Inclusion on the margins: exploring multicultural education in predominantly White areas

Abstract

At a time when the Western world is facing major sociocultural and geopolitical turbulence through far-right and anti-immigration protests, it has become even more important to practise multicultural education. This is particularly pertinent in unique topographies that remain predominantly White, despite experiencing an increase in their global majority populations. This article is based on a doctoral study that explored teachers’, parents, and students’ experiences and understanding of multiculturalism in mainstream primary schools in an under-researched geographical location in southwest England. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with adult participants, students’ classroom activities, field notes, and classroom and corridor displays. This article focusses on findings from the students’ classroom activities by analysing the ways in which teachers designed and conducted them. Findings reveal varied levels of understanding and skills on the part of teachers relating to lessons around multicultural education in predominantly White areas where existing opportunities to experience diversity are already considerably limited. The findings highlight the need for teachers to have race-conscious, culturally responsive professional development, which is essential for creating an oasis of safe and respectful spaces that genuinely include global majority students in primary education.

Keywords

multicultural education predominantly white areas global majority communities multiculturalism student-teacher interactions classroom conversations

Introduction

The torturous killing of George Floyd in the USA in 2020 brought to limelight talks concerning race equality and cultural diversity in British schools. However, in recent times, the upheaval of far-right and anti-immigration demonstrations across Britain is threatening its democratic foundation which is meant to be based on mutual trust, egalitarianism, and multiculturalism (Modood, 2024). As an example, over 110,000 people participated in the far-right street protests led by the activist Tommy Robinson, which are considered the largest national event to have taken place in decades, spewing racist and hate speech (Vinter et al., 2025). There is a need for renewing the multicultural commitment in British schools for promoting respectful inclusion and a sense of belonging for all communities of individuals, irrespective of whether they belong to the dominant majority or the ethnic minority communities, whom I call global majority communities. My study location is a geographically remote city in southwest England. It is unique in the sense that although it has witnessed a two-fold increase in its global majority populations in a decade, it remains predominantly White (ONS, 2022; PCC, 2023). Teaching workforces in predominantly White schools often end up sharing similar principles and mentalities that shape their pedagogic and curricular choices (Lander et al., 2024; Lander and Santoro, 2017; Sleeter, 2017). This may significantly affect students’ experiences because many teachers may have limited knowledge around multiculturalism and underestimate the crucial role of diversity (Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2004; Lander, 2014a; Race, 2014). This situation leads to under-representation of students and parents from global majority communities in these schools guided by an education system that is run in accordance with the interests of White people from dominant majority in mainstream society (Lander et al., 2024; Sleeter, 2017). Those who do not conform to these interests in White areas may be ignored as others or outsiders (Bhopal, 2018, p. 25). There are many studies (Demie, 2021; Li, 2010) concerning global majority in areas with high ethnic diversity. However, these communities continue to be overlooked in my study location specifically, where they may feel vulnerable and lack confidence (Pac-Soo and Taylor, 2023) and, as scholars (Bagchi, 2024, 2025; Cline et al., 2002) hold, in predominantly White areas, in general. The interests of White people shape social relations within particular social contexts, often resulting in inherent prejudices and racial hatred (Pac-Soo and Taylor, 2023; Rogoff, 2003; Skerrett, 2008a), no matter how unintentional this might be (Bagchi, 2025). However, my study location has registered an increase in hate crimes and religiously aggravated incidents (Mamluk and Jones, 2020; Pac-Soo and Taylor, 2023). Therefore, in my study’s geographical context, I believe that multicultural education may help facilitate global majority students’ inclusion in school settings. From this perspective, my study addresses the literature gap on multicultural education as an under-researched topic in a region with limited ethnic diversity. My research question revolved around how teachers, parents, and students describe their experiences and understandings of multiculturalism in four mainstream primary schools in Southwest England. The present article focusses on students’ classroom activities aimed at exploring how the teacher participants understand and engage with multicultural education within classroom practices. These understandings significantly shape the schooling experiences, inclusion, and sense of belonging of students from global majority communities.

