Context, Relevance & European/International Dimension

The European Union’s Working Group on Equality and Values in Education and Training (2021–2025) has emphasised that racism-critical self-reflection among school professionals is widely recognised as a key prerequisite for fostering inclusive and equitable educational environments. In its most recent report, the working group highlights inspiring educational practices and teacher training initiatives from countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and France. However, Austria is not yet represented among these examples of good practice in addressing racism in schools (European Commission. Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture., 2023).

Similarly, within German-speaking educational research, Austria has been comparatively slow in systematically addressing racism in schools and has only recently begun to engage more intensively with the topic, particularly within the frameworks of inclusion, global citizenship education, and critical diversity literacy (Mecheril & Melter, 2025). Education systems across Europe are under pressure to uphold equality, respect and democratic values due to the growing influence of right-wing movements.

Beyond explicit or highly visible forms of racist discrimination, little attention has been given to teachers' self-reflection on their own racist attitudes concerning subtle, everyday practices, language use, and implicit mental images. Such microaggressions often operate at hidden and unconscious levels, and can only be addressed when made visible through reflection on one’s own social positioning, privileges and embeddedness within hierarchical and hegemonic school structures (Broden, 2017; Doğmuş, 2024; El-Maawi et al., 2022). This study focuses on how such processes of racism-critical self-reflection are articulated and negotiated in the everyday practices of secondary school professionals.

Research Question / Aim

This study aims to reconstruct the orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection of middle school professionals, and to identify potential avenues for transformative practice in everyday school settings. Through a comparative analysis of narratives from teachers, school social workers and headteachers, the study will explore how professional roles and institutional contexts influence opportunities for racism-critical reflection and action.

Central research question:

How do middle school professionals’ orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection emerge in their narratives of everyday school practice?

Sub-questions:

Which situations and aspects of everyday school practice prompt racism-critical self-reflection among middle school professionals?

How do institutional hierarchies within school staff shape professionals’ possibilities for critical or resistant action?

What orientations towards transformative and inclusive practice can be reconstructed from professionals' narratives?

Theoretical Framework

This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on cultural studies, sociology and educational research. Racism is conceptualised as cultural racism (Balibar, 1990; Rommelspacher, 2009) and understood as a structural phenomenon embedded in postcolonial and decolonial power relations (Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2020). Taking an intersectional perspective, racism is considered one of several interrelated dimensions of inequality that allocate power and privilege within society and educational institutions (Walgenbach, 2012). Theories of hegemony and power (Hall et al., 1994; Reckwitz, 2012) offer an analytical framework to examine how racialised norms and practices become normalised in everyday school contexts.

The study also draws on critical whiteness approaches (Tißberger, 2017) to acknowledge the researcher's socially privileged position and its implications for knowledge production and interpretation.

In the field of education, this study draws on transformative theories of learning (Mezirow, 2006) and research on teacher professionalisation, which highlights self-reflection as a vital foundation for anti-racist practice  (Akbaba et al., 2022; Helsper, 2018). Although the aims and dimensions of racism-critical self-reflection have been extensively theorised in existing research, little is known about how such reflection is experienced and negotiated in everyday school practice. To address this, the study engages with scholarship on anti-Muslim racism (Said, 2003) to analyse how religious difference intersects with processes of racialisation in European school settings.

A reconstructive qualitative research design and the documentary method are used to explore racism-critical self-reflection, including implicit beliefs, mental images and everyday practices. This method aims to reconstruct implicit, atheoretical knowledge that guides everyday actions, but which the individuals involved cannot fully articulate themselves. This tacit knowledge is considered to be part of an individual's habitus and is formed through collective social contexts. Drawing on Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, this shared experiential background is conceptualised as 'conjunctive experience'. By comparing cases that share similar conjunctive experiences — here, professional work in middle schools — the study reconstructs orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection and develops a typology of professional orientations (Bohnsack et al., 2010; Nohl, 2017; Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2014). The documentary method focuses on the ‚documentary meaning‘ of pedagogical practices, distinguishing between what is said and how it is said. Everyday pedagogical actions are analysed as expressions of underlying orientation frameworks that cannot be accessed through explicit statements alone (Bohnsack et al., 2010). The data analysis followed the four-step procedure of the documentary method. First, thematic progressions were identified within each narrative interview and relevant passages were selected for in-depth analysis. Secondly, a formulating interpretation examined what was said in the text. Thirdly, a reflective interpretation focused on how experiences were narrated, distinguishing between narration, description and argumentation. Narration and description were particularly relevant for reconstructing implicit orientations (Nohl, 2017). The fourth step involved conducting a comparative analysis of shared themes (tertium comparationis) across cases, leading to type formation. Constant comparison using minimal and maximal contrasts ensured methodological rigour and analytical control (Bohnsack et al., 2010). Sampling followed a theoretical sampling strategy. The sample consists of eleven narrative interviews with middle school professionals in Austria: seven teachers, two school social workers and two head teachers. This composition enables a comparative analysis of the ways in which different professional roles contribute to inclusive school practices. Participants varied in age, professional background, first language and religious affiliation. All participants provided informed consent and were anonymised. Data were collected through narrative interviews conducted in Upper Austria with the approval of the regional Education Directorate. The interviews, which were audio-recorded and transcribed according to established standards on talk in qualitative research (Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2014), lasted between 60 and 120 minutes. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the Ethics Committee of the University of Klagenfurt.

As the analysis is ongoing, the following preliminary findings outline themes that will be further condensed into orientations and types of racism-critical self-reflection. The results will be presented through comparative case analyses and illustrated by selected case vignettes in order to make implicit orientations and their tensions visible. Religious practices—particularly narratives surrounding Ramadan in comparison to Catholic or interreligious school festivities—emerge as recurring sites of racism-critical self-reflection. These situations reveal how school professionals negotiate their own assumptions, norms, and positioning when dealing with religious diversity, especially Islam, in everyday school practice. Another recurring theme is the narrative about pupils' parents, which implicitly addresses social class and educational background. Moreover, middle schools are often positioned in contrast to academically selective secondary schools ("Gymnasiums"), reproducing hierarchical distinctions. Such orientations are implicit and point to (structural) conditions in which racism and classism intersect, become intertwined and are normalised within everyday school routines. Considerable variation is also found in how racism is conceptualised. Some professionals describe racism as absent from their school context, while others refer to notions of racism directed against the ethnic majority. These perspectives reflect broader societal discourses and illustrate the challenges professionals face in recognising structural and micro-aggressive forms of racism within their institutional settings. Institutional hierarchies, particularly those associated with age and professional seniority, have been shown to have a significant impact on the opportunities available for critical or resistant action. Preliminary analyses show that younger teachers often have critical reflections but don't voice them in work settings due to fears for their career and relationships. Overall, the preliminary findings suggest that racism-critical self-reflection emerges from the interplay of individual orientations and institutional conditions. The study aims to contribute to discussions in teacher education and professional development across European school contexts.

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