“It feels very white of me to go in and start poking my nose around in that, do you know what I mean?”: How do Educational Psychologists (EPs) experience their own whiteness during racialised interactions in their day-to-day life?

The education system in the UK continues to disadvantage children who are racialised as other than white: data repeatedly suggests inequity and discrimination within the system (see for example: Long et al, 2023 for a recent round up research in this area). There have been repeated acknowledgements of failures and repeated initiatives to address systemic racism (Barnardo’s, 2020). Educational Psychologists working for Local Authorities are positioned in a way that means that they are afforded opportunities to implement meaningful change across the different systems in which their work has impact and are well-placed to locate instances of systemic failures. Calls for EPs to investigate their own practice and an acknowledgement of the Whiteness of educational psychology, in terms of both the foundations of the discipline and attitudes held within the profession, feel important to recognise and act on. Whiteness, although having multiple definitions, is a social process that has its roots in global colonialism, imperialism, and the transatlantic slave trade. It is a ‘lens’ through which to examine social relationships and it is maintained by institutions, ideologies and societal practices that tend to normalise power imbalances and preference symbolic cultural meanings attached to people with white skin. Whiteness is identified as a barrier for change to create more equitable systems (DiAngelo, 2020). However, the focus on addressing whiteness within Educational Psychology, noticed in the wake of the events that led to the mobilisation of the #BLM movement (Williams, 2020), is vulnerable to losing momentum as things have returned to a business-as-usual way of doing things. In response to this concern, the aim of this study was to explore the experiences of EPs who identified as white and gain some insight into their awareness of their own whiteness and their experiences of racialised interactions within their work and day to day lives. Four EPs who were employed by Local Authorities took part in unstructured interviews where the concepts of whiteness and racialised interactions were discussed. The data produced was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and four Group Experiential Themes were identified: ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’, ‘Shifting sense of Self’, ‘Degrees of Agency’ and ‘The fact of Whiteness’. The conclusion of this piece of research is that the processes of racialisation and whiteness have inevitably shaped and continue to shape, the interactions of the participants within this study and that time for critical self- reflection is necessary for EPs to be able to consider how their own whiteness has an impact on their everyday work.