Multicultural education

As a normative concept, multiculturalism recognises different ethnicities, religions, genders, races, and socio-economic statuses (Banks, 1999; Nieto, 2017). It involves a political ideology including the state’s responsibility to recognise group or community differences through rights within a liberal democracy (Kymlicka, 2018) and a social justice ideology to address historical inequalities experienced by some communities (Kymlicka, 2010). Multiculturalism also includes an approach to immigration, wherein the state adopts measures to include immigrants while the latter negotiate their identities between their country of origin and the host country (Kastoryano, 2018; Meer and Modood, 2011). However, multiculturalism has also been sharply criticised for its innocent celebration of cultures and for being non-radical and apolitical (Bonnett and Carrington, 1996; Ladson-Billings, 1994) without trying to address racism and societal inequalities (Gillborn, 2013a).

Despite criticisms, both multiculturalism and multicultural education support equitable opportunities. Multicultural education can be considered a school reform movement that is necessitated though relevant teaching procedures, organisational frameworks, and educational materials to acknowledge students across diverse backgrounds and social classes (Sanahuja et al., 2020; Skerrett, 2008a, 2008b; Sleeter and Grant, 2008; Tonbuloglu et al., 2016). By informing about existing societal diversity, it supports outright rejection of racism and exclusion necessary for ensuring a basic education standard for all students (Aydin, 2012; Parekh, 2000). Multicultural education may boost empathy among students by promoting an atmosphere of recognition of each other’s cultural perspectives, which, in turn, is conducive to improving their academic achievement (Parekh, 2000; Tonbuloglu et al., 2016).

I consider multicultural education deeply connected to a commitment to race equality as recognition and celebration of diverse cultures is insufficient unless equality of people across communities and backgrounds is not accepted. Therefore, the commitment to race equality helps check racial bias (Banks, 1993) against global majority communities and supports the latter’s positive self-explanations and institutional accommodation (Modood, 2019). Multicultural education consists of two essential elements: equity and cultural awareness (Bagchi, 2024, 2025). It serves two important purposes. First, it facilitates inclusion of students from the increasing population of global majority communities. Second, it informs students across communities about multiculturalism, thereby seeking to prepare all students for the multicultural society that Britain is. This dual function is aimed at promoting students’ resilience through respectful recognition and inclusion of global majority communities (Bagchi, 2024, 2025).

A brief history of multiculturalism in England

Multiculturalism in England is closely tied to Britain’s broader colonial and post-WWII immigration history. Modern multiculturalism is largely linked to post-WWII immigration from South Asia to address labour shortage (Ashcroft and Bevir, 2019; Gillborn, 2016; Lander et al., 2024). Migrants faced racism and exclusion, prompting assimilationist policies in the 1960s, such as promoting the use of only English language at home (Alladina and Edwards, 1991; Troyna and Edwards, 1993). A shift towards integration followed, as reflected in Roy Jenkins’ definition advocating cultural diversity and mutual tolerance, though interpretations varied (Race, 2015; Troyna and Edwards, 1993).

It is worth mentioning the Windrush as a fundamental episode in the history of multiculturalism in England. A vessel named the Empire Windrush arrived on England’s shores in 1948, carrying many first Caribbean immigrants who eventually came to settle down here after World War II as full citizens (Wallace et al., 2022). Windrush generation refers to over 300,000 people, including men, women, and children from the Caribbean who came to the host country Britain between 1948 and 1971 (Hewitt, 2020; Wallace et al., 2022). More recently, the term has been linked to a public scandal, laying bare the extent of racism experienced by long-settled migrants with roots in former colonies (De Noronha, 2020; Slaven, 2022), after it emerged that hundreds of British citizens, mainly the children of the Windrush generation had been wrongly detained, deported, and denied legal rights (Hewitt, 2020; Wallace et al., 2022). This scandal not only highlighted the years of struggle of the parents of the Windrush for their non-inclusion (Wardle and Obermuller, 2019), but also mistreatment of their children by the government, who experienced social inequality in the domains of employment, education, housing, health and occupation (Wallace et al., 2022), thereby revealing decades of racist, hostile, and anti-immigrant politics in Britain (El-Enany, 2020; Slaven, 2022; Wardle and Obermuller, 2019). I believe that this scandal also revealed demonstrated lack of competence in relation to racio-cultural diversity.

