Fola Adekola is an EdD student as well as an Assistant Headteacher who is passionate about issues of race and often draws on the Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework to explore ‘whiteness’ in education and in professional spaces.

A modified version of her assignment submitted for the Foundation of Professional (FoP) module has been published as an article in a peer-reviewed journal. The article is available here.

In the article, Fola reflects on the over-representation of white teachers in senior leadership posts in British schools and the concept of ‘whiteness’ in the teaching profession. As a black member of the Leadership Team at a secondary school in London, she explores the impact of whiteness on her professionalism and her perception of herself at work. Additionally, she refers to her experience of subtle forms of racism which Marom (2017) calls ‘professional microaggressions,’ that can be interpreted as covert racism under the guise of teacher professionalism. She questions if teaching in the UK is a “neutral” profession or one embedded with the normativity of whiteness – disproportionately affecting those who do not fit in, regardless of their qualifications or competence. She concludes with a few suggestions of how normativity in Senior Leadership Teams may be addressed.