Teaching to transform the curriculum (T2TC)
Building frameworks for racial literacy
News
BERA & Black History Month 2025
To celebrate Black History Month this October, the British Educational Research Association (BERA) will be highlighting a range of noteworthy contributions in our latest work promoting race, diversity, and equity in education.
Teaching to transform the curriculum (T2TC)
A new BERA-funded report explores how racial literacy can be embedded into secondary school curricula. Based on surveys and dialogic groups with Leicester educators, the study reveals a need for practical, whole-school approaches to anti-racist education.
Key findings are:
- Teachers need language, confidence, and support to challenge racism.
- CPD is often inconsistent and emotionally demanding and should be formalised.
- Racial literacy must move beyond EDI initiatives and be central to curriculum design with principles embedded across governance and subject areas.
BERA Blog
Below are the some of the latest BERA Blog posts on the theme of race, ethnicity and education, including:
- Dr Silhouette Bushay’s blog post which responds to Njilan Morris-Jarra’s and Ebinehita Iyere’s (2025) report See Us, Hear Us: The Perceptions and wellbeing of Black Girls in London secondary schools
- BERA President, Marlon Moncrieffe’s blog post on decoloniality and education which is part of the 10 years of the BERA Blog series
- a BERA Blog special issue, guest edited by Dr Karamat Iqbal, exploring how the education system must recognise the current context in the light of the racist riots of summer 2024 in England
What are Black British schoolgirls telling us?
Njilan Morris-Jarra’s and Ebinehita Iyere’s (2025) report See Us, Hear Us: The Perceptions and wellbeing of Black Girls in London secondary schools has been circulating around social media and...
Decoloniality and education: Seeing and knowing beyond the locus of enunciation
This blog post presents decoloniality as education in being emancipated ontologically in sense and epistemological enlightenment. Seeing and knowing beyond the locus of enunciation What is the...
Seeking a new paradigm for antiracist multicultural education
English society and its education system have been through several phases of multicultural education. The current context for race, racism and hope education was discussed by Vini Lander in her...
Making teaching an antiracist profession: An urgent invitation to BERA members
The antiracism framework for initial teacher education and training (ITE/T) in England is an ongoing project for our team, engaging with ITE/T providers across England, with the aim of making...
Raising Critical Confidence as a root to knowledge of self
hooks (1994, p. 34) advises us to ‘renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions and society so the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our...
Addressing education inequality for Black and ethnic minority students in schools
One of the most challenging debates in education among schools, academic researchers and policymakers in the past three decades has been how to close the achievement gap of Black and ethnic...
Invisible in plain sight: Similarities of race-denial in two European education contexts
Schools in England are now moving towards a new national curriculum, but what might this mean for anti-racism initiatives in education (Kebede et al., 2025)? The Curriculum Review sets out its...
Tracing the footsteps of anti-racism: From my journey to our collective responsibility
Reflecting on my own educational and professional journey – from my time as a teenager, as an undergraduate student teacher, and now as a professor in England – it is clear how crucial it is...
Reclaiming our roots in higher education: A call for policy development to address hair-based discrimination in UK educational institutions
A crucial yet often overlooked aspect of educational equity is the need to address hair-based discrimination in UK educational institutions. While racial inequality in education is well...
Narrating self, narrating us: Autoethnography in Black women’s storytelling
Telling stories has been part of my upbringing since birth. My Jamaican immigrant grandparents used stories to shape my identity, build character, and share their histories – stories of arriving...
Beyond navel-gazing: Why is there a lack of Black male teachers in the United Kingdom?
‘Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.’―Paulo Freire In this blog post, I will share how autoethnography has shaped my doctoral research on...
BERA Announces Professor Heidi Safia Mirza as the 2025 John Nisbet Fellow
Since 2014 BERA has awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship to recipients who are deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to educational research over their career. Named in honour of our first...
Presidential Seminar Series – Anti-racist education in Northern Ireland: Progress, Problems and Prospects
On Tuesday 4th November 2025, the BERA Presidential Seminar Series will hold an online event to focus Northern Ireland. During a period of significant educational transformation, and in the...
Race Equity Policy
BERA has redeveloped the previously agreed ambitious policy and action plan for addressing racial inequities within the Association and within the wider research community to build on the progress...