Educational policies and reports, including the Plowden Report (DES, 1967), revealed institutional failures to support global majority students and families, highlighting systemic resistance to adapting to a more diverse society (DES, 1974). The Swann Report (DES, 1985, p. 315) emphasised an interconnection between two objectives: ‘on the one hand, meeting the educational needs of ethnic minority pupils, and, on the other hand, broadening the education offered to all pupils to reflect the multi-racial nature of British society’. However, the Report lacked an explicit reference to racism and was sharply criticised as being tokenistic and assimilationist (Ball and Troyna, 1987; Gillborn, 2013b; Troyna, 1986, 1987). Although the Education Reform Act of 1988 established the national curriculum as a means of promoting the British way of ensuring integration, it continued to overlook the unique cultures of global majority students (Tomlinson, 2012; Troyna and Edwards, 1993). The Crick Report (QCA, 1998) led to the introduction of citizenship education in secondary schools and inspection-based preparation in primary schools, focussing on volunteering and political literacy. However, it was integrationist in assuming that global majority communities needed to assimilate and presenting them as less law-abiding (Osler, 2017; Osler and Starkey, 2009). It also overlooked structural barriers like poverty and racism, framing citizenship as earned rather than a right (Arnot and Dillabough, 2000; Osler and Starkey, 2009).

In the 1990s, the Macpherson Report (Macpherson et al., 1999) presented a contrast from previous reports by acknowledging institutional racism and it recommended curriculum reforms for race equality, although its impact on anti-racist education remained limited (Gillborn, 2008, 2016; Race, 2015). The Cantle Report (Cantle, 2001) highlighted the dangers of communities living ‘parallel lives’ (p. 9) and called for intercultural contact, shared values and cross-cultural initiatives in schools. Despite encouraging multicultural recognition in education, it largely overlooked racism within communities (Race, 2015). The Ajegbo Report called for a new curriculum focus on ‘identity and diversity’ (DfES, 2007, p. 97). While it aimed to promote multicultural understanding, it failed to fully engage with racism and democracy, and highlighted teachers’ lack of training in delivering effective citizenship education (DfES, 2007; Race, 2015). Despite some positive recommendations, citizenship education remains inconsistently implemented, particularly in primary schools (DfE, 2015a; Ofsted, 2023). National and global incidents, such as the 2005 London bombings, led to a shift away from multiculturalism and towards security-focused policies like Prevent, which disproportionately targeted Muslim communities and stigmatised global majority students (Jerome et al., 2019; McGhee and Zhang, 2017). More recently, the BLM movement and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and Israel-Lebanon wars, as well as anti-immigrant and far-right demonstrations across Western countries, including Britain have received global attention. These serious developments demonstrate that racism, Islamophobia, genocide, and antisemitism remain evil forces to reckon with.

Coming back to my study context in England, the curriculum remains largely ethnocentric, failing to reflect societal diversity (Tomlinson, 2023). The key challenge for recent governments has been to balance ethnocultural diversity or multiculturalism with the promotion of British values (McGhee, 2010). This could be better addressed through multicultural education, which is the focus of my study.

