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no. 21_april 2025

On Education

editorial: discrimination

This issue of on_education explores the multifaceted nature of discrimination in education across diverse national and institutional contexts. The contributions examine how discrimination manifests in school curricula, higher education structures, and everyday educational practices—often in ways shaped by race, gender, class, and language. Authors address the limitations of current anti-discrimination policies, the persistence of structural inequalities, and the tensions between policy intentions and lived experiences. Using empirical, historical, and theoretical approaches, the articles engage critically with topics such as affirmative action, the role of educators and parents in reproducing or challenging bias, and the potential of critical theory to uncover systemic exclusion. The issue brings together voices from various regions including the United States, India, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, and invites readers to reflect on how educational institutions both reflect and shape broader societal dynamics of discrimination.

Anne Piezunka and Josefine Matysiak

discrimination by teachers against students: sensemaking in light of a reporting obligation

In the German city of Munich, there is an obligation to report incidents of discrimination in schools to a public complaints office since 2022. Against this background, the present study analyzes how teachers make sense of situations in which their own or colleagues’ actions could be considered discriminatory against students. We are interested in the individual and structural dimensions that define teachers’ sensemaking (e.g., biographical experiences or existing hierarchies). Interviews with teachers (N=6) were analyzed using Kruse’s data analysis procedure (Integratives Basisverfahren). The results show that the interviewees often perceived discrimination ambiguously. Three areas of tension regarding reporting behavior emerge: 1) the need for a clear case of discrimination vs. a lack of consideration of the situational context, 2) the fear that admitting misconduct in school might have an impact on existing hierarchical relationships, and 3) the interdependence among teachers, students, and the complaints office when dealing with cases of discrimination.

Bourabain, Colak, Essanhaji, Sahin & van Veen

the (im)possibility of joy in academia for racialized scholars: reflections from a podcast project

This paper draws on our podcast conversations with racialized scholars based in the Netherlands and Belgium on the (im)possibility of practicing Joy in predominantly white academic spaces. In our podcast, we approach Joy as a political act of solidarity and resistance that generates alternative ways of doing research, teaching, and community building in academia. Our conversations shed light on the way Joy is practiced both as a tool and a weapon to refuse academic whiteness and sustain alternative collective ways of being, feeling, and thinking that disrupt and move beyond extractive and exploitive academic norms, structures, and practices.

Esther Cyna

naming discrimination in school finance

Inequalities in US school finance have attracted the attention of scholars in education, economics and public policy, yet the description of “gaps” between the most and the least advantaged schools often obscures active discriminatory practices. Analyzing policies that contribute to unequal schooling through historical methods and reflecting on how to narrate them, can help further understand causality and highlight the actors who choose to challenge, perpetuate or exacerbate disparities in school budgets despite their consequences for millions of children. Following the scholarly tradition of Critical Race Theory, the emerging scholarly subfield of Critical School Finance adopts analytical language around discrimination and theft in a more active framework that sheds light on the role of public policy and governmental actors. Through an analysis of primary sources and a synthesis of the secondary literature, this article argues that discrimination and dispossession along class and racial lines are built into school funding systems.

Beth Marsden & Matthew R. Keynes

“don’t take the bait in ’88: let’s educate!” – protest, celebration and education in Australia

The article argues that educational protest offers a heuristic for understanding Indigenous political aspirations and politics in Australia. It analyses the celebrations and protests marking 150 and 200 years of European colonisation in Australia, in 1938 and 1988. Using Indigenous protest about education as an analytical and empirical frame, the paper explores how Indigenous protest drew attention to discriminatory policies, long-standing deficit narratives in curriculum, and Indigenous political aspirations. In doing so, the paper addresses a gap in research on debates about the celebration of settler nationalism in education which has typically focused on representations of Indigenous perspectives contra settler perspectives in curriculum texts or commemorative practices. This paper illustrates how paying attention to Indigenous protest, and the ways that public education and curriculum change are conceived and advocated, can shift attention to Indigenous political aspirations and the central place of education therein.

Seyran Bostancı

parental and institutional strategies of (de-)thematization of racism in daycare centers

This article analyzes the manifestation of institutional racism within daycare centers. It draws on findings from the qualitative study “Institutional Racism in Daycare Centers” conducted at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) in 2020/2021 and discusses (de-)thematization strategies concerning racism that illustrate how racism is structurally embedded in these settings. For that the article explores parental intervention strategies for dealing with experiences of racism, as well as institutional responses to such interventions. The analysis reveals how these strategies are intricately intertwined, thereby contributing to the perpetuation of institutional racism. The article provides deep insights into the complexity and persistence of discrimination mechanisms within early childhood education environments.

discrimination

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