Critical Conversations as a Model for Teaching Anti-Racism in Initial Teacher Education

Abstract

This article describes the use of dialogue, through the format of critical conversations, as a creative and reflective anti-racist tool to develop understanding of departmental values of anti-racism, equity and social justice with colleagues across academic, technical, and leadership roles. The project focused on the development and facilitation of spaces for dialogue between staff members employed in an education department in a university in a city in the Southwest of England. Making use of concepts from Smith and Lander’s critical pedagogy and critical race theory as well as philosophy for children (P4C), we developed a framework used by adult participants to encourage the development of racial literacy through reflexive practice. More than seventy staff members were invited to attend five sessions over a six-month period. During each session, staff members were given pre-prepared stimuli designed to encourage ‘epistemological shudders’ that stimulate dialogue in relation to professional roles and responsibilities of anti-racism, equity and social justice within our working context. Each session was facilitated by two colleagues, given the agency to make use of the stimuli within the sessions in any way they chose, together with their participants. Feedback from each session was non-mandatory and informal. In this article, we capture our reflections on the processes of developing and adapting P4C within a university education department. We believe that this evolving model acts as a valuable tool for dialogues, particularly when attempting to encourage discussion of topics perceived as providing professional risk due to their sensitive and controversial status within education and more broadly.

1. Introduction

Before beginning, it is important to define what we mean by race and anti-racism. The Equality Act defines race as including “colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins”, and refers to “a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a person of a particular racial group”, or “persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same racial group” [1]. Palmer (2010 p. 47) [2] describes race as “a socially constructed myth based on implausible pseudo-scientific meanderings and superstition”. Tembo (2021) [3] adopts a racial ambivalence positionality, complicating race as both real (as a social tool) and unreal (as a scientific category). Garratt and Flaherty (2020) [4] notes the concept of race and how racism manifests in society is complex due to the multitude of infrastructures and institutions which subtly and explicitly reproduce racism. Our own institution (UWE Bristol 2025) [5] describes anti-racism as “actively opposing all forms of oppression, as racism is deeply interconnected with other systems of inequality”. We understand ‘race’ [6] as a social construction continually re-imagined, socially, politically and culturally, through and by social relations and political discourses [7,8] refracted through a ‘dominant white frame’ [9]. However, we also acknowledge Brah’s (1996 p. 117) [10] conceptualised difference framework where identities are ‘culturally constructed’, intersecting and multi-dimensional.

This paper explores the ongoing process of creating transformational change in embedding anti-racist practice within a university education department. Against a backdrop of heightened public and professional awareness of systemic racism, amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed systemic inequities in health outcomes, the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and local protests such as the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol [11], we situate our work as part of an urgent need for higher education institutions, and particularly initial teacher education (ITE) providers, to respond meaningfully to the structural, institutional, and interpersonal inequities that persist within education [12,13]. Our aim is to examine how intentional, dialogic processes can support staff to engage critically with questions of race, racism, and anti-racist practice, moving beyond surface-level training towards deeper cultural and organisational change [14,15]).

We present a chronological narrative of our initiative, critical conversations facilitated through critical conversation circles, capturing the design, facilitation, and iterative development of these spaces. The narrative is informed by multiple voices, with each of us reflecting on our positionalities and experiences [16,17]), recognising how our identities and roles shape both our interpretation of events and our contribution to the work. This reflective stance is integral to the paper, as it enables us to examine not only the outcomes of the process but also the tensions, risks, and learning that emerged through practice [18,19]. Our work is framed by several theoretical lenses. We draw on transformational change theory to consider the conditions under which individual and organisational shifts become possible [20,21,22]). Critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies provide the tools to interrogate systemic inequities and to challenge dominant narratives that sustain racial hierarchies [23,24]). Organisational change theory helps us situate our departmental initiative within broader institutional and sectoral contexts, where policy, leadership, and culture interact in complex ways [25]. Finally, traditions of critical pedagogy [17,26]), anti-racist pedagogy [27], and dialogic teaching [28,29]) inform our practical approach, positioning dialogue as a means of unsettling assumptions, cultivating racial literacy [30,31]), and creating the conditions for collective responsibility and professional transformation. This paper explores how facilitated, dialogic spaces support staff engagement with anti-racist practice, asking how critical conversation circles enable engagement with race and positionality and contribute to cultural and organisational change within an initial teacher education department. This study is framed as a practice-based, reflective inquiry into an ongoing departmental initiative, rather than as conventional empirical research, foregrounding sense-making, reflexivity, and professional learning over data extraction or measurement of impact.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we outline the context in which the critical conversations were developed, locating our work within the wider landscape of anti-racist initiatives in higher education and teacher education [32,33]). Second, we introduce the methodological design, explaining our bricolage approach [34] and the principles underpinning our use of dialogue [35]. Third, we provide a chronological narrative of the critical conversation circles interweaving reflections from multiple voices to capture the evolving process. Finally, we reflect on the implications for professional learning, departmental practice, and the wider field of initial teacher education, identifying both possibilities and limitations for embedding anti-racist approaches sustainably.