Primary national curriculum and role of teachers

The primary national curriculum in England includes subjects and guidelines for students aged 5–11. Despite the extensive nature of the 201-page curriculum document, a thorough review of the curriculum suggests that it gives limited attention to multicultural awareness (Bagchi, 2025). Points 4.5 and 4.6 (DfE, 2015b, p. 8) refer to supporting pupils taking English as an Additional Language (EAL), reflecting a focus on overcoming language difficulties. The integration of multicultural components beyond the religious education curriculum within core curriculum subjects appears to remain limited. However, cultural adaptation is also key to inclusion, particularly in relation to whether students feel psychologically connected and accepted within the school environment (Qvortrup and Qvortrup, 2017). With the population in Britain becoming increasingly diverse (ONS, 2022), with increasing global majority students, I argue that it is important for the curriculum to include clearer guidance on addressing their cultural and emotional needs (Bagchi, 2024, 2025). These factors are vital for fostering a sense of belonging, which can enhance students’ psychological well-being, emotional attachment, and support their academic achievement (Allen et al., 2021; Baumeister and Leary, 2017). Despite repeated policy statements (discussed in the previous section), calls for a more ambitious curriculum (Ofsted, 2023) to ensure students’ wider development (Ofsted, 2024), and ongoing public discourses, the actual promotion of multiculturalism as a foundation for a broad, diverse curriculum remains uncertain in England. It is essential to counter the continuing dominance of an ethnocentric curriculum (Moncrieffe et al., 2020), which largely upholds the values and priorities of the dominant majority. There is a need to move beyond superficial cultural references to ‘saris, steel bands and samosas’ (Troyna, 1986, p. 24) towards a more meaningful and integrated approach to multiculturalism.

The revised Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2021) offer limited focus on the essential themes of equality and inclusion, particularly in relation to ethnicity, race, and religion, which can significantly affect educational experiences of global majority students. Research suggests that initial teacher education (ITE) remains largely deracialised (Smith and Lander 2023), and in the absence of statutory guidance (Gillborn et al., 2016), teacher educators often find it difficult to incorporate race and ethnicity meaningfully into the curriculum (Lander, 2014b). As a result, many teachers lack the relevant training (Miller, 2021) and necessary skills and courageousness to teach sensitive and difficult topics, including responding to the real-world challenges that students face beyond the classroom (Lander 2015; Lander et al., 2024). An embedded anti-racist strategy within the ITE curriculum (Smith and Lander, 2023) may help teachers challenge educational inequalities based on deficit-based and stereotypical assumptions about global majority communities (Alvaré, 2018; Bagchi, 2024; Kleen and Glock, 2018). Racist stereotypes are generalised ideas reflecting historically derived societal perceptions about global majority communities (Bagchi, 2024). Hence, as classroom leaders and role models for students, teachers are intellectually and morally accountable to play a crucial role (Bagchi, 2024) in uncovering how specific communities are framed and projected in classroom conversations, thereby ensuring educational and social equality.

Theoretical framework

My theoretical framework drew on three sociocultural strands of scholastic perspectives: figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998; Holland and Lave 2001), Rogoff’s sociocultural theory (2003) and Nasir and Hand’s (2006) work on identity and power. Figured worlds are culturally constructed spaces where individuals, such as teachers and students, create and negotiate their identities through social interactions and engagement with mediating cultural artefacts like the curriculum resources. These worlds reflect broader historically derived power dynamics, including the disproportionate distribution of resources across socially defined groups such as the dominant majority and global majority communities (Holland et al., 1998; Holland and Lave 2001). Rogoff (2003) highlights how culturally grounded, everyday interactions contribute to learning through guided participation, where peers and adults influence mutual understanding and development. In schools, teachers play a crucial role in shaping students’ development by either extending or constraining their opportunities, thus influencing their sense of belonging within the school atmosphere. Finally, Nasir and Hand (2006) add that identities and learning trajectories are significantly shaped by race, ethnicity, power, and privilege. These social factors influence the access individuals have to cultural artefacts and life opportunities. Together, these sociocultural concepts derived from the three strands of scholars emphasise that schools are not neutral spaces, but sites where historical and contemporary inequalities are sustained and reproduced. Understanding how teachers facilitate students from global majority communities in navigating these spaces is key to understanding how these students are included, and multicultural education is practised in primary education, if at all, in my study’s specific context.

