Towards an anti-racist practice of early childhood studies in higher education: challenging the whiteness of the field with critical race theory

In this article we provide a critical race theory-informed analysis of an early childhood studies programme at an English university from the perspective of the students. The article contributes to wider research on anti-racism and decolonisation in universities, since there are few studies of early childhood studies in higher education focusing on race, especially in the UK, and little research which includes student perspectives. We co-constructed a study between staff and students and drew on critical race theory, both as a lens to analyse the data and as a framework to develop an anti-racist approach to early childhood studies in higher education. Our results suggest the programme could be seen to reproduce white supremacy, understood here as a normalised system of institutionalised racial oppression and privilege, rather than a form of extremism: deeply engrained, oft subtle and potentially hard to identify. The programme does this by maintaining an assumption of whiteness and practising tokenism and essentialisation. We argue that an anti-racist framework for early childhood studies should involve an understanding of structural racism, a diversification of voices and materials, a challenge to essentialisation, engagement with inclusive and critical pedagogies and an understanding of different racial positioning.