2. Theoretical Framework

Our work is underpinned by a synthesis of transformational change theory, critical perspectives on equity and anti-racism in higher education, and organisational change models, alongside a reflexive and multi-vocal methodological stance. Together, these frames allow us to analyse how critical conversations acted and continue to act as catalysts for cultural and organisational change within a university education department.

2.1. Transformational Change and Critical Race Theory

Transformational change is more than the introduction of new practices; it requires a fundamental shift in assumptions, values, and professional dispositions. Mezirow (1991) [20] identifies “disorienting dilemmas” as necessary conditions for critical reflection and the reframing of perspectives. Shields (2010) [21] advances this by linking transformational leadership with social justice, emphasising that authentic change must directly confront inequities. Burns (2015) [22] argues that transformational change must be systemic, recognising interconnections and relationships rather than treating change as discrete interventions. Within our initiative, critical conversation circles were designed to provoke “epistemological shudders” [35,36], where familiar assumptions no longer suffice, creating conditions for staff to critically engage with their own positionality and complicity. Critical race theory (CRT) provides an essential lens for interrogating the permanence of racism and the ways in which it is normalised within education systems [12,13]. Central to CRT is the recognition of whiteness as an ideology that sustains inequity through denial, avoidance, and claims of neutrality [24]. Intersectionality [37] highlights how racism intersects with gender, class, and other inequalities to shape experiences of exclusion in higher education, while decolonial approaches challenge Eurocentric epistemologies and call for recognition of global majority knowledge [38]. Research in teacher education has demonstrated how colour-blindness, race-neutrality, and avoidance [39,40] maintain inequities and silence marginalised voices [14]. These insights are particularly salient in higher education contexts where professional staff, often racialised as white, struggle to move beyond guilt or fragility [41], and where statutory frameworks encourage “de-racialisation” [12,42]. Our critical conversation circles explicitly sought to disrupt these dynamics by creating “third spaces” [15] for engagement with racial literacy [30]; and to allow discussion and dialogue to flourish [31].

2.2. Organisational Change Models

Classic organisational change theories, such as Lewin’s (1947 [43]) “unfreeze-change-refreeze” and Kotter’s (1996) staged model, remain influential in higher education [44]. Yet these approaches often present change as linear and technocratic, neglecting how power and resistance shape equity initiatives. From an anti-racist perspective, organisational change cannot be separated from the realities of fragility, fear, and avoidance [39,40], nor from political pressures to depoliticise racial discourse [30,45]. As Virdee, Taylor and Masterson note, staff may simultaneously hold conflicting beliefs about racism, complicating institutional responses [46]. Our approach, therefore, critically engages with organisational change theory by foregrounding equity, recognising that sustainable change in education departments requires both leadership commitment and grassroots, relational processes [15,25].