Study context and methodology

The study was conducted in a city located in southwest England, which has lately experienced a two-fold rise in global majority populations with roots in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. However, the study location remains predominantly White, with 94.9% ethnically White British people (ONS, 2022). It is also characterised by educational isolation, which is a situation where a school experiences restricted access to resources (e.g. high quality workforce, financed school improvement intervention, and school support) for school improvement due to difficulties connected to school location concerning geographical location, cultural diversity, and socio-economic conditions (Ovenden-Hope and Passy, 2019, p. 4). My qualitative study within a case study design explored teachers, students, and parents’ experiences and understanding of multiculturalism in four mainstream primary schools (educating 5–11-year-old students). For data triangulation, multiple data collection sources were employed, which included semi-structured interviews with eleven teachers and six parents, observation of students’ classroom activities, and field notes, supplemented by corridor and classroom displays. I respected ethical guidelines related to several issues, including informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality (BERA, 2024). Reflexive thematic analysis was applied for data analysis, enabling my critical reflection and intense coding process through the identification and interpretation of both common and specific patterns across data (Bagchi, 2025; Braun and Clarke, 2022).

This article focusses on findings generated from students’ classroom activities by analysing how teachers designed and conducted the activities. Key stage two students (aged 7–11 years) participated collectively in three classroom activities over three lessons, spanning for an hour each on three separate days. On the first lesson, students were asked to find two similarities and differences between Britain and a chosen country. On the second lesson, the classroom activity required students to write a letter to a penfriend sharing information about their culture. On the third and final lesson, students guessed festivals, food, and clothes related to global majority communities. The activities were initially designed by me. My positionality as a researcher of colour settled in the UK for a long time influenced my equity-focussed study. That is why my participants belonged to dominant majority and global majority communities. Minors’ voices were as fundamental as those of adults in eliciting understandings and experiences of multiculturalism. In designing the activities, I took care to ensure that the tasks were age-appropriate, dialogic, and reflective, enabling students to draw on their prior knowledge, cultural encounters, and everyday school learning and interactions. The three lessons were structured in a way that allowed scope for comparison, personal cultural expressions, and collective cultural recognition, thereby generating layered insights into students’ multicultural awareness. My long experience as a Hinduism faith speaker in British schools helped me to be confident, empathetic, and understanding while interacting with students. Adhering to the pandemic restrictions, teachers conducted them apart from participating in interviews with me. However, they were asked to amend the activities, as circumstances demanded, when they conducted them. While the activities were aimed at generating data concerning how students understood and experienced multiculturalism, the way teachers framed and executed the activities became rich data illuminating their attitudes and perceptions towards multiculturalism involving global majority communities.

Findings and discussions

Findings focus on two themes generated from data collected through the observation of classroom activities: teacher-student power relationship and cultural projection. They throw light on how talks around multiculturalism are conducted and handled by teachers with minors in classroom discussions.

Teacher-student power relationship

Power relationship involves connected ideas of legitimacy, dominance, and authority (Hearn, 2012). Teacher-student power relationship is a central issue in understanding what takes place in classrooms (Macleod et al., 2012). It denotes how, intentionally or unintentionally, dominance and authority are maintained in a hierarchical order. This implies a communication between the giver and receiver of orders (Hearn, 2012), which may adversely affect the receiver. My research involved participants who represented different voices in schools and included power relationship between those voices. For instance, in the school hierarchical system, the heads of key stage two and teachers were perhaps obliged to participate in my research study when the head teacher asked them. I was also a party to power relationship that involved negotiations with the head teachers and teachers about the schools’ participation in my research. There exists a hierarchical teacher-student power relationship in classrooms (Macleod et al., 2012; Manke, 1997), and I will focus on that in this theme. I cite a critical incident below that illuminated such relationship when a teacher went about asking students what they wanted to share about multiculturalism.

Teacher: Yeah, say what Mum says, what were you thinking? Go on. No, just say, what are you talking about? What did your mum talk about with you? Which bit do you remember she said in the beginning you don't remember?

Child: I literally don’t remember.

Teacher: You didn’t listen to what you were saying with Mum.

Child: I tried to, but I forgot.

