achieve?

Engaged Pedagogy

The Academy is not paradise. But learning is a place paradise can be

created. The classroom with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility...( a place) to demand for ourselves and our comrades an openness of mind

and heart that allows us to face reality..

to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the

practice of freedom.

Bell hooks : Teaching to transgress