“Glimmers of Hope”: Practitioners’ Perspectives of Racial Literacy with Young Children in England

Abstract

After the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, racial justice seems to have fallen back into performative racial liberalism. Racialised outcomes are evident in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector (0-5 years). However, the opportunity of these foundational years is often overlooked in its potential to help address these inequalities. This study aims to give practitioners a voice and explores the gap between theory, policy, and practice by seeking out the perspectives of ECEC Practitioners interacting with our youngest generation. By taking an interpretivist approach through open-ended interviews and questionnaires, this study seeks to understand the meaning practitioners make of racial literacy in anti-racist practice with young children and highlights the barriers and successes from the practitioners’ perspective. The image of a river emerged as depicting the upstream struggle of practitioners’ journey of anti-racist practice. The barriers are categorised as: fear, confidence, and Whiteness; time and capacity; and lack of guidance at the national and local policy levels. The successes experienced by the participants, or ‘glimmers of hope’, are heart knowledge; self-reflection; and the opportunity to reflect within a community. The potential of reflective communities emerges as critical in the purposeful and continuous excavation of racialised inequalities in pursuit of equity and racial justice.