“They’re probably quite used to this idea of us and them”: The racialising assemblage and development discourses in school geography in England

Abstract

School geography classrooms are crucial sites where the international is taught and learned. In English school geography, the dominant mode through which the international is taught is via global development education. This article analyses ethnographic research with teachers to examine their experiences of teaching about global development in GCSE geography. Based on their accounts, it identifies the circulation of problematically racialised development discourses. Furthermore, our analysis finds evidence of epistemic, material and affective dimensions (Sriprakash et al, 2022) through which a racialising assemblage (Weheliye, 2014) is constructed around global development education in English school geography. Guided by the research question ‘How do geography teachers experience teaching about global development in the English GCSE geography curriculum in England?’, we explain how four dominant curriculum framings of comparison, simplification, decontextualization and post-racialisation function to maintain whiteness as hegemonic in the curriculum. Teachers respond to these framings with feelings of discomfort and awkwardness, yet navigate the complexities of the racialised assemblage in ways that reinforce it, but also have potential to create space for resistance to it. Throughout, we draw attention to how neoliberal educational structures of governance and surveillance reinforce the racialising assemblage and shape the labour that teachers do. We understand school classrooms as geopolitical sites of struggle (Lizotte and Nguyen, 2020) within which racialised discourses are assembled, promoted and contested. We conclude with suggestions for how the racialising assemblage we identify might be contested and overcome.