3. Methods

This project is framed by a reflexive, narrative, and multi-vocal stance. Reflexivity acknowledges that researchers’ identities shape both process and interpretation [16,17]. Narrative allows us to represent change as emergent, contested, and situated rather than linear or predetermined [18,19]. Multi-vocality is central to our design: we incorporate reflections from equity change partners, a dean, facilitators, participants, and executive staff. This choice is both methodological and ethical and it resists hierarchical accounts of change and values contributions often marginalised in institutional narratives [47]. Reflections were interpreted using a reflexive, narrative approach, with insights from facilitators, participants, and leaders examined iteratively to identify shared themes, tensions, and shifts in understanding, rather than being treated as discrete or representative data points. In this way, critical conversations act as a form of professional “culture circle” [48], creating collaborative problem-posing spaces where power is redistributed through dialogue [28,49].

3.1. Positionality

Along with a strong base in theory and methodological approaches, our positionalities are integral to the framing of this paper. Malcolm, a Black British academic of African and Caribbean heritage, draws on lived experience of racism in education and leadership. Sarah, a white, working-class, neurodiverse Welsh academic, reflects on privilege, equity, and social justice within ITE. Other authors contribute perspectives shaped by professional practice, leadership, and research in anti-racist pedagogy. Together, we acknowledge that positionality shapes both facilitation and interpretation. For those racialised as white, engagement requires confronting complicity, fragility, and privilege [41,50]. For those racialised as Global Majority, the work carries different risks and responsibilities [32]. Epistemologically, we align with critical and decolonial traditions that position knowledge as situated, relational, and contested [18,27]. We therefore write not as neutral observers but as engaged participants committed to reconstituting education departments as critical sites of anti-racist transformation.

3.2. Chronological Narrative of the Process

In this section, we present a chronological account of how the critical conversation circles were initiated, developed, and embedded within our university education department. Our account is intentionally multi-vocal: we interweave leadership perspectives, facilitator and participant experiences, and external critique to illustrate both the opportunities and the tensions that shaped the process. Each stage is anchored in theoretical frameworks that help us to interpret both practice and reflection. It is important to note that this work is ongoing, so these reflections are situated within the ongoing development of dialogic circles as critical conversations.

3.2.1. Stage 1: Initiation

The decision to engage in structured anti-racist practice arose from multiple intersecting pressures: sector-wide calls to tackle institutional racism in higher education [32,33], the recognition of entrenched inequities within ITE [12,51], and local activism following events in Bristol [11]. The Dean understood and was committed to, the moral and professional imperative of this work, but also needed to balance the challenge which might emerge from seeking whole department engagement in an approach which invited greater personal exposure than a more typical training course. As Shields (2010) [21] argues, transformational leadership requires courage to confront systemic inequities and align institutional values with social justice. Yet, as Tate and Bagguley (2016) [25] note, higher education often defaults to symbolic gestures, avoiding the structural disruption necessary for anti-racist change. The equity change partners, acting as critical friends, provided challenge and dialogue. Their role echoes Stewart-Hall, Rabiger et al. (2024) [15], who highlight the importance of creating spaces where leadership teams, often white-led, can be unsettled and held accountable. From the outset, tensions were apparent: staff acknowledged the urgency of change but were uncertain about practical pathways, exposing both institutional drivers and barriers [46]. Perhaps the bigger issue was that many of the leadership team needed to embark on their own learning journey in racism and anti-racism. It is not possible to step outside a leadership role because you need to face something you do not currently have enough knowledge or understanding of to navigate well and, while this is hardly unusual, leaders needed to quickly educate themselves and seek advice and guidance from others to enable them to become thoughtful and effective in this new area. Leaders acknowledged that needing to do this with reference to race and anti-racism was highly charged and there were so many ways to get it wrong. Some participants were hesitant of the process at the beginning with one reflecting that they “had mixed feelings initially when the decision was first announced. This was due to several different factors. I was incredibly pleased that there was going to be a way for our staff team to share and openly discuss issues that were so evident in the personal and professional lives of lecturers and students. As a white woman I am keenly aware that my experience is markedly different of many of my colleagues and the students I teach. I had some concerns about the reactions of other members of staff: would they see this as a criticism of them for example? I was also aware that we would need to find time in the busy working day and wondered if that could practically be made possible without grumbles and logistical issues”. There were initial concerns around the content as well as the practicalities of managing this alongside their day jobs.

