My research is trying to answer the question of how the education systems in different countries (Germany, Ireland, and England) are dealing with racism. Fueled by current events around the death of George Floyd and the resulting discussions around racism and structural/institutional racism, I decided to look a bit closer at how this might affect the education system. The PISA, TIMSS, and PMSS studies all showed drastic differences in achievement levels for children with an international family history compared to their native counterparts. Following that, I looked into the differences in the government documents that give guidance/advice and instructions to the education systems of these three countries, as well as the teacher training, and what the curriculum includes about racism and the different school curriculums. My research questions are:

* How are racism and discrimination in the documents of official organs inside the education system addressed, and do these documents include calls to action?
* What kind of pedagogical approach is found in the different curricula as well as in the teacher training on how racism is addressed?

The decision to look into Germany, Ireland, and England was made for different reasons. Firstly, they have very different results in the above-mentioned studies, where in England, for example, the children with an international family history perform in some areas even better than their British counterparts. Ireland has overall better results and in Germany, there seems to be a fundamental achievement gap.
The other reason why I am determined to this country constellation is the significantly different historic experiences these countries have made with racism and discrimination which makes them a very interesting subject to look into and see the different routes and developments that have taken place over time in these countries.

Racism is defined as a system that involves the whole society in which an unlawful categorization of people into groups based on their looks, ethnic belonging, or culture is taking place. Following this, that categorization is used to diminish this group and legitimize the creation of a hierarchy.
I will line out the historical development of racism and the historical events that have an impact on the countries and the way they approach racism. Further, I will evaluate how the concept of othering is relevant to the education system and how institutional racism might impact the educational results that children with an international family history are achieving.

My work will also touch on the topic of white fragility to discuss why there seems to be a reluctance to call out racism as an important and present topic in the education system. The choice of wording will also be part of my research, in which manner racism is addressed and how clear the messages go to the education system regarding racism.

Given the impact the teacher has on educational success, the analysis of the teacher education itself regarding the topic of racism and discrimination is imperative. Are new teachers prepared to deal with racism, and if so, how are they trained?

As per my definition of racism as a systematic issue that includes all of society, it is a meaningful topic in education, so determining how children are taught around this is of great importance for our development as a society. Given that institutional racism as such is not necessarily a conscious decision to discriminate against minority members but a result of structural regulations and small acts, it is also important to discuss the topic of bias in this context.

To provide information on the research questions, I am working with a qualitative content analysis based on Uwe Kuckartz and Werner Früh. For the first research question, I a, analyzing official documents from the departments for education or respective state departments that address the topic of racism or discrimination. Additionally, there will be documents from teacher units and student representatives to be analyzed for the first research question. The second question will look at the curricula of schools up to secondary school and into the contents of the teacher training. To determine the extent to which these documents can provide answers to my research questions, two category systems are developed. These are compiled from inductive and deductive categories. That means that, based on the research question and the hypotheses, I started with a set of categories and added to them when I looked at the documents and found further relevant category topics in the data. These were added to the previous system and developed so over time, so far the analysis part is not fully completed. The first question has a category system that has a graduation in the categories. That means there are different levels where a category can be fulfilled but it can also be missing, which is also a category, as it is important to make it visible when certain information is missing in a document. The category system for the second question will not have that feature. It is, in comparison, a bit simpler. It just includes categories that can be fulfilled or not. For both data sets, I work with MaxQDA as a supporting analytic system. Once the categorization is completed, I plan to put both results in context with each other and analyze the differences between the distribution of categories regarding the documents and, respectively, the countries, and that will offer information that can provide recommendations for the education system.

So far I have no conclusive results, but I would expect to find a difference in the documents and word choices regarding racism between the countries. I assume there might be some reluctance to address the topic clearly - specifically in Germany - which could potentially be explained by white fragility. I would further expect a certain difference in educational achievements to be caused by the different structuralization of the education system in Germany compared to Ireland and England. Given the current data that I have already collected, it looks like there is a significant difference in the length of the documents that the countries issue around this topic. Ireland has a rather holistic approach towards the child and does not address the topic as bluntly and clearly as England but seems to rely on positive affirmations regarding the preferred development of the child. Germany seems to avoid racism as a word and refers rather to discrimination. So far, it also seems that racism is rarely a topic in teacher's education or the analyzed curricula. In particular the last findings are concerning and should be addressed. It seems that there are different pedagogical approaches to racism in the education systems where multicultural education seems to be prevalent.

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