Everyday race-making pedagogies in the classroom

Abstract

In this paper I examine the ‘pedagogies of positioning’ performatively played out within the Australian high school classrooms I observed. The study aimed to develop a better understanding of how teachers pedagogically racialise the classroom in and through discursive encounters with students. The social analysis of these data accepts that teachers and students (and the researcher) performatively do race in ways that locate, construct, and negotiate racialised identities and relationships. A collection of ‘chronicles’ are presented that help reveal the ‘everyday’ discursive practices of both teachers and students that continue to rely on racially stereotypical social scripts that sustain discriminatory racialised hierarchies. The article aims to (re)emphasise why the classroom remains a valuable location to interrupt the reiterative power of Whiteness, in addition to gesturing to potential ways forward with opening up alternative ‘lines of flight’ for young learners.