Theoretical anchors: leadership for equity (Shields, 2010) [21] and the work of Tate and Bagguley, (2016) [25] and Stewart-Hall et al., (2024) [15] around institutional drivers and barriers to change.

3.2.2. Site Selection and Participants

Participants were all staff members of the education department including technical, academic and research staff and the department executive team. Malcolm and Sarah, as equity change partners, were keen to ensure that sessions were hosted in person on the university campus. Following negotiation with the department’s leadership team, it was agreed that sessions would be scheduled and advertised centrally, with rooms booked and times selected to coincide with maximum opportunity for participation. Participants were invited to attend, through advertisements sent through the department’s administrator and the Dean was keen to get as close to full participation as possible, whilst ensuring nobody felt coerced into dialogue. To this end, the Dean also promoted attendance at staff meetings, with care over how this was done and using the status of their role deliberately and carefully. Participants were able to select which sessions they joined and had visibility of their session’s facilitators and colleagues who would join them in their sessions. To further encourage openness, staff were encouraged to ask Sarah and Malcolm any questions or queries about the process and how it would be undertaken.

3.3. Structure, Principles, and Practice

The critical conversation circles, consisted of five one hour and fifteen-minute sessions, held over an academic term (twelve-week period). Each circle was composed of up to eight staff members and were cofacilitated by two facilitators. We had a lot of conversation about who to invite as facilitators and this was another important part of the process. Representation was a consideration but was not the priority as the most important thing was that they would be good facilitators for what would be a challenging role. So, we discussed which colleagues we knew to have these skills and who we felt would manage this challenging brief well and invited them. In terms of representation, what we did want to ensure was that all the areas of the school were represented, i.e., not all the facilitators being from one suite of programmes within the department. Malcolm and Sarah felt that co-facilitation was an important aspect to support dialogues in this format [52]. The evolving relationship between the co-facilitators each semester was key to the effectiveness of their group sessions (See

Table 1. Critical Conversation Circles: Season 1.

	Dates	Activity 1	Activity 2	Key Theme
Session 1	December 2024	Ground rules	Collective choice and agreement	Establishing professional engagements
Session 2	January 2025	Current dialogues in education #1	Current dialogues in education #2	Developing a culture of understanding
Session 3	March 2025	Anti-racist dialogue in education #1	Anti-racist dialogues in education #2	Identifying professional responsibilities to anti-racism
Session 4	April 2025	Case studies	Case studies	Exploring organisational responses to anti-racism
Session 5	June 2025	Video stimuli	Video stimuli	Examining sector-wide responses to anti-racism

).

In more than one session, gender was also used to explore equity issues; this was effective as bringing in other ideas helped colleagues access dialogue around equity.

3.3.1. Stage 2: Building Engagement

Early workshops and consultations marked the first attempts to translate leadership commitment into collective engagement. The sessions, facilitated by pairs of colleagues, introduced stimuli designed to provoke dialogue and, in some cases, “epistemological shudders” [35,36]. The facilitator’s voice reflects both opportunity and challenge: “Colleagues arrived wary, unsure of what would be expected. My role became less about instructing and more about creating safety for discomfort.” This resonates with Ahmed’s (2012 [53]) analysis of diversity work as “brick wall” encounters, where institutions resist disruption, and with Di Angelo’s (2018) [40] notion of white fragility, where defensiveness can derail conversations. The participant’s perspective, taken from end of project evaluations, illustrates the importance of the circle in shifting this dynamic: “All people spoke. It didn’t feel like individuals dominated—this contrasts with ‘behaviour’ in normal meetings with similar people. There must have been something about the circle that quietly demanded a different sort of listening and response.” This demonstrates Mezirow’s (1991) [20] emphasis on disorienting dilemmas as triggers for perspective transformation. In other circles, tensions surfaced with some participants questioning the relevance of anti-racism to their roles, while others expressed frustration at the lack of immediate action to address issues. These reactions highlight the fragility of equity work in higher education [14,39], where competing priorities and defensive postures often undermine momentum but also the power of dialogue in dismantling these postures.

Theoretical anchor: discomfort as a site of learning (Ahmed, 2012 [53]; Di Angelo, 2018 [40]; Mezirow, 1991) [20].

