This chapter introduces background information about schools , teachers and students increasingly being required to develop knowledge and understanding of Britishness and Fundamental British Values (FBV) . Since 2007 politicians have offered hegemonic ideas about the meanings of Britishness and called upon the teaching and learning of Britishness as necessary for social cohesion. This endorsement of national identity has in recent years evolved into the FBV duty where schools have now been placed in a position where they must actively promote FBV. The chapter also examines how identity, national identity and nation are defined in the literature, as well as the intersections of multicultural and White Britishness .
Teaching Britishness and Fundamental British Values
In the past, perhaps governments may have discouraged citizenship education , preferring docile subjects to radical citizens who challenge the status quo (Heater 2001; Andrews and Mycock 2008), but today critically examining and embracing new conceptions of belongings and identities is becoming more and more necessary. Educationalists witness Britishness and British values debated in popular, academic and political spheres (House of Lords 2008; Brunel University 2016) “at unprecedented levels” (Ward 2009: 3). This is a contrast to decades before when there was “relatively little public debate about the meaning of Britishness ” (Carrington and Short 1995: 221) when political rhetoric seemed to doggedly cling onto defence of an exclusive White Britishness (Ward 2004). Yet paradoxically, the government reacted angrily when The Parekh Report suggested that symbols of Englishness or Britishness represented Whiteness (Gilroy 2004) , denying the intersections of Britishness , Whiteness and racism.
Emphasising the reasons it is important to listen to stories about Britishness , in this book, I report on the outcomes of employing a critical pedagogy framework when exploring identities, as well as on the expectations and experiences of trainee teachers , and young people and their Art teachers when it comes to learning and teaching about Britishness . With its non-hierarchical and non-elitist approach, critical pedagogy empowers teachers and students to collaborate; they can work together to create a schooling space that emboldens students’ voices, stimulates dialogue and recommends reflection and action to attain goals of social justice . Education should strive to seek “the opening up of possibilities through the exploration of alternative understandings, the critical application of evidence and argument and the development of the skills and dispositions necessary to act on the possibilities” (Sears and Hughes 2006: 4). This book will therefore describe how education can promote the pedagogy of possibility through advocating the alternative and championing the critical .
In this chapter, I introduce the backdrop against which schools, teachers and students are required to develop knowledge and understanding of FBV. By writing this book, I aim to “make hegemonic forms of subjectivity and identity strange” by “problematizing and relativizing” (Weedon 2004: 4) concepts of Britishness and FBV , while remaining mindful of race , nation and ethnicity as “constructed (not inherited) categories, shaped by political interests exploiting social antagonisms” (Cohen 1995: 2). “Melancholic nostalgia” seeps into contemporary discourses of Britishness harking back “for a monochrome Britishness that probably never existed” (Gidley 2014: n.p.). To counter this monochrome and melancholic depiction of a mythical Britishness of the past that has seeped into our national imaginary, this book moves forwards by including the voices of ethnic minority and White working-class communities as they seek to rethink and redefine contemporary (national) belongings and identities. Rather than teaching students about politicised and hegemonic versions of Britishness , I draw upon the ways teachers can choose to galvanise young people to speak boldly about what it means to be British. This book addresses the ways (trainee) teachers are working out how they might best incorporate exploration of identities in their lessons. Teachers and students working together can counteract “the power of the rhetoric of ‘Britishness ’” (Andrews and Mycock 2008: 143) for, as this book substantiates, there is no singular way to experience Britishness .
Chapter 2 outlines features of educational, urban and critical ethnography , arts-based educational research (ABER) , as well as critical race methodology (CRM) and critical pedagogy which I believe are necessary in enabling participant voice and empowerment , thereby advancing social justice and social change . Chapter 3 explains the potential of critical pedagogies for teachers and students wanting to explore identities, social experiences and belongings. Drawing upon empirical research conducted with trainee teachers, and school students and their teachers, Chaps. 4–7 detail how Britishness and FBV teaching are perceived by trainee teachers and experienced by young people and their Art teachers. I ...