ABSTRACT
Debates about the extent and type of school racism have been prominent in educational research.57 The substance of the disagreement concerns the question of whether or not schools are places which systematically deny equal treatment to ethnic minority children. It is complicated by different definitions of racial discrimination as it is practised in schools, and by different methodological debates about how it is possible to know whether teachers and schools racially discriminate. These are two separate issues, though they are connected. If we operate with a limited definition of what constitutes racial discrimination in schools, ie. that we can only conclude that it has occurred if evidence for it comprises direct discursive data given to the researcher or direct observational evidence collected by the researcher to the effect that the teacher or teachers in the school under investigation are implementing policies and practices which discriminate, then it is relatively easy to settle the dispute one way or the other. However, if our definition of what constitutes racial discrimination in schools is a different one, ie. teachers and schools may not intend their practices to be discriminatory but this is what results, then what constitutes evidence for discrimination is certainly more difficult to collect and may involve inference from indirect evidence. Definitions therefore play an important part in the designation of methodological strategies for determining whether schools and teachers discriminate. There are a number of possible definitions, and which one the researcher adopts determines the type of data collection strategy they implement.
