ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1520607
This article is part of the Research TopicCritical Racial Consciousness Among Diverse Youth: Global Perspectives and Educational PossibilitiesView all articles
ROOM FOR DISCOMFORT WHEN TEACHING ABOUT RACISM
Provisionally accepted
- Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway
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Many show emotional ambivalence, and in many cases discomfort, when dealing with sensitive topics such as racism, and research has shown that teachers tend to avoid addressing racism in schools because they lack appropriate tools. This article describes a pedagogical method – giving room for discomfort – that was conducted in seminars with six groups of pre-service teachers at a Norwegian university in 2018 and 2019. The seminars focused on racism and prejudice and used virtual reality as a didactic tool. Theoretically based in the framework of the Pedagogy of discomfort, the method emphasises that allowing room for discomfort when teaching about racism can be a valuable pedagogical strategy. By facilitating a classroom environment where both minority and majority students have space to share their perceptions of racism, including those that are uncomfortable, one can both increase understandings of racism and equip students with tools to handle situations related to racism that may arise in their future classrooms
Keywords: Racism, pedagogy of discomfort, norm-critical pedagogy, virtual reality, VR-didactics Engelsk (Storbritannia) formaterte: Engelsk (Storbritannia) formaterte: Skrift: Kursiv formaterte: Engelsk (Storbritannia) formaterte: Engelsk (Storbritannia) formaterte: Engelsk (Storbritannia)
Received: 03 Dec 2024; Accepted: 22 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Faye. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Reidun Faye, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway
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