Racism is a global phenomenon affecting many of the world’s peoples across all continents including Europe and Australia, with experiences such as prejudice and discrimination well-documented (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), 2018). With the 2020 renewal of, and global interest in, USA’s Black Lives Matter movement, white Australian and European peoples have begun to become more cognizant of our dichotomous positioning as both ‘multicultural’ and highly racialised societies. Immigrants to Australia and Europe experience racisms through the systems of the dominant, neo-liberal, white, patriarchal, capitalist culture. These systems of Whiteness are invisible and ubiquitous, normative, and performative (Ball et al., 2022; Moreton-Robinson, 2015) and result in similar experiences of racisms for many individuals identified as not belonging to the white social. Although the targeted groups may differ, “race…as a technology of power” (Lentin, 2020, p. 82) and the “hierarchy of different races with White people (men) at the top” (Ball et al., 2022, p. 3) drives racisms across multiple facets of society in both the European Union and in the country now known as Australia.

The 2021 report from the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) provides an example of the similarity between experiences of racisms on the European and Australian continents. The experiences of racism in interactions with policing in Europe harms many non-white people, including Roma and people of African descent (Ball et al., 2022), with “discriminatory profiling by the police…a common reality” (FRA, 2018, p. 1). Racial profiling and targeted incarceration (in both adult and juvenile systems) are common experiences for Aboriginal Australian Peoples also. Changes to policy and systems at government levels have failed to demolish institutional/systemic racisms, address white privilege, or deliver substantive improvement to disparities in the wellbeing, life expectancy, and social opportunities afforded non-white peoples globally.

Experiences of racisms in pedagogies, curricula and policy continue to impact educational outcomes for many students of colour around the world, including Roma and Aboriginal Australian students (Ball, 2022; Moodie et al., 2019). The consequent “critical education gap” between Aboriginal peoples and other Australians is mirrored globally. The impact of a lack of cultural safety (Bin-Sallik, 2003) within classrooms on this “education gap” has garnered little attention in mainstream Australia, with student outcomes in education such as attendance, literacy and numeracy and year 12 completion remaining the most common measure of the impact of education on students (Burgess et al., 2019). These outcomes remain consistently unequal when compared to non-Aboriginal students, regardless of unceasing guidance from Aboriginal Peoples (Morrison et al., 2019) and decades of change to Australian federal and state policy and educational practice.

My PhD research is grounded in the need for non-Aboriginal Australian teachers to develop an understanding of the ongoing colonisation of the place now known as Australia, and the detrimental impact this continues to have on Aboriginal students, families, and communities. It seeks to explore how the concept of “racial literacy”, first posited in 2004 by British scholar France Winddance Twine and American scholar Lani Guinier, could provide a bridge for teachers to understand and address the euphemistically described “race relations” (Lentin, 2020) within Australian education. It draws on Decoloniality and Critical Whiteness Theory as frameworks to guide a critical qualitative research study in three phases.

Theoretical framework The PhD research is framed by Decoloniality (Patel, 2016), recognising the global impact of colonial processes as still present. A decolonial approach allows for Critical Whiteness Theory (CWT) (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) as an analytical device. CWT aligns with Critical Race Theory’s fundamental precept that racisms are ordinary and usual at both individual and systemic levels (Crenshaw et al., 1995). CWT turns the theoretical lens onto white people and Whiteness in particular. It strives to interrogate the normative invisibility of Whiteness, pointing to the ways this invisibility is embodied through Education systems and teachers’ knowledges and practices. Data collection in three phases In the first phase Aboriginal secondary students will be invited to share their experiences of racisms at school. Participants will be supported to share what they choose regarding their experiences of racisms in schools and what they wish their teachers knew, felt, could do through a method of their own choosing. Inviting student participants to engage in coding and analysis of their own data acknowledges the ownership of stories, and students can control their narrative all the way through the research process. Privileging Aboriginal Australian students’ voices strives to position experiences of racisms at the centre of the study, as “we need to design research…in which accounts of racism can be solicited and represented” (Swan, 2017, p. 557). Phase two explores white teachers’ racial literacy, based on six criteria outlined by Twine and Steinbugler (2006). The narrative approach of Appreciative Inquiry will be utilised in this phase of the project, providing opportunity for open reflection upon current thoughts, feelings, values, processes, and policies (Leeson et al., 2016). Finally, a small group of white teachers from a single education site will be supported through Critical Action Research to explore the effect of developing racial literacy on their pedagogies. This approach allows teachers to explore issues of social justice through working together to consider the impact of their professional practices. Thematic analysis will be utilised to code data from all phases. As an iterative process, thematic analysis supports the fundamental responsibility of researcher reflexivity in this project. Further, thematic analysis incorporates critical frameworks to investigate phenomena within socio-cultural constructs, supporting the application of Decoloniality and Critical Whiteness Theory to the data analysis.

Students’ experiences of racisms in education are well-documented globally, and increasingly within Australia (see Moodie et al., 2019). This ontological (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) and pedagogical (personal communication, K. Sinclair, 2022) violence has a detrimental impact on the short-term cultural safety of students in education settings, and correspondingly longer-term impacts across a wide range of life domains. Teachers cannot defer pedagogical responsibility because the systemic nature of racisms is evident. Zembylas (2018, p. 94) insists that this “…is political work that needs to be done to confront the consequences of white supremacy rather than the narcissistic and sentimentalised illusion of constructing emotionally safe spaces for Whites.” Teachers must be educated about Australia’s hegemonic education system to drive educated, professional choices in their practice. Teachers’ lack of knowledge about ‘race’ and racisms, including the institutional Whiteness of education and the structural privilege of being white in highly racialised societies, delimits teachers’ roles in working in Anti-racism to decolonise the institutional racisms experienced in education. This PhD research aims to contribute to global Antiracism praxes by exploring the benefits of increasing awareness of race, racisms and Whiteness for teachers who do not experience racisms. The research methods aim to privilege the voices of students experiencing racisms in schools to honour the counter-narrative, making space for voices that are often not heard within Australian schools. White teachers need support in the essential work of delivering culturally safe education. This PhD study aims to explore whether racially literate praxes becoming central to teaching and learning can scaffold the perspective shift required to support teachers’ commitment to social justice and enable an activist teacher identity.

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