Ethics before Equality: Moral education after Levinas

Emptiness, indeed nihilism, is a characteristic of so much contemporary discourse regarding morality and moral education. This is found in facile notions of teaching right and wrong but also in the prevalence of rights-talk, with its sacrosanct assumptions about equality. This article examines this discourse in the light of Levinas' account of the primacy of ethics - of my absolute responsibility in the face of the other, of the asymmetry of my relation to the other. It seeks an account of receptivity that releases the ethical from the limitations of moral reasoning.     

Education for multicultural citizens in Indonesia: policies and practices

Abstract

This paper examines how education in Indonesia can help create tolerant and multicultural citizens through the analysis of policies and practices. After the political shift in 1998, Indonesia issued education law No. 20 in 2003 which contains, though vague, a couple of articles that can underpin the development and implementation of multicultural education. This is a ‘spirit’ of multicultural education, which has been interpreted in subsequent regulations and decrees. In this paper, the author explores how these policies and school curricula have been translated into practices. The author conducted a series of ethnographic fieldwork in two provinces, Yogyakarta and Central Kalimantan, visiting six different schools: four religious (three Islamic and one Catholic), one state secular and one state vocational. The findings suggest that there were inconsistencies between policies and practices of multicultural education due to a lack of explicit policies and incapable education decision-makers and teachers.     

Pedagogy and the "problem" of difference: On reading community in The Darker Side of Black

This paper examines the responses of two groups of high school students to Isaac Julien's film The Darker Side of Black and theorizes what these responses might suggest for how students imagine and argue for community. It explores the tension that is produced as students argue for community as continuous and stable in the face of discontinuity and difference in the diaspora. The paper raises the possibilities for how pedagogy may occupy the space of tension that emerges from competing notions of community. It calls attention to the pedagogic constraints that come from the practice of privileging difference between communities, which might well compromise engagement with difference within. The trope of culture as the attribute of social groups that has come to structure debates on multicultural and antiracist education is critiqued.     

Eyes wide shut: the fantasies and disavowals of education policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the tensions between education policy’s attachment to notions such as excellence and inclusion and its investments in managerial tropes of competition, continuous quality improvement, standards and accountability that are at odds with and which undermine its attachments. In order to explore these tensions, I draw on the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy, explained through Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes wide shut. My argument is that while the individual and society are both constituted through unavoidable division, antagonism and opacity, these notions are obscured through the operations of fantasy which holds out the promise of wholeness, harmony and redemption. In particular, education serves as a key site in which these fantasmatic ideals are promoted and pursued, a claim I substantiate via an analysis of the UK government’s 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere. Specifically, I read the White Paper in terms of five fantasies of: control; knowledge and reason; inclusion; productivity; and victimhood. My argument is that while fantasy is an inescapable element that inevitably structures what we take to be ‘reality’, education policy might strive to inhabit fantasy differently, thereby finding ways of escaping its current mode of seeing education with eyes wide shut.     

Research,writing, and racial identity: Cross‐disciplinary connections for multicultural education

Abstract

This paper describes a classroom‐based research study designed to determine how students in an undergraduate multicultural education course experience difficult and emotional content about racism. Samples of students’ reflective writing were used as sources of data, and Janet Helms’ theory of racial identity development served as the framework for analysis. Findings suggest that coursework in multicultural education can influence white students’ racial identities. In addition, the experiences of one white student are highlighted as she grappled with issues of white privilege and multicultural teaching. This study illustrates how reflective writing in combination with teaching practices informed by psychological theory helped to expand