Originally published here.

The career progression of teachers and academics of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage in England has been a matter of intense scrutiny among a range of actors including the public, politicians and researchers. Many reasons and explanations have been provided for the apparent lack of improvement in this area, despite an increase in the numbers of students of BAME heritage in schools and other educational institutions, despite the passage of the Equality Act 2010, despite student led campaigns such as ‘Why is my professor not black?’, and despite the substantial body of evidence on the benefits for students of BAME heritage of having same race teachers and lecturers. At the individual level, barriers have included interpersonal racism, and at the organisational level, institutional racism has been identified as contributing to, if not responsible for the lower than average progression of staff of BAME heritage in England’s educational institutions. Nevertheless, over the last decade, an emergent and sustained body of research has emerged that examines ‘how’ and under 'what conditions’ promotion/progression occurs or can be achieved. In arriving at a conceptual model of progression among teachers of BAME heritage, critical evaluation of the four available studies reveals four key factors or enablers: meritocratic agency; contrived agency; endorsement and institutional habitus.

Several studies and reports have detailed the barriers to the career progression face byteachers of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage in England (Department ofEducation (DfE) 2018; Haque & Elliott 2016; NASUWT 2015). At the same time, a smaller bodyof research, conducted over a decade (Miller 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019b), has instead focused onactual or perceived enablers to progression in the career progression of teachers of BAMEheritage. Each of Miller’s individual studies has two purposes: first, serving as a counter- balance in ongoing decades concerning the progression of teachers of BAME heritage, andsecond, as a means to identify and articulate ‘what works’ and under what conditions, inenabling and/or increasing the career progression of teachers of BAME heritage. By bringing together the evidence of four previous studies on enablers to progression, this paper attemptstwo things: first, to present a critical review and summary of the evidence from the fourstudies, and to make connections between and among them; and second, to propose aconceptual model of progression that reflects the experiences of teachers of BAME heritage(across all education phases) in England.

Repeated studies have found that there are several barriers to the promotion/progression ofteachers of BAME heritage. These include government policy, racism/race discrimination,institutional practices, affiliation/group membership and religion. Nevertheless, an emergent body of research now shows several factors that influence the career progression of teachersof BAME heritage. These include personal agency, endorsement and institutional habitus.Although each factor on its own may lead to some degree of progression for the BAME staff, together as a whole or in different combinations, they help us to understand the complexityand fraught nature of BAME staff progression. Importantly, they help us to see what works,under what conditions and to what extent.

The multivariate and factor alignment modelsshow the interrelationships among factors, whilst also underlining that without deepinstitutional changes to cultures, structures and practices, career progression for teachers of BAME heritage is likely to remain flatlined or restricted. The multivariate and factoralignment models also represent a conceptual turning point in debates and research on BAME teacher progression and in our understanding of the role of individual agency (A, B), culturaland social capital (C) and institutional structures and cultures (D) in these debates and incareer progression.

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