Attitudes, Stereotypes and Anti-Discriminatory Education: Developing Themes from Sullivan

Correspondence to Richard Pugh NEWI, Plas Coch Campus. Mold Road, Wrexham LL11 2AW, Wales, UK. Summary This paper acknowledges the importance of the issues that Sullivan(1998) raises, but questions assumptions made about the natureof anti-discriminatory practice and is critical of the way inwhich shifts in attitudes are interpreted as evidence of furtherproblematic discrimination. It suggests alternative interpretationsfor Sullivan's examples, and questions the conceptions of attitudesand the model of self presented in Sullivan's account of attitudechange. The paper considers stereotyping as a cognitive processand whether it is an inevitable, or invariable, phenomenon.It reviews the nature and goals of anti-discriminatory education,contending that discrimination arises not from the holding ofstrong attitudes perse, but from the nature of, and the consequencesthat follow from, particular attitudes. Finally, it makes recommendationsfor educators and provides suggestions for further developmentof the anti-discriminatory perspective.