As arms were being raised, as statues were being toppled and as protesters marched, teachers began to look at how they, too, could contribute to the huge social change of the Black Lives Matter movement - and for the most part their instinct was to examine content.

It made sense: distortions in the substance of what we teach - the “facts of our lives” - have underpinned many of the discussions around BLM, not just in terms of what is missing from curricula, but what has been distorted, misapplied and reworked to hide the suffering of black people and to make the transgressions of white people disappear.

However, some schools began to look further and deeper. They began to interrogate not only what was taught, but also how it was taught. They asked: could our pedagogy be prejudiced, too?

One of the most high-profile examples of this was the Uncommon Schools network of schools in the US. In the past few years, it has faced criticism that some of its techniques - some of which appear in the Teach Like a Champion (TLAC) suite of teaching tools - were at risk of negatively impacting on black and other minority ethnic students. In August, it decided to respond to those criticisms.

“To become an increasingly anti-racist organisation, we must consider how our disciplinary processes, student culture and academic approach can lead to stronger student-teacher relationships and more equitable outcomes, particularly for black and Latinx students,” wrote Brett Peiser, CEO at Uncommon Schools, and Julie Jackson, president of the network.

“Our systems and policies must support our students’ growth and development on their journey to and through college - and we should decide what to keep, revise or let go of with that firmly in mind.”

One of the techniques it decided to drop for these reasons was Slant, part of the TLAC toolbox, which required students to sit up, listen, ask and answer questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. The decision prompted a social media storm of attacks on the TLAC toolbox as a whole, and accusations that the wider pedagogy of TLAC, alongside the policies of schools that often use TLAC techniques, were prejudiced, too.

In turn, this catalysed an interesting response: a counter claim from many TLAC users that, actually, their approach was less prejudiced than that adopted by their detractors.

At the heart of the debate was Doug Lemov, former managing director of Uncommon Schools and the author of the training and books that have taken TLAC around the world.

Lemov makes it clear that questioning pedagogy for possible prejudice is an essential part of a healthy democracy. However, he feels that accusations of prejudice against TLAC rely on an assumption that often, in itself, reflects racial bias. “If all you see in asking students to look at each other is control, coercion and racism, that may reflect your own low expectations of what students deserve and are capable of,” he says.

For him, a classroom where everyone “tracks” the speaker, where pupils are taught not to slouch or stare out of the window, is one where students feel that when they speak they’re being listened to and their ideas are valid - whatever their ethnicity.

“I think when it comes to prejudice, the most important thing to look at is outcomes,” he counters. “If your teaching method feels liberatory to you because it rejects authority, but results in the pupils [of colour] not being prepared to become doctors, engineers, lawyers and analysts, then you may feel pretty good about yourself, but the results of your teaching are racist.”

The positions of Lemov and his critics are vastly different. How do we know who’s right? Is there even a “right”?

It’s incredibly complex, but, as Lemov says, that does not mean the central question - whether how we teach can be as prejudiced as what we teach - should be avoided. It is important not just in terms of race, but gender, sexuality, class and many other historically marginalised groups. So, where do we start?

Intersectional identities

Of course, we’d all like to think we’re free from prejudice, but as Dr Jessica Gagnon, research fellow for the Stem Equals Project at University of Strathclyde (which focuses on women and LGBT+ in Stem), notes: “We know that the culture we’re raised in produces biases that are often unconscious, even if our heart is set on equality. We will bring our biases into our teaching. Being aware of that is important.”

That unconscious bias exists is widely evidenced across multiple disciplines, from neuroscience to sociology. And those biases are likely broad and multiple, says Heidi Safia Mirza, professor of race, faith and culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. “Identities are intersectional - those of pupils and teachers,” she explains. “We have complex classed, raced, gendered identities. When we go into a classroom, sometimes we don’t have the experience of the lives of the children we’re teaching.”

Trying to navigate those different identities and experiences is tough enough when you’re selecting content, but with pedagogy it can seem impossible to find the “right” way forwards.

Here’s an example: a recent debate in education has centred on the “correct” use of English and how far language use that deviates from the “Queen’s English” should be challenged by teachers.

Gagnon believes that being too strict on correcting the use of language may push some students to the fringes of the classroom. She points to a phenomenon called “stereotype threat” - where people are afraid of a stereotype being attached to them. One example she’s encountered is students afraid of “outing” themselves as working class.

“One woman came from Peckham and said she was in this classroom full of, quote unquote, ‘well-spoken students’ and was afraid if she spoke that the teacher and students would think she was stupid because of her accent.”

