Education should change the world

Education has the power to shape people’s lives. When education is truly inclusive it opens doors and opportunities, but when inclusion becomes a problem, it can just as easily close them.

The Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths has a long history of breaking down barriers. Senior Lecturer and sociologist, Anna Carlile, is no exception. Her pioneering research looks to understand and address issues of social justice and inclusion within our education system.

“I’m a sociologist that looks at inclusive education, so any kind of barrier to inclusion is my focus. I’m really passionate about doing research that is participatory, co-constructed and amplifies people’s voices.”

Deep and lifelong impact

Education in the UK is facing some significant challenges, from lack of representation to underinvestment. These issues can have a huge impact on a person’s life and the opportunities that are open to them in the future.

“A huge area that is problematic in our education system at the moment is lack of funding. What that means is that children are missing out on early intervention that could completely change the pathway of their life. You can see the traces of that lack of funding and lack of support all the way through a child’s life. At Feltham Young Offenders Institution, for example, the proportion of young men with autism is extremely high. It is really tragic because if they’d had proper diagnosis and support, they would not end up in the criminal justice system.

“It has a deep and lifelong impact. If we don’t address these problems in our educational system, they will shut down opportunity, aspiration, and what people think is open to them in terms of study and jobs in their future.”

“Another area of problems come from the fact that teaching staff don’t represent the children that they’re teaching. Teachers are overwhelmingly white middle-class women and if you interview black teachers who are starting out in the profession, they talk about how they walk into a room and the kids are amazed and so pleased to see it. We’ve got a big problem with representation. And of course, the higher up you go, the worse it gets – the more white and male it gets.”  

A tool to improve the world

As well as being a senior academic at Goldsmiths, Anna actively leads research to help address social justice issues within the education system. Her recent studies have included work around Black girls’ experiences of neighbourhood safety and violence, LGBT inclusion in faith communities, and challenges for transgender children and young people.

“I see research as a tool to actively improve the world. With all the research that I do, I try to make it really useful from the moment it starts. I carry out participatory methodologies – this is where I start by getting relevant individuals into a workshop and working with them to develop a really good research question.

“I’m genuinely asking for their opinion on this particular subject that I’m researching, it will be my research data but when they leave the room they’re also going to have shared their personal experience in a way that’s going to change how teachers teach. So that’s what I’m interested in doing.

“I try to do research that will help with social justice issues. So, for example, I’ve done quite a lot of research with a charity that supports young transgender children and their families. By working on this research, it gives the charity a chance to connect with a university and that increases the validity of its work. This will then help them to further their charitable, policy and campaigning aims to drive the changes needed.”

Decolonising the curriculum

The Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths doesn’t just talk about inclusion and social justice, it actively works to remove prejudice from student recruitment, its curriculum, and its assessments. 

“Social justice and representation are woven through everything we do in the department. The notion of decolonising the curriculum has been happening here for many years, so we’re always trying to be more inclusive and representative in our curricular content and in the modules that we teach.

“To further diversify one of our longer written assessments and make it more inclusive for neurodiverse students, we gave them the opportunity to submit part of their work as a podcast. Not only does this increase the inclusivity of the assessment, but it means that we can share the amazing stories of our students and their communities more widely.

“We try to weave inclusive practice into our recruitment strategies. We do application workshops for Black men and women who want to go into teaching, supporting them to complete their applications. We have also developed a protocol to support students who have experienced racism whilst they are on their school placements.”

Although they are working to a curriculum that is heavily regulated by Ofsted, Anna and her team are passionate about opening up conversations around social justice, and challenging the norm.

“When it comes to our teacher education programmes it’s hard because we have so many regulatory requirements to teach a packed curriculum of very specific topics. So, we try to weave it in as tightly as we can. Every conversation that we have, we always try and open it up to those questions of social justice.”

Education’s function is empowerment

The Department of Educational Studies is grounded in the theory of Critical Pedagogy. This was first developed by leading educator and philosopher, Paolo Freire.

“Critical Pedagogy is what underpins everything that we do in the department. Paolo Freire said that education should change the world. He talked about ‘reading the world’ to change the world through education. The first step is finding out what’s wrong with the world, and then the next step is learning how to change it. Education’s function is empowerment and that’s the bottom line.

“A lot of our teaching focuses on ensuring that people with lived experience are able to teach the rest of us what we need to know about it, but also to have their experiences validated.”

Find out more about Anna’s work, and the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths on the department’s web page. You can also hear Anna in conversation with student Sachelle as they discuss all things education.