Barriers to success for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) student teachers in Undergraduate Initial Teacher Training programmes in England

Title: Barriers to Success for BME student teachers in Undergraduate Initial Teacher Training programmes in England. Aim: This study aims to contribute to growing research about barriers faced by BME students in Initial Teacher Education in England. The issues of identity and diversity continue to be marginalised within ITE and are often taught as an ‘add-on’. This research intends to take one step further towards addressing that status quo. Content: There is currently little research into how Black Minority Ethnic (BME) students in Initial Teacher Education perceive their development, both professional and personal, during their time at university and school. The decision to undertake this study was taken as data indicated that a number of female BME students were struggling to perform as well as their white counterparts academically especially in the core subjects. The data for this study are based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews conducted with ten female BME students on an Undergraduate BA Primary Teaching Degree (three years QTS) in a university based in the South of England. Comparisons are made between performances of these students and their white counterparts both in school and university. The aim is to understand the reasons behind this negative trajectory so that BME student teachers can be helped to develop their potential to the same degree as their white counterparts. This research will draw on critical race theory as a theoretical framework to analyse how students perceive the role of their ethnic identity in developing them as competent teachers and how one can be used to enhance the other. Feelings of ‘belonging and exclusion’ which exist within higher education in the cultural and social contexts of English universities (Bhopal and Rhamie, 2013) will be explored. Also, Implications for ITE policy, the curriculum and practice with particular reference to the institutional and school – based interface of ITE programs will be discussed. Link to the conference: As a part of ‘thinking deeply about teacher education’, there is a need for ITE tutors to critically engage with their own understandings and historical narratives of how discourses about identity and inclusion have developed in order to inform their pedagogic interactions with students on these critical matters (Johnson, Lachuk and Mosely, 2012). References: Johnson Lachuk, A.S. and Mosley, M. (2012) Us and them? Entering a three-dimensional narrative inquiry space with white pre-service teachers to explore race, racism, and anti-racism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15, 3, 311-330 Bhopal, K.& Rhamie, J. (2014) Initial Teacher Training: Understanding ‘race’, diversity and inclusion. Race Ethnicity and Education, 17, 3, p. 304-325