As evident in the above extract, the teacher kept on asking the child several times to share his views about cultures, that was almost like forcing, despite the child saying that he did not ‘literally’ remember. The child might have genuinely forgotten what their Mum said. It was also likely that they were possibly reluctant to speak. This incident clearly demonstrated how classroom hierarchy significantly shaped teacher-student interactions, where the teacher’s position allowed them to pressure or direct responses, thereby asserting authority and limiting the student’s agency. The repeated questioning highlighted how classroom hierarchy constrained children’s freedom to express themselves and influenced how they engaged in learning activities. Finally, this incident crucially showed how the design of the activities, while intended to provide students with opportunities for choice and self-expression, interacted with the conventional power dynamics existing in the classroom, sometimes restricting that intended freedom.

There were several other incidents that reflected the teacher-student hierarchical power relationship, such as when the teacher selected the country for students to work on during the activities, especially when the students expressed that they wanted to select another country of their choice. ‘An understanding of power as a unidirectional flow from educators to children fails to account for the ways in which young children are attuned to and shape the spaces in which they exist’ (Jobb, 2019, p. 213). While this was said in the context of an early childhood setup, I believe that it is equally applicable to primary education. Hence, these incidents in my study raised doubt on the teachers’ skills in creating a safe space for the children where they had the choice of not speaking if they did not wish to or work on their chosen country during the activities. This issue forms an inherent part of children’s right to act freely. This was because in such situations, the teachers’ authority vis-à-vis the students raised the question of students’ right to free expression (UNCRC, 1990, articles 12, 13). Socioculturally speaking, activities of free expression in regulated spaces are important as they help to grow new social competencies in figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998). Moreover, learning through daily classroom interactions is a joint social activity where teachers and students negotiate and manage their participation in relation to each other (Nasir and Hand, 2006; Rogoff, 2003). This idea resonates with dialogic or multilogic conversations supported in multiculturalism (Modood, 2024) for an empowering school environment (Banks, 1993). While teachers could have varying interpretations of lesson design and delivery, these instances showed that teachers’ social reality in the figured worlds of the classroom resided within dispositions and activities mediated by power dynamics, where they enjoyed a commanding position over students which considerably affected students’ freedom of choice within classrooms. Hence, these incidents laid bare an inequitable teacher-student non-democratic engagement, highlighting the existence of a strong hierarchy in their relationship. As a researcher undertaking non-participant observation (Bryman, 2016), I found it ethical to keep silent although I felt relatively powerless to provide the child a safe space where it was totally up to their choice whether they wanted to speak or not.

Cultural projection

In this theme, I focus on the examples used about global majority communities and cultures that helped to indirectly maintain social divisions based on factors such as ethnicity, race, power, and privilege between the dominant majority and global majority communities. These were problematic instances that maintained and reproduced social inequalities between these communities within the figured worlds of classrooms in my study’s particular context (Holland et al., 1998). Lander (2014a, p. 93) observes:

[T]here is very little content related to preparing teachers to understand their own racialised positions as powerful professionals, within either predominantly White or multi-ethnic classrooms. There is almost no education or training to help student teachers to understand the constructs of race and ethnicity; there is even less attention given to how student teachers can work with pupils to address racist incidents and how they can use the curriculum as a vehicle to develop children’s understanding of multicultural Britain, or how to educate children and young people ...

Ofsted does not consider race equality as a necessary requirement for its inspection (Warmington, 2019). Hence without any proper guidelines either in teacher training or school inspection, it is possibly not surprising that various racist stereotypical assumptions were promoted during the classroom activities that did not show global majority communities in good light. The following two excerpts clarify my point.

Excerpt 1

Child: They eat caterpillars.

Teacher: As worms...mopane worms, and they are actually caterpillars.

Child: They make it crispy.

Teacher: They make it crispy, good, as crunchy as potato chips, or cooked and drenched in sauce. So, it’s a staple part of their diet that they eat often. It's very important.

Excerpt 2

Child: The crocodile tail [in Zimbabwe] needs to be cutted [sic] into pieces, like sliced into pieces and people eat them. And so, they get it and put it on a stick thing, and they put it over fire.

Teacher: So, it’s an open fire?