3.3.2. Stage 3: Decision-Making and Agency

As the initiative developed, the focus shifted towards embedding outcomes into departmental practice. Conversations moved beyond dialogue to consider curriculum design, governance processes, and workforce development. A facilitator who also sat on the departmental executive described this double role: “I felt pulled in two directions—wanting to preserve the openness of dialogue but also having to navigate discussions in light of my own role in the exec team.” This tension reflects Applebaum’s (2017) [41] observation that white educators often struggle to separate culpability from liability, and it also raises questions of power and responsibility in organisational change. However, one participant stated that they felt a sense of agency as someone who had been invited to attend: “ I guess they (critical conversation circles) did seem to come ‘out of the blue’—not what they were seeking to address or the issue that the university clearly had, but in terms of the approach that was going to be taken. However, we want leaders to lead, and this felt like what they were doing so whilst I didn’t feel immediate agency in the process, I trusted the process. There was a good deal of agency in relation to the circle you joined, and the timings of those groups that fitted in with timetables. Within the group, there was agency in determining the area of discussion”. Agency became a central concern, not just about the practicalities of the circles but also who had the authority to act, and how could actions be sustained beyond the enthusiasm of a few committed individuals? Organisational transformation requires structural as well as cultural change (Burns, 2015) [22], and equity governance must navigate competing interests, hierarchies, and pressures for neutrality (DfE, 2024 [45]; Arbouin and London-Miyo, 2024 [30]).

Theoretical anchor: agency in organisational transformation (Burns, 2015 [22]); equity governance (Applebaum, 2017 [41]; Smith and Lander, 2023 [12]).

3.3.3. Stage 4: Embedding and Reflection

Over time, aspects of the critical conversation circles began to take root. Facilitators noted increased confidence in naming racism, some curriculum revisions were initiated [54] and staff expressed a stronger sense of collective responsibility. Reflections across voices reveal a mixed picture. The dean was pleased that “we had got this initiative underway successfully, with a large majority of staff attending. This wasn’t inevitable—in deliberately promoting it as neither compulsory not optional, it was possible that a significant minority may have decided not to attend or that attendance would have tailed off, which it didn’t.” Facilitators celebrated small wins—colleagues referencing racial literacy in curriculum meetings while also lamenting the absence of structural accountability mechanisms. Participants highlighted personal growth but expressed uncertainty about how their insights would translate into systemic change: “It is always good to be challenged and to listen and that has been one of the impacts of the circles. I think it has given me more knowledge of personal experiences of race and racism—and in particular how white colleagues understand racism and the limits almost of what, as a white person, I am able to understand. It raised issues for me of my own unconscious bias. It sparked conversations beyond the university at home in relation to gender as well as race and inclusion more widely”. These reflections underscore the tension between structural and cultural change. Transformational change requires deep shifts in values and professional identities [27,50], and we are hopeful that we can maintain momentum through ongoing dialogue, leadership commitment, and institutional accountability [32,33].

Theoretical anchor: transformational vs. transactional change (Burns, 2015 [22]; Shields, 2010 [21]); sustaining change in institutions (Tate and Bagguley, 2016 [25]; Stewart-Hall et al., 2024 [15]).

4. Results

4.1. Reflections on Tensions and Methodological Decisions

The use of multiple voices within this study significantly shaped both the process and its representation. Rather than presenting a singular, linear account of change, the inclusion of perspectives from facilitators, participants, leaders, and an equity change partner highlighted the contested and uneven nature of anti-racist practice. This aligns with Freire’s (1996 [17]) conception of dialogue as a collective, problem-posing activity and hooks’ (1994 [16]) insistence that education should resist reinforcing dominant, singular narratives. In methodological terms, the multi-vocal approach allowed the narrative to reflect the plurality of experiences, tensions, and resistances that surfaced through the critical conversations, moving away from institutional accounts that too often smooth over conflict [47]. However, using multiple voices also raised questions of representation and risk. As Stewart-Hall, Rabiger et al. (2024) [15] note, whiteness is often maintained through avoidance, denial, or withdrawal, and the absence of resistant voices risks reproducing a partial account. Similarly, there were tensions around whose voices were amplified: the perspectives of Global Majority staff and participants carried profound insight but also the burden of representation [55]. Conversely, white staff often struggled to articulate their complicity or fragility [39,40]), raising concerns about reinforcing hierarchies of labour in anti-racist work.

