The Relationality of Race in Education Research

This edited collection examines the ways in which the local and global are key to understanding race and racism in the intersectional context of contemporary education. Analysing a broad range of examples, it highlights how race and racism is a relational phenomenon, that interconnects local, national and global contexts and ideas.

The current educational climate is subject to global influences and the effects of conservative, hyper-nationalist politics and neoliberal economic rationalising in local settings that are creating new formations of race and racism. While focused predominantly on Australia and southern world or settler colonial contexts, the book aims to constructively contribute to broader emerging research and debates about race and education. Through the adoption of a relational framing, it draws the Australian context into the global conversation about race and racism in education in ways that challenge and test current understandings of the operation of race and racism in contemporary social and educational spaces. Importantly, it also pushes debates about race and racism in education and research to the foreground in Australia where such debates are typically dismissed or cursorily engaged.

The book will guide readers as they navigate issues of race in education research and practice, and its chapters will serve as provocations designed to assist in critically understanding this challenging field. It reaches beyond education scholarship, as concerns to do with race remain intertwined with wider social justice issues such as access to housing, health, social/economic mobility, and political representation.

Greg Vass is a Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His work in the Sociology of Education is concerned with social and Indigenous perspectives in education. His research interests are focused on investigating relationships between policy enactment, and pedagogic/curricula performative race-making practices and inequalities. This work explores how discrimination and privilege are connected to subjectivities that continue to rely on racialised social scripts and everyday practices. Building on his experiences as a high school teacher, central to his work are concerns with how educators can work towards disrupting the reproduction of raced hierarchies and inequalities within educational settings.

Jacinta Maxwell is a Pakeha New Zealander and a non-Indigenous Australian, who is currently a Lecturer at the School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. Her doctoral research examined stated and implicit intentions underpinning the inclusion of the 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’ cross-curriculum priority within the Australian Curriculum. Jacinta’s research engages with critical race theories of education, policy and curriculum, and notions of national culture in international and offshore schools.

Sophie Rudolph is a Lecturer in the Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. She has a long-standing interest in exploring issues of social justice, difference and equity in education. As a non-Indigenous, Anglo-settler Australian she has been particularly interested in the impact that colonial history has on present day inequalities in Australia. These interests frame her teaching and research practices. Her research includes sociological and historical examinations of education and investigates issues of curriculum, pedagogy and politics in education, policy and practice. Her work is informed by critical and post-structuralist theories and aims to offer opportunities for working towards social change. Her PhD thesis was awarded a Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in 2016.

Kalervo N. Gulson is Associate Professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia. His work is located across social, political and cultural geography, education policy studies, and science and technology studies. His current research programme examines Code, Data, Science and Education policy.