This is a summary of a talk given at the IATEFL 2019 Conference, which appeared in Liverpool Conference Selections, edited by Tania Pattison.
How can we improve student learning? Motivation, materials, training, technology, approaches and assessment all focus on what teachers do in the classroom to help learners learn. Yet one barrier to learning is rarely talked about: which teachers actually get into the classroom. In my experience, black teachers are often denied the opportunity to teach because of their race.
In 2017 a recruiter in Beijing told me she does not hire black teachers because ‘students think black teachers are from Africa’. In another Chinese education company, the sales director kept records of teachers’ skin colour to ensure only white teachers were involved in the sales process. And although the headteacher of a Shanghai school agreed to hire South African teachers, there was a proviso: whites only.
However, racism in TEFL is not exclusive to China. Participants in this presentation shared anecdotes from other parts of the world. Teaching in Saudi Arabia as part of their hajj, British-born Muslims, often of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage, report being treated as second-class teachers compared with their white colleagues. In the UK, students assumed their teacher was a non-native speaker because of his Geordie accent and skin colour.
The problem with these anecdotes is that is that they do not adequately represent the prevalence, the effects, or the causes of racism in our industry.
Measuring racism
To measure racism in other industries, researchers create fictitious CVs, some with traditionally ‘white’ sounding names and others with immigrant or minority-sounding names. Researchers then use these to apply for the same jobs and measure the number of callbacks to interviews each CV receives. A meta-analysis of such studies in the USA looked at 55,842 applications for 26,326 positions and found that ‘Since 1989, whites receive on average 36% more callbacks than African Americans’ and that there has been ‘no change in the levels of discrimination against African Americans since 1989’ (Quilliana et al. 2017: 2). A study commissioned by the UK government made 2,961 applications for 987 jobs and found that whites received 78% more callbacks than ethnic minorities; in the UK education sector, they received 23% more callbacks (Wood et al. 2009).
Racism in TEFL
To attempt to measure racism in TEFL recruitment, I used a similar research method to Quilliana. I included photos of a black teacher and a white teacher on the CV, in addition to traditionally white and black-sounding names. These fictitious teachers both had 2:1 degrees from UK universities, online TEFL certificates and around 1.5 years of teaching experience. I then used the CVs to apply for 250 teaching jobs: 50 in Europe, 100 in Korea and 100 in China.
In Europe, the white and the black candidates received exactly the same number of callbacks to interviews. In Korea, the white teacher received 33% more callbacks than the black candidate. In China, the white applicant received 64% more callbacks than the black teacher.
The roots of racism
Why do recruiters discriminate? A 2014 study found that ‘employers attempt to appease their customer base by interviewing fewer blacks (relative to whites) in jobs that require contact with customers’ (Nunley et al. 2014: 25). It seems possible that recruiters in Asia may also be more concerned with parent and student reactions to black teachers than with their ability to teach. This raises the question: Do parents and students actually care about race?
To find out, I surveyed 151 adult students and 97 parents of young learner students in China, asking respondents to rank eight factors related to choosing a teacher including ‘appearance’ (a proxy for race), ‘attitude’, ‘being a native speaker’, ‘L1 ability’, ‘nationality’, ‘personality’, ‘qualifications’ and ‘relationship with students’. Parents and students ranked ‘appearance’ as the least important of these factors. This suggests that race might be less important to students and parents than recruiters believe.
Conclusions
How can we improve student learning? With better teachers. Elsewhere in IATEFL Conference Selections you can read about what it is that better teachers do. But when better teachers are denied opportunities because of their race, we miss the opportunity to work with superior colleagues and students miss the opportunity for a superior education.
References
Nunley, J., A. Pugh, N. Romero and A. R. Seals Jr. 2014. ‘An examination of racial discrimination in the labor market for recent college graduates: estimates from the field’. Auburn University Department of Economics Working Paper Series.
Quilliana, L., D. Pagerc, O. Hexela and A. Midtbøenf. 2017. ‘Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PNAS.
Wood, M., J. Hales, S. Purdon, T. Sejersen and O. Hayllar. 2009. A Test for Racial Discrimination in Recruitment Practice in British Cities. Leeds: Corporate Document Services.