Acknowledging and Interrogating the Place of Race and Privilege in Comparative and International Education

Abstract

In the United States and other Anglophone countries in the Global North, there exists a rich and lengthy literature on how white teachers and teachers-in-training can and should begin to recognize, question and challenge their own privilege. Indeed, entire literatures have been developed around problematizing whiteness, and teacher education programs regularly incorporate this literature into preservice courses as an expected part of teacher training. However, despite similar proportions of white educators and researchers-in-training in comparative and international education, a similarly thorough discussion and unpacking of privilege is relatively lacking. Comparative and international education graduate programs rarely (if ever) incorporate multicultural education courses similar to those that have become staples in North American teacher education, and the literature interrogating whiteness in comparative education is still nascent. However, in 2015 several significant steps forward were taken into this dearly needed conversation, opening potential lines of continued inquiry. This essay outlines and begins to explore several of these directions for the future of the field: namely, critical self-studies of comparative educators, ethnographic research of racial dynamics in international education development organizations, and critical discourse analysis of prominent documents in international education and their recognition (or lack of such) of the role of race in sustaining global educational inequities.

Citation

Straubhaar, R. (2016), "Acknowledging and Interrogating the Place of Race and Privilege in Comparative and International Education", Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2016 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 71-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920160000030006