Anti-racism education research with Professor Fiona White

Social Intelligence is one of the College’s strategic pillars and a recent opportunity to work again with Professor Fiona White, Professor of Social Psychology, from the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, was welcomely received by Pymble Ladies’ College.

In her latest research project: “RESPECT Against Racism: Advancing new anti-racist educational e-modules”, Professor White and Dr Alexandra Wong will develop and evaluate a set of online modules, co-created with cool.org and underpinned by leading anti-racism approaches. The modules use resources which will support Year 5 and 6 teachers’ delivery of an engaging and educational anti-racism curriculum and support schools to guide young people in the creation of culturally inclusive communities.

The project is especially timely as Australian society is faced with issues of stereotyping and prejudice. The College agrees with the research team that primary school teachers have a significant role to play in supporting the next generation in their development of kind, pro-social and inclusive beliefs. Professor White’s ABC documentary (The School That Tried to End Racism), and her 30 years of research in this area, shows that young children are very aware of racism and have the skills to discuss it.

The Pymble Institute took the research proposal to the College Ethics Committee, which approved it. The Committee is made up of students and teachers, and the group gave valuable feedback to the academics including clarifying the composition and methodology of the focus groups, and ideas for expanding the project to students and parents, if future funding made this possible. We are now helping to recruit interested Junior School teachers.

This will be our second research collaboration with Professor White. Our prior collaboration in 2022 and 2023 resulted in a student-developed, anti-racism and prejudice reduction curriculum. That project was initiated by a group of Senior School students intent on making sure racism experienced by some communities during the COVID-19 outbreak did not take root in their own school or local communities.

Professor White would love to hear from other schools interested in participating in her research. We are excited to see what results from this new research initiative.