4.2. Ethical Considerations

Although this was not a research project, ethical concerns were central to our thinking. We deliberately chose not to record or mandate feedback, respecting the ethics of care in dialogue [18] and allowing colleagues to control their own disclosures. The decision not to record sessions reflected an ethical commitment to confidentiality and dialogic integrity, recognising that recording could inhibit participation and disproportionately increase risk for marginalised staff engaging in sensitive anti-racist discussions. This reflected our desire to create safe and brave spaces [15], balancing the need for openness with the responsibility to minimise risk, not just for marginalised staff, but for all staff so the learning journey did not have such a steep incline that colleagues felt they needed to step off the path. This is the difficulty of providing the right level of challenge for participants, particularly those from marginalised groups. Yet, as Ahmed (2012) [53] reminds us, diversity and anti-racism work within institutions often encounters the “brick wall” of resistance; ethical care for participants had to be balanced with the need to document, critique, and disrupt institutional complicity.

5. Discussion

As a practice-based reflective inquiry without systematic data collection, the insights offered here are contextually situated and analytically interpretive, which may limit their direct transferability to other institutional settings while still offering conceptual and practical resonance for similar contexts.

5.1. Power, Resistance, and Co-Construction of Knowledge

The structure of critical conversation circles allowed facilitators to navigate the tension between creating inclusive, deliberative spaces [28] and confronting any tensions that may have emerged [40]. As seen in quotes above, participants’ reflections demonstrated how knowledge was co-constructed through dialogue. Global Majority perspectives often carried epistemic authority grounded in lived experience [23,27], while white participants sometimes found it hard to understand such accounts. This dynamic echoes Leonardo’s critique of whiteness as “unwillingness to name the contours of racism” [56], as well as Charteris and Smardon’s (2015) [35] framing of “epistemological shudders” as necessary but destabilising encounters with unfamiliar knowledge. Ultimately, our methodological decisions: multi-vocality, reflexivity, and ethical care, created conditions for both learning and tension. They foregrounded the reality that anti-racist transformation in higher education is not linear or comfortable but requires sustained attention to voice, power, and positionality [41,50]. The critical conversation circles therefore became not just a method but also a site of negotiation over what counts as knowledge, whose experiences are validated, and how responsibility for change is shared.

5.2. Implications

The experiences of developing and facilitating the circles provide both theoretical and practical insights for schools, universities, and other professional education contexts seeking to embed anti-racist practice. We have realised that anti-racist change requires more than policy adoption or compliance with mandatory training. As Advance HE (2020) [32] and Universities UK (2020) [33] note, institutional commitments to anti-racism are often undermined by superficial or transactional responses. Our initiative highlights the importance of relational, dialogic spaces that allow staff to confront discomfort [40,53], interrogate their assumptions [20], and collectively construct new understandings of professional responsibility [48]. For other institutions, the key lesson is that creating spaces for ongoing dialogue can provide the conditions for staff to engage with sensitive and controversial issues [45], despite sectoral pressures that encourage “de-racialisation” and avoidance [30]. Second, the critical conversations circle model underscores the need for both top-down and bottom-up engagement. Leadership endorsement was crucial to legitimising the work [15,21], yet the initiative also relied on grassroots commitment and the willingness of facilitators to engage in “third space” dialogues [56]. This dual dynamic suggests that sustainable change requires leaders to create enabling structures while empowering staff to take ownership of equity-focused professional learning.

5.3. Theoretical Contribution

This project contributes to understandings of anti-racist organisational change in higher education through transactional and transformational change. Transformational change requires shifts in values, identities, and institutional cultures [21,22], and this is ongoing work for us alongside the process of transactional changes such as policy updates, training requirements and curriculum revisions. The critical conversation circles exemplify how critical pedagogy [17,26], critical race theory [13,23], and racial literacy development [30,31] can be operationalised within professional development for staff. This suggests that anti-racist organisational change is not a linear process [43,44], but an iterative, contested practice in which power, resistance, and fragility must be continuously negotiated [39,40,53].

