Critical Multicultural Education

This book aims to bring together two movements - multiculturalism and anti- racism - which, though having aims in common, have been at arms length in the past. Differences of emphasis have meant that classroom practice has been the natural realm of multiculturalism, while anti-racism has been dissatisfied with an approach that accentuates life-style at the expense of challenging or changing the racism that minority students experience. In these debates, there has been a concentration on culturally specific topics and this book goes beyond national boundaries to find how international concerns and contexts might provide answers to problems faced in single countries. Leading figures in the USA, Canada, South Africa, the UK and Australasia write on the issues.

This volume applies the critical pedagogical approach to the area of language learning, and in doing so, it addresses such topics as critical multiculturalism, gender and language learning, and popular culture.

This volume is the first authoritative reference work to provide a truly comprehensive international description and analysis of multicultural education around the world. It is organized around key concepts and uses case studies from various nations in different parts of the world to exemplify and illustrate the concepts. Case studies are from many nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Norway, Bulgaria, Russia, South Africa, Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico. Two chapters focus on regions – Latin America and the French-speaking nations in Africa. The book is divided into ten sections, covering theory and research pertaining to curriculum reform, immigration and citizenship, language, religion, and the education of ethnic and cultural minority groups among other topics. With fortynewly commissioned pieces written by a prestigious group of internationally renowned scholars, The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education provides the definitive statement on the state of multicultural education and on its possibilities for the future.

This book explores and expands upon linkages between multicultural education and critical pedagogy, drawing on the shared goal of challenging oppressive social relationships.

"Over time, many people have come to understand and enact multicultural education in ways that evade grappling directly with racism. This collection addresses this problem with ten articles by Christine Sleeter that explicitly locate multicultural education within critical understandings of race, racism, and colonialism, offering both theoretical and practical discussions of what that means"--

This text aims to bring together two movements, of multiculturalism and anti- racism, which have previously been distant from each other.

In his new book, Michael Vavrus helps readers better understand why issues of diversity and difference are so highly contested in the United States and across the globe. Vavrus incorporates specific education examples throughout the text to examine six contested areas: race and ethnicity; socioeconomic class and culture; multicultural and ethnic studies; language; religion; and sexuality and gender. In each of these areas, the author explores how contrasting worldviews found in social conservatism, liberal multiculturalism, and critical multiculturalism influence our understandings about difference and diversity and the education policies we develop as a result. Diversity and Education is designed to help educators move beyond the “how can they believe that?” knee-jerk reaction toward a more informed, strategic understanding of belief systems and political affiliations. Book Features: Brings a contemporary, 21st–century perspective to differing political orientations toward diversity and education. Examines outcomes of diversity debates on children of color, the poor, immigrants, women, and sexual and religious minorities. Uses critical pedagogy with a historical and political economy lens to explain current diversity issues in education. Critiques the diversity stance of new national teacher education standards from the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation. “Diversity and Education can not only help us have conversations about racism, institutionalizedoppression, and cultural fear, it can also offer an intervention that can movereaders towards a deeper critical consciousness about diversity and multicultural education in their own lives.” —From the Foreword by Wayne Au, associate professor at the University of Washington, Bothell, and an editor for Rethinking Schools “Few education scholars have offered as potent and cogent a political and economic analysis of multicultural education and diversity as Professor Michael Vavrus has in his new book. His critique of neoliberalism via critical pedagogy and his advocacy of social justice education are timely and praiseworthy.” —Ramin Farahmandpur, professor, Graduate School of Education, Portland State University “Diversity and Education is a must-read for anyone concerned about why so many policies claiming to ‘help’ diverse students fail, and what alternatives exist. Vavrus clearly believes in the power of teachers who are well-educated critical thinkers. In this lucid and compelling text, he skillfully applies a highly useful framework to unpack historical and contemporary debates about core concepts underlying multiple struggles for education and rights.” —Christine Sleeter, professor emerita, California State University, Monterey Bay

Bringing together scholarship from both sides of the Atlantic, this book focuses on the questions that shape the field of multicultural education, offering the reader an opportunity to achieve a real grasp of the subject.

Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity, a hands-on, reader-friendly multicultural education textbook, actively engages education students in critical reflection and self-examination as they prepare to teach in increasingly diverse classrooms. In this engaging text, Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter, two of the most eminent scholars of multicultural teacher education, help pre-service teachers develop the tools they will need to learn about their students and their students’ communities and contexts, about themselves, and about the social relations in which schools are embedded. Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity challenges readers to take a truly active and ongoing role in promoting equity within education and helps to guide them in becoming highly qualified and fantastic teachers. Features and updates to this much-anticipated second edition include: Reflection boxes that encourage students to actively engage with the text and concepts, along with downloadable templates available on Routledge.com "Putting It into Practice" activities that offer concrete suggestions for really "doing" multicultural work in the classroom Fictional vignettes that illustrate the real issues teacher education students face and the ways their own cultural attitudes can impact their response New coverage of issues pertaining to student achievement, federal and state policy, and socioeconomic connections between the current economy and educational funding A more comprehensive discussion about the different social movements that have affected education in the past and present