Being Transformed? On the Process of Recognition in Anti-Discrimination Workshops

In the current discourse on teacher education, there is a prevailing argument that (prospective) teachers need to be sensitized when dealing with intersectional discrimination. Based on an exploratory research project which was conducted in a workshop designed for prospective teachers with the explicit aim of sensitizing them to discrimination, the article places following questions at the center: How is the subject of sensitization interactively constructed among the participants and how do they position themselves and are positioned by others in relation to the given subject? Research findings highlight that workshop participants are addressed as individuals who are already sensitized and capable of acting against discrimination. The student-participants revealed being affected by phenomena of discrimination in various ways, which posed the question of guilt. In this interplay between the logic of activation and guilt, discrimination was interactively co-constructed into a 'sensitive topic'. Simultaneously, a socially constructed understanding of difference in the context of discrimination was silenced.