Teachers and white privilege attitudes: Correlates and consequences for in-service secondary education teachers

Abstract

While considerable research has examined white privilege in educational settings, particularly in Great Britain and the United States, less attention has been paid to in-service teachers’ white privilege attitudes, especially in European contexts. This study addresses this gap by analyzing cross-sectional data from 536 teachers across 44 Belgian secondary schools, using multilevel modeling. First, it explores the correlation between teachers’ white privilege awareness (cognitive) and remorse (affective) with the schools’ ethnic composition and teachers’ ethnic prejudice, socio-economic background, level of education and gender. Second, it investigates the relationship between these characteristics and teachers’ involvement with multicultural teaching. The findings highlight the importance of teachers’ individual characteristics in explaining variability in teachers’ white privilege attitudes and demonstrate the importance of these attitudes, particularly the affective component, in explaining variability in multicultural teaching. This study discusses the implications of these findings for future research and social policy.