Child: And then when you finish, you put it on like this massive table and you cut it and then you can put it in stew or something.

Another child: It's starting to be a bit unusual...I meant the crocodile tail!

During the classroom activities, students read out from printouts that were consciously selected by the teacher, as in the above two excerpts, and followed the teacher’s instructions while finding out and gaining information about global majority cultures. The classroom activities were aimed at projecting global majority cultures from a positive angle instead of showing them as exotic and amusing, simply to attract students’ attention. While it may be accurate information that mopane worms and crocodile tails are consumed in Zimbabwe, I believe that other food examples could be used in the activities for a respectful projection of global majority cultures, because the cited food facts represented only a small part of the country’s broader dietary practices. The typical Zimbabwean diet centres on sadza (Bonzo et al., 2000; Kauma and Swart, 2022). It is a thick maize meal porridge consumed daily with vegetables and meat, constituting the national dish of most Zimbabweans and is complemented by traditional common relishes such as peanut butter and leafy green vegetables like spinach (Bonzo et al., 2000). This possibly reflects a diverse mix of food groups, which varies across socio-economic groups and regions (UNICEF, 2024) rather than being limited or exoticised.

In excerpt 1, while the teacher attempted to validate eating mopane worm as a staple diet, their choice of comparing mopane worms to crispy ‘potato chips’ dipped in ‘sauce’ possibly sounded patronising, thereby conforming to a stereotypical middle-class model of familiar British food. This contrast inadvertently framed the Zimbabwean diet as weird or unusual. Using potato chips against mopane worm as an example set up a hierarchy, subtly implying a nutritional and status superiority or prestige of British food. This possibly diminished the cultural value, culinary traditions, and nutritional benefits of eating mopane worm in Zimbabwean cuisine.

In excerpt 2, labelling the food as ‘unusual’ reflected a Western or British-centric norm, where food eaten in Zimbabwe was deemed strange or exotic, reinforcing an us-versus-them dichotomy. Cutting of raw crocodile tail into slices and then putting them on fire or placing in a big table to feast on them gave out the image of prehistoric people hunting food in jungles for consumption. This example reflected a barbaric act committed by Zimbabwean people. The child’s emphasis ‘I meant the crocodile tail!’ suggested a kind of discomfort or disbelief that possibly normalised disrespect towards food consumed by the global majority communities. More importantly, the teacher did not engage with a comment from a student that Zimbabweans also ate cow and lamb. I argue that this could be an opportunity to show a culture and its eating habit in a good light.

It can be concluded that the above two excerpts focussing on cultural projection represented instances of the practice of microaggression. Microaggressions (Doharty, 2019; Fu et al., 2022; Pérez Huber and Solorzano, 2014; Warmington, 2019) are everyday acts of racism, whether intentional or unintentional, and only serve to demean the racialised global majority communities as inferior. Without contextualising the food practices within the perspectives of street food culture, historical reasons, or regional practices in Zimbabwe, the teacher helped to homogenise diverse cultures of people. These examples also demonstrated how racist stereotypical assumptions were promoted by a dominant majority teacher through the reduction of an entire country to a few sensationalising facts. The excerpts reflect how, in the process, the teacher missed an opportunity to shift the conversations on cultures from shock or amusement concerning eating of mopane worms and crocodile tail to respectful curiosity relating to global majority cultures. In this way, the examples of cultural projection illuminated an unequal racialised power system where only the mainstream narratives upheld by the dominant majority teacher were promoted as acceptable ways of knowing and doing while the global majority were sidelined, belittled, and rendered powerless (Alvaré, 2018).

In my study, the stereotypes visible in the students’ activities reflected culturally mediated behaviour shaping teachers’ identity and practice. This behaviour in local classrooms was influenced by the wider racialised world, including practices of previous generations, factors that did not exist in isolation, shaping teachers’ beliefs about global majority communities and cultures (Nasir and Hand, 2006; Skerrett, 2008b). In that sense, their teaching practice became a contribution to cultural traditions of their dominantly positioned community in mainstream society (Rogoff, 2003). According to Rogoff (2003), since development takes place in shared sociocultural activities, children, along with adults (e.g. teachers), learn and extend their community’s cultural practices. In the above excerpts, dominant majority students possibly learnt to reinforce the unfavourable and degrading cultural perceptions of global majority communities promoted by a member of the dominant majority.

