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Between Ideal and Reality: Racializing Practices Against Primary School Students and Racializing Attributions of School Performance.
Malmö University, Faculty of Education and Society (LS), Department of School Development and Leadership (SOL).ORCID iD: 0009-0009-9317-7086
2024 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Based on a 2020 survey answered by 10% of Sweden's licensed primary school teachers, this paper will provide a unique insight into the Swedish teacher corps’ attitudes and experiences of racialization in primary school. Analyses reveal paradoxes between ideals and reality, coexisting logics of equality and practices of difference. For instance, 99.5% believed everyone in schools should counteract racist behavior, yet 43% thought students with a migrant background performed worse due to difficulties complying with Swedish norms and values. Furthermore, students who were presumably excluded from normative Swedishness were more likely to be subjected to racism by school staff. Teachers' own likely exclusion or inclusion in normative Swedishness influenced perceptions of racist treatment.Survey responses link to the school's wide range of othering practices, indicating among others racialized attributions of students' performance and compliance. Maladjustment was racialized as something non-Swedish, as a lack of Swedish norms and values. A textbook example of how notions of Swedishness are loaded with positive content while notions of non-Swedishness are loaded with negative content. Drawing on psychoanalytic and postcolonial perspectives, the paper examines how othering split and categorize human traits and attributes when, for example, motivation and commitment to school are racialized. Internalized splits and categorizations create conflicts between normativeprocesses, which try to maintain splits and categorizations, and counter-normative processes, which resist and refuse to accept them. Conflicts visible in the paradox between racializing understandings/practices and anti-racist ambitions. Perspectives on internalizations of racist power hierarchies explore how individuals' understandings of themselves and their environment interact with surrounding power structures, challenging binary notions of being racist and not being racist. In the fight against racism, it's crucial to raise awareness of normative processes and strengthen counter-normative processes.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024.
National Category
Pedagogical Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-67394OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-67394DiVA, id: diva2:1860243
Conference
Nordic Conference on Racism and Education 2024: Uppsala University 15-16 May.
Available from: 2024-05-23 Created: 2024-05-23 Last updated: 2024-08-05Bibliographically approved

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Nilsson Mohammadi, Sara

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CiteExportLink to record
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  • apa
  • ieee
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