Research Update: Anti-Racism in Education Project

 The CREAN research team has been working very hard over the past few months on a project that is focused on the experiences and barriers faced by racialized students in the BC public school system. With the literature review completed this summer, the team decided on conducting surveys as well as interviews and focus groups with students. Meanwhile, to get the perspective of others within the school community, interviews and focus groups will also be conducted with parents and teachers. The ethics application was submitted to the Community Research Ethics Office (CREO) in November and the project was approved in January!

After getting the perspective of the incredible advisory committee, the research team decided to run a pilot study at Victoria High School to test the methods of the research on a smaller scale before expanding the project to the entire province in September. The project was approved to move forward at Victoria High School and the research team is currently in communications with the administration to set-up a plan for the project. As of right now, it seems as though parts of the project, including the interviews and focus groups, will be able to take place in person. This will likely begin in May and go until the end of the school year, at which point the research team will analyze the data and try to post an initial paper. Beginning this project locally will allow the research team time to deepen their understanding of this issue and then meet with the advisory committee again for more counsel before branching out across the province. Additionally, this will allow CREAN to recruit racialized students to be a part of the advisory committee, which will allow their voices to be heard at every step, from the planning to the implementation of this study.

In addition to this project, CREAN will be running an anti-oppression book club for educators over the summer. These sessions will allow for open and honest discourse about anti-oppressive practices and allow teachers to implement these frameworks into every course that they teach. The research team is very excited about the ethics approval, advisory committee meetings (both past and future), anti-oppression book club, project roll out and data collection that will occur in the coming weeks and months! If you have any questions or suggestions about this project, please do not hesitate to reach out to us by email at jake@creansociety.org. Thank you for reading this update about the Anti-Racism in Education Research Project!