Furthermore, the case illustrates how methodological choices: multi-vocality, reflexivity, and ethical care, can themselves be mechanisms of organisational change. By amplifying multiple voices, including those often marginalised in institutional accounts, our approach allows for co-construction of knowledge production [24,27].

5.4. Practical Contribution

Moving forward, leaders are committed to moving beyond rhetorical commitments to embed anti-racism within governance, curriculum, and workforce structures [51]. Leaders must also be willing to confront discomfort and accept complicity in structural inequities [41,50], resisting pressures to depoliticise or neutralise race in the name of “professional impartiality” [45]. For facilitators, the circles highlight the value of co-facilitation across diverse identities [52], reflexive practice, and the use of carefully designed stimuli to provoke dialogue [28,35]. Facilitators must be prepared to navigate difficult conversations while maintaining an ethic of care that allows participants to engage meaningfully without fear of reprisal [18]. Equity change partners were critical in supporting the development of the circles and supporting the leadership team and holding them to account [15]. Their outsider–insider positioning provides both critical distance and relational trust, enabling them to mediate between institutional drivers and grassroots concerns.

In summary, the critical conversation circles demonstrate a different way of approaching institutional racism that embraces dialogue as a process of cultural, pedagogical, and organisational transformation. The model contributes both conceptually, by linking transformational change theory with CRT and equity-focused organisational change, and practically, by offering a replicable framework for schools and universities seeking to move beyond compliance towards sustained, meaningful anti-racist practice.

6. Conclusions

This paper has argued that transformational change in embedding anti-racist practice is necessarily messy, relational, and multi-vocal. The critical conversations circle is a model to support change in higher education that moves beyond policy compliance or top-down initiatives alone [25,32]), but through contested processes that require leadership commitment [15,21], grassroots engagement, and a willingness to sit with discomfort [40,53]). By foregrounding dialogue, reflection, and positionality, the project created conditions where staff could critically engage with race and racism. Central to this process was the use of multiple voices. By interweaving perspectives of leaders, facilitators, participants, and equity change partners, we resisted singular accounts of institutional change that risk smoothing over tensions or silencing resistance [47]. Instead, our narrative highlighted the uneven, fragile, and contested nature of equity work in universities. As Freire (1996) [17] and hooks (1994) [16] emphasise, critical dialogue is not neutral: it redistributes power, challenges dominant narratives, and creates spaces for participants to reimagine their responsibilities to anti-racist practice. The circles also underscore the value of reflexivity and critical storytelling within equality, diversity and inclusion practices. Reflexivity enabled us to situate our positionalities: racial, cultural, gendered, and professional in shaping both the facilitation and interpretation of dialogue [41,50]. Storytelling, meanwhile, provided a vehicle for epistemological “shudders” [35], moments that disrupted established assumptions and created openings for new understandings of professional identity, curriculum responsibility, and organisational accountability. Our case adds to the growing literature on anti-racist organisational change by illustrating that transactional measures such as policy updates, training programmes, and curriculum reviews must be accompanied by deeper, relational work that engages directly with the permanence of racism [12,13]. Sustaining transformation requires continuous negotiation of power and resistance, and an acceptance that such work is iterative, incomplete, and fragile [15,22]. The critical conversations circle model is grounded in traditions of critical pedagogy, dialogic teaching, and critical race theory, yet differs from many anti-racist pedagogical frameworks by foregrounding ongoing, facilitated professional dialogue as organisational praxis rather than as curriculum intervention or time-limited training, positioning relational, multi-vocal sense-making as the primary mechanism for cultural and structural change. The critical conversations circle model offers a replicable framework for other schools and universities, not as a prescriptive solution, but as an invitation to embrace dialogue as praxis; a means of unsettling, reflecting, and co-constructing knowledge in ways that can shift both cultures and structures. We contend that transformational anti-racist change in higher education will remain precarious unless institutions commit to reflexivity, multi-vocal engagement, and critical storytelling as core practices in their equity and inclusion strategies.