Conclusion

An analysis of students’ classroom activities revealed limited levels of understanding, and skills among teachers in relation to lessons around multicultural education with minors in predominantly White areas where opportunities to experience differences around cultures, race, and ethnicities are already considerably limited. Backed by studies (Miller, 2021; Moncrieffe et al., 2020; Smith and Lander, 2023), most teachers possibly did not receive teacher education that prioritised racial or multicultural awareness. A strong teacher-student hierarchical power relationship was evident, which compromised students’ freedom of choices. The examples used by teachers during the activities were based on demeaning and deficit-based perceptions of global majority communities, which helped maintain and reproduce an imbalanced and racialised power structure that operated silently in classrooms. The findings highlighted whose voices are prioritised and whose are suppressed (Bagchi, 2024, 2025a). According to sociocultural theory, learning involves socially mediated processes. People develop knowledge, attitudes, and values through interaction with others in their environment (Rogoff, 2003). How they internalise knowledge is influenced by the social environment in which they are embedded, such as their families, peers, and the wider community, which also includes a reflection of the broader global processes in practice (Holland and Lave, 2001). Particularly in my study location, where almost 100 percent of staff belong to White ethnicities, teachers’ identity and teaching practice were shaped by broader narratives of social and racialised inequalities that have persisted unhindered for generations in units of social practice (Nasir and Hand, 2006). That is why they fell short of projecting global majority cultures respectfully, thereby reflecting imbalance in their practice in the local context and time, however unconscious and unintentional (Bagchi, 2025a; Nasir and Hand, 2006). The pandemic circumstances (Bagchi, 2025b) did not allow me to directly interact with students, which may have reduced the chances of teachers influencing students in ways that limited their ability to express their wishes. I invite future studies involving direct interactions between students and researchers.

Based on my data findings and analysis presented in this article (Bagchi, 2025a), several strategies can be incorporated to foster a more positive multicultural reflection within the school atmosphere (Bagchi, 2026). Teachers could use a simple checklist to review lessons, ensure respectful and accurate representation of global majority cultures, avoid comparisons that imply hierarchy, include diverse perspectives in classroom discussions, plan opportunities for students to share their cultural experiences, and reflect on their own assumptions. Such tools can help translate theoretical recommendations into everyday classroom practice, helping a move towards more actionable, concrete steps in schools situated in predominantly White locations. However, for effectively realising these strategies, there is an urgent need for race-conscious, culturally responsive professional development for teachers, which may equip them with relevant knowledge and expertise to conduct multicultural lessons. Such development may also raise awareness of their own complicity in reproducing and sustaining racist stereotyping in classrooms (Smith and Lander, 2023). In my study location, a diverse workforce is also essential to practise equity in school culture, help in boosting global majority students’ self-esteem and sense of belonging. While these strategies are not exhaustive, I welcome future research to explore how an oasis of safe and respectful spaces could be created for global majority students, supporting the development of a genuinely inclusive primary education practice.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank all the research participants without whose cooperation this research study would not have been possible. I also thank the reviewers and editors for their valuable feedback, which helped in the formation of this article.

ORCID iD

Suparna Bagchi

Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of University of Plymouth (Ethics Code: 19.20-286.2) on December 18, 2020.

Consent to participate

All adult participants provided written informed consent prior to enrolment in the study. Students participated as a classroom cohort from whom 2 informed consent was acquired. Moreover, although parents gave consent to their child's participation, the child's consent was binding on whether they wanted to participate or not. All participants were informed that data generated from them will be used in the research study and dissemination. This research was conducted ethically in accordance with the British Educational Research Association guidelines of 2024.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

Due to the nature and sensitivity of the research and ethical restrictions, supporting data is not available.*

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