Education, identity and Roma families: teachers' perspectives and engagement with INSETRom training

This paper outlines and discusses work carried out with teachers of Roma children in the North East of England. The paper draws upon continuing professional development (CPD) work carried out in two primary schools as part of the Comenius IN‐SErvice Training for Roma Inclusion (INSETRom) project. The project spanned a number of school terms over an academic year and involved working closely with two groups of teachers from different schools. This paper draws upon data arising from semi‐structured interviews and the authors’ field journals. It identifies critical key issues such as teachers’ misconceptions, limited home–school relations, problems relating to the identification of Roma pupils and the tensions arising from meeting the needs of a marginalized group within an education system underpinned largely by a performance‐driven, neoliberal agenda. It discusses issues arising from delivering CPD within such a context, and highlights the difficulties associated with transforming and challenging perspecti...