This conversation is about race: exploring Educational Psychologists’ experiences of promoting racial equity

Racism remains a deeply embedded systemic feature of the UK education system, shaping the everyday experiences of Black and Global Majority Heritage children and young people. Although legislation, policies, and professional guidance influenced by sociopolitical movements have sought to challenge institutional racism, racial inequities continue to manifest in the practices and outcomes of school communities. These enduring disparities highlight the need for critical reflection and systemic transformation, underpinned by Critical Race Theory and a Critical Realist paradigm, to better understand and disrupt the structures that sustain them. This qualitative study addresses a gap in the literature concerning the applied practice of educational psychology. It explores two interrelated concerns: how anti-racist practice (ARP) is enacted and sustained within Local Authority (LA) Educational Psychology Services, and the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the promotion of racial equity (PRE) in education. Eight LA Educational Psychologists participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews, analysed through an iterative process of Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Four overarching themes were constructed to represent how participants navigated their roles, agency, and ethical commitments to PRE within interconnected personal, relational, and institutional contexts. Participants’ accounts illustrated that engagement with PRE was shaped through ongoing reflexivity, ethical tension, and the influence of leadership and team cultures, alongside the embedded dynamics of whiteness within professional norms. The analysis attends to the affective, relational, and situated nature of this work, affirming that ARP is contextually produced within wider systems of power, culture, and structural constraint.