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‘There isn’t kind of a White History Month or anything like that for them’: equity, schooling and the problematics of group identity politics

journal contribution
posted on 2014-01-01, 00:00 authored by Amanda KeddieAmanda Keddie
This paper explores issues of equity and group identity at ‘Hamilton Court’, a large comprehensive multi-faith and multi-cultural school located in England. The exploration draws on data gathered from a study that examined the conditions, structures and practices associated with productively addressing issues of justice and cultural diversity. The paper focuses, in particular, on the voices of two learning mentors, ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Yasmeen’. With reference to a cultural event at the school based around an Asian-inspired Bollywood Dance Festival, the school’s approach to absence requests on the basis of religious observance, and the disadvantage experienced by a particular White British working class boy, the paper highlights tensions and problematics associated with issues of equity, schooling and group identity. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to debates in this area. Further illustrating the limitations of distributive understandings of equity that begin with group identity politics and fail to consider matters of context in struggles against cultural oppressions, it examines the possibilities of an equity approach that instead begins with a focus on overcoming these relations of oppression.

History

Journal

International journal of inclusive education

Volume

18

Article number

8

Pagination

809 - 822

Publisher

Routledge

Location

Abingdon, Eng.

ISSN

1360-3116

eISSN

1464-5173

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2013, Taylor & Francis

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