Please join us in congratulating Aneet Kaur Kahlon who successfully defended her M.A. Thesis on April 8 of 2025.
Title:
Investigating racial equity and anti-racism policy in K-12 public schooling in British Columbia: An anti-colonial analysis of the Surrey School District’s Racial Equity Strategic Plan
Abstract:
The purpose of this research is to examine how Canadian K-12 public education racial equity policy may function to reproduce the oppressive social, historical, and political forces it claims to challenge. This thesis conducts a qualitative content analysis of Surrey School District’s Racial Equity Strategic Plan 2023-2028, through an anti-colonial discursive framework, to research how capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy may be overlooked within attempts to achieve racial equity in education. Specifically, this investigation focuses on how hegemony may be reinforced through the implementation of educational racial equity policy due to persistent power inequities embedded in the text which function in opposition to policy goals. This research delves deeply into investigating historical educational policies in British Columbia’s public schools in order to understand how educational policy has affected Indigenous, Black, and racialized communities in the past and how these outcomes endure today. This research finds that in order for the Surrey School District’s Racial Equity Strategic Plan 2023-2028 to improve the equity outcomes of its target populations, it must acknowledge and address the normative colonial structures and values that enforce educational domination over and oppression of marginalized communities beyond the dimension of race. Racial equity and anti-racism policies must incorporate initiatives of critical structural reform of education systems that seek to address the root cause of racism, such as capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, systemic whiteness, and white supremacy, in order to meaningfully and holistically address racism for Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities within K-12 public schooling.
Examining Committee:
Dr. Ali Abdi, Professor, EDST (External Examiner)
Dr. Bathseba Opini, Associate Professor, EDST (Co-supervisor)
Dr. Hartej Gill, Associate Professor, EDST (Co-supervisor)
Congratulations Aneet!