Supporting Students in Relation to Racism: Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Educator Perspectives.

Only nine people took part, all from Manitoba, and the authors had hoped for 12 to 16. The findings are tied to that province and to placements held in spring 2022, so whether they fit your setting is a judgement the authors say is yours to make. Everyone volunteered for a study about racism, so these educators are probably more engaged with the topic than the average fieldwork educator, including the ones who take students but would rather not discuss it. The authors did not test how much the participants actually knew or how skilled they were at anti-racist practice. They only recorded what the educators believed about themselves. Participants talked far more about educating White students about racism than about supporting BIPOC students who were experiencing it, and the authors did not ask them why. The authors treat that silence as important rather than incidental. The focus group facilitators were White or White-presenting and two-thirds of the participants were White. In the mixed-race group the facilitators felt BIPOC participants had more to say but stayed silent, so the data may under-represent what those participants thought. After a reviewer challenged the team to look at what the transcripts did not say, the project lead re-read the raw transcripts and revised the findings and discussion, concluding that her own fragility had led her to protect the participants and her institution. The published findings are the revised version. The paper treats racism across different groups together, and the authors note that the history and experience of racism are not the same for all groups, especially for Indigenous peoples in Canada.

The authors state that they received no financial support for the research, authorship or publication of the article. No commercial sponsor was involved. The team was largely White and White-presenting, and every student member was supervised by the project lead at some point during the project, which the authors flag as a limit on how far they could break down the power difference between the team and the people they interviewed.

Do not read the teaching strategies described here as evidence that reflection and open dialogue work. Nine self-selected educators described what they believe they do; no students were asked and no outcomes were measured. Four participants also said the BIPOC students they had supervised had not met 'blatant' interpersonal racism, and the authors point out that this conflicts with the wider literature and may reflect denial rather than an absence of racism.