This thesis reports on the effectiveness of an anti-racist
training program implemented at secondary schools in Vancouver
and Richmond in February and March of 1995. The program used
Responding to Racism; a guide for High School Students, prepared
by the author, with John Kehoe and Lily Yee. Training involved
three hours of anti-racist role-play exercises from Responding to
Racism. A pretest-posttest control group design was employed to
measure: retention of given models for dealing with racist
incidents, post-treatment levels of racism, and behavioral
reactions during a staged racist incident.
Ten social studies classes from two schools made up a sample
population of 262 students. Following half-day workshops, three
teachers carried out the program with a total of six classes of
either grade 9 or 11 students. Four additional classes continued
with regular curriculum to serve as the Control sample. The
Cultural Diversity Scale (Kehoe, 1982, 1984), was given as a
pretest to establish Control to Experimental group equivalency.
A posttest Written Response to Racist Incidents instrument, used
to measure knowledge of how to respond to a racist incident,
found a significant positive difference between Experimental and
Control groups, (t=(3.83) p.<.001). Post-training levels of
racism, evaluated through the Evidence of Racism Scale, were not
significantly different (+.16Sd).
The final postmeasure, the Racist Incident Behavioral Scale
(Culhane, 1995), found significant positive effect among a sample
of 68 students (40-Exp./28-Cntl.), (t=(3.33) p.<.001). Students
undergoing treatment were in the 68th percentile of Control
students on the Written Response to Racist incidents, (+.47Sd),
and the 92nd percentile (+1.23Sd) of Control subjects on results
from the Racist Incident Behavioral Scale. Experimental students
did not show significant difference when compared to Control
subjects on items pertaining to empathy for the victims of
racism. The results suggest the program was most successful in
changing behaviour, over attitudes, within the context of a
relatively short-term time period.
Responding to Racism provided students with methods for
responding to racist incidents which were evident on written and
behavioral measures. Support given to the victims of the racist
incidents, opposition to the perpetrators, and positive attempts
to limit the racism in each incident were all significantly more
apparent in responses of Experimental students over Control. The
results reaffirm the utility of role-play anti-racist training,
and validate the use of Responding to Racism as an effective
package for use in secondary school settings, notably in regards
to changing student behaviour in racially-motivated situations. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/3739 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Culhane, Stephen F. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 4795463 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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