So, regarding her own university students, Gagnon notes: “I probably wouldn’t correct them publicly because I think that says, ‘Don’t speak again because I’m going to embarrass you.’”

She says international students have also said they appreciate this.

While she would note on an essay if they needed to check their spelling or grammar - and work with them to improve this - if their point was coherent, she wouldn’t mark them down.

“I don’t think that a few misspelled words or use of slang should mean you are excluded from the conversation. For me, I care more about the concepts they’re talking about,” she explains. “If you think about history, it’s not just what’s written but who gets to write it. If we are closing the door on learners who write differently, we are excluding their voices from the history that’s being written now.”

But where is the line between exclusionary pedagogy and teaching children the language they may need to access aspects of life from which they would otherwise be locked out?

For Lemov, a pedagogy that reinforces consistent use of standard English is one that gives students access to opportunity.

“We all code switch,” he says. “Everyone speaks differently in school or work [compared with] home. Most parents that I’ve met don’t have any questions about whether someone should be teaching their children to speak in the way that creates opportunity and is most economically viable.”

He also finds the implied assumption that pupils of colour - or working class - are more likely to need pulling up problematic.

“I find it hasty and possibly demeaning to assume the way young people speak is a reflection of their culture,” he says. “There are many parents who are concerned about how their teenagers speak, whether they’re black, white, wealthy or poor.”

As with the classroom routines debate between Lemov and his critics, the aim of both parties here is the same: the best future for our children and to eradicate prejudice in teaching to achieve it. But the methods that each believes are needed to achieve this are almost opposite.

Systemic bias

Why is there such divergence? While discussions on content can be difficult, these conversations can turn on competing facts. With pedagogy, the focus is necessarily more on emotion, opinion and anecdote. It is about competing goals of education and competing narratives about how best to achieve those goals. It is about ideology and individual experience: whether it is conscious or not, a teacher’s history will determine which side of the debate they fall on any given topic.

Yet how far do systemic factors impinge on that individual experience and dictate pedagogy with or without a teacher’s conscious consent?

While one would hope explicit prejudice is a thing of a past, systemic prejudice is a slippery beast that’s increasingly being shown to have slithered into the foundations of much of society.

Dr Edmund S Adjapong, a former teacher and now assistant professor at the Department of Educational Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, believes that, at least in the US, prejudice is baked into the system - and thus into the way that teaching is approached.

“In the US, public schooling started during slavery. So we know that black and brown students were not taken into account,” Adjapong notes. “Our education system caters to and values more the behaviours of white middle-class folks. For example, one person speaking at a time, waiting to be called on to answer a question, asking permission to use the restroom. But this may not be inclusive of students of colour whose cultures are community-based and rooted in trust and respect of elders.

“Acknowledging students’ cultures might look like creating spaces where multiple students are talking at a time or where they are trusted to go to the bathroom only when needed. When students are disciplined for engaging in ways that they do as a result of their culture, schools are sending a message that their true selves are not welcome.”

To counter this, Adjapong is one of the people behind HipHopEd, a campaign to steer pedagogy into a more inclusive space and to make teachers aware that how they teach may exclude large numbers of pupils (see box, below).

In the UK, there is an equivalent issue around gender bias being sewn into the fabric of pedagogy, argues Dr Victoria Cann, course director of MA gender studies at the University of East Anglia. “Historically, the British education system wasn’t open for girls. And there are those legacies in the structures of education,” she says.

The scenario in which girls might be disadvantaged is in class discussions, argues Gagnon: “There is research to suggest that girls in mixed-gender classrooms are less likely to engage in class discussion. It’s not that somehow girls have less to contribute. Instead, they’re raised to believe they need to take up less space - physically and verbally.

“We know from research that in meetings when women talk more than usual - not more than men, but just more than usual - they are perceived as taking up too much space or being too assertive. So when we’re conducting a group discussion, do we call on particular genders to speak more? Do we recognise when one gender is being left out?”

As with HipHopEd, there are efforts to counter this. Diane Reay, professor of education at the University of Cambridge, suggests that what she calls an “enabling pedagogy” could help in this situation. “Some girls might be in a much stronger position to contribute if they gain some confidence in a small group where they do collaborative problem-solving at first,” she says.

A markedly different approach is a tactic Lemov dubs “Cold Call”: asking someone who hasn’t raised their hand their opinion.

“I was working with a group of teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa and they found that Cold Call really worked,” he says. “Girls are socialised not to speak there and will never raise their hands because of the social transgression that involves. But if you ask them, they are exonerated and they find that they can speak, they are intelligent. There’s nothing more inclusive than saying to someone who’s not sure that their voice matters, ‘What do you think?’”

