The British Psychological Society
  • My BPS

    • Activities for teaching

    Lectures, seminar activities and other specific teaching materials that can be used to build anti-racism into a psychology curriculum.

    Topic: The Social Construction of Race

    • Format: This seminar should take approximately 120 minutes and consists of playing 3 online videos outlining the social construction of race ands asking students some open ended questions about each video. Indicative answers are provided for staff in the sheet as are links and the learning objective.
      Note: All videos could be accessed at time of writing though if a link is broke try looking it up on the waybackmachine.
      Quiz questions, answers and video/article links are listed here: the-social-construction-of-race_seminar
      Duration: Approximately 120 minutes.

    Topic: The intersection of racism & classism

    • Format: Video and discussion. Play the following 5-minute animated video to students: How racism & class overlap and then lead a discussion e.g, around the following questions 1) How else might racism & class overlap? and 2) What does racism's class intersection suggest for anti-racist efforts?.
    • Duration: Video length is 5 minutes, discussion around 15 minutes.

    Topic: Racism in UK schools

    • Format: Blog post & Kahoots multiple-choice quiz. The following teaching activity was designed by BSc Psychology Student (2024) Carla House. "Ask students to read the following publicly available blogpost by Laura Swizczowski about racism in UK schools. Laura is from an organisation that trains the next generation of educators. Students should then be asked them to complete a multiple-choice quiz. The blogpost can be referenced as: Swiszczowski, L. (2022). Teach First [blogpost] Retrieved 15th March 2023.
      The quiz is designed can be accessed here though it may require a Kahoots account but free versions are available.
      Duration: 30 minutes approximately.

    Topic: The Social Implications of Racism

    Topic: Intersectionality

    • Format: Two short videos (5 mins & 3.5 mins) including an interview with Kimberle Crenshaw and the trailer for the US film 'Hidden Figures'. Also 11 seminar slides relating to intersectionality and open-ended discussion questions (e.g., "How might Hidden Figures help us to understand privilege and intersectionality?" and "How does intersectionality contribute to our understanding of gender and gender inequalities?"). Designed by Helen Malson. Video links, questions and intersectionality content available in the following .ppt slides: Helen Malson Hidden Figures Intersectionality and Gender seminar
    • Duration: Approximately 45 minutes.

    Teaching Tolerance

    [Free resources for educators, primarily for those who work with children from early childhood through to high school/college but with content that can be used and applied to Higher Education.  Their materials are used to supplement curriculums and inform practices; not limited to race and racism, Teaching Tolerance has content on ability, religion, class, gender, sexual identity, immigration, bullying and bias, and rights and activism.  Some examples of content are Teaching about race, racism and police violence and Discussing Whiteness].

    White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

    A checklist that can be used in seminar activities with students to highlight aspects of everyday white privilege.

    Our Migration Story

    A wealth of resources around migration to the British Isles, including input from around 80 academics. Particularly useful to counter anti-immigration rhetoric and myths about the British being historically white. This is a prize winning resource specifically designed for teachings in mind. It's teaching resources pages also includes guides on how to teach controversial issues in the classroom by Oxfam and the Imperial War Museum].

    Research on teaching anti-racism:

    • Torino's (2015) useful paper examining different learning exercises for promoting anti-racism including experiential learning, group based learning and didactic methods.
    • Case & Rios (2015). Experiment assessing whether paper handout or video exercise is more effective as a teaching strategy in developing white privilege.
    • Teaching racism to psychology students: This study concerns a quantitative evaluation of teaching an anti-racism module by the author to a large cohort of White and BME students.

    Resources for talking about race

    • Our Migration Story [a wealth of resources around migration to the British Isles, including input from around 80 academics. Particularly useful to counter anti-immigration rhetoric and myths about the British being historically white.
      This is a prize winning resource specifically designed for teachings in mind. It's teaching resources pages also includes guides on how to teach controversial issues in the classroom by Oxfam and the Imperial War Museum].
    • Lentin, A. (2019). In the lecturer's recent Guardian article she notes that: "To really stamp out racism, we need to begin with a commitment to deepening our racial literacy, and for a majority white society to depersonalise its reaction to racism" (para 16).
    • Kerr (2019). Let's talk about race - useful guide from the 'Princes' Responsible Business Network' that has done previous work on employment racism.
      This guide is from business sector on holding race discussions, arising from their survey findings that sizable proportions of employees feel thier workplace is uncomfortable talking about race equality (around 35% from their 2015 and 2018 survey data).
      The guide is for an adult audience and includes notes on preferred terms (e.g., BAME/ ethnic minority), what to avoid saying and how to do this respectfully. Note the economic case for racial equality is often made ('being anti-racist is profitable') which some see as a dangerous and irresponsible argument to make given anti-racism should be done for moral purposes independant of financial gain).