Class can also have an impact on the extent to which a child feels they can speak in a classroom, says Jessica McCrory Calarco, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University. Again, a shift in pedagogy can help here, she explains.

“In my research, I find that students from working classes and marginalised backgrounds are often very reluctant to approach teachers for help,” she says. “They worry about the negative stigma of people from marginalised backgrounds being treated as ‘less than’ for needing help. Teachers can help by making it clear to students they won’t be punished for seeking help, as well as offering unsolicited support.”

So individual and systemic issues may be making your pedagogy prejudiced, and both can influence how sensitive content is approached - not just in what is selected to be said, but how it is delivered.

Terra Glowach, lead practitioner with responsibility for literacy and decolonising the curriculum for Cathedral Schools Trust in Bristol, gives an example: ‘If a white teacher is presenting content about lynching and they seem quite comfortable to confront the class with it, without an awareness that students might have a family history with it, I think that lack of sensitivity is a problem. Also, sometimes there isn’t ownership of the fact that it’s continuing in society - that students will be carrying around trauma from their own experiences [of racial violence].

“One [other] thing that well-meaning white teachers might do through their pedagogy is to single out black students and ask them specifically to talk about how they feel about it [ie, racism]. Making them the spokesperson for all black people is a lot of pressure and comes from this place where white people might see themselves all as individuals but see black students as representative.”

It’s easy to imagine parallels in calling on pupils to talk about their gender or sexuality.

In addition, Charlotte Beardsley, sociology teacher at Saint Benedict school in Derby, notes it’s important to practise what you preach. For example, if you claim to be open to all sexualities but only use heterosexual couples in examples, it doesn’t add up.

Countering prejudice

So whether it is rooted in individual or systemic bias, it’s hard to argue against pedagogy being vulnerable to prejudice. The question is: how far can it be countered?

Clearly, rethinking pedagogy requires time and sensitivity, and tough questions have to be asked about practice that may need to be handled carefully. Yet, as frequently shown above, the most complex problem is that there are no easy answers here: rather, two people can believe in entirely different “correct” approaches.

Faced with this complexity - and the fear of getting it wrong - some may opt out altogether. Others may claim to be “colour blind”, suggesting that they see everyone as the same and don’t discriminate. That wouldn’t be a good option, explains Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, presidential fellow in sociology at the University of Manchester and the author of Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools, published by race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust.

“Racism patterns young people’s lives, whether through advantage or disadvantage. Not talking about it does not make it go away,” he says. “It just means that processes are made invisible and young people are not encouraged to develop the language needed to discuss the challenges they face.”

In short, it could make things worse.

Instead, some recommend an easier way of unpicking the issue than focusing on particular areas of prejudice and trying to find the “right” path: teachers should simply aim for an “inclusive culture”.

An inclusive culture is the “secret sauce” to great classrooms, argues Lemov. He advocates for the purposeful creation of “a culture where we cheer for each other, take responsibility for supporting each other, discuss ideas, listen to each other”.

Adjapong agrees that this can break down barriers: “You’re getting students with different identities to interact with each other and make sense of each other.

It starts with teachers and students having a conversation, saying, ‘I want to be able to teach you in a more effective way. So what’s been going well, what hasn’t worked well?’”

Adjapong suggests schools could use “focus groups” of pupils from different populations to inform their pedagogy. And Mirza notes that some schools get former pupils and parents to be liaison links to the community.

But it is crucial that this is not a one-hit wonder: this is not a job to be done and ticked off. It has to be an ongoing conversation, says Gagnon, and it has to treat students as individuals, not as parts of a group.

“We shouldn’t assume all black students, or all females, or all trans students, need the same thing. Because that’s ridiculous - that’s not how this works,” she stresses.

And beyond this, Reay believes that “it’s a matter of social justice that you have a range of pedagogies in your repertoire because there’s never one size fits all”.

Do teachers have time to run focus groups? Do they get sufficient training in tackling prejudice? Is using multiple pedagogies viable?

Gagnon admits that to tackle prejudice in pedagogy, “we should be more highly valuing the time it takes to teach well”.

And Adjapong says that if it is seen as a personal journey, as well as a professional responsibility, it can be tackled in a developmental, progressive way - with all recognising that this is how we really ensure that every child has the best chance at life.

“Maxine Greene was an amazing philosopher who had this philosophy of becoming - you have never arrived because you’re always becoming better,” he says. “As an educator, the students are always changing, you’re always encountering new perspectives. So we’re never done learning. We’re always becoming better - for ourselves and for our students.”

Jessica Powell is a freelance journalist

This article originally appeared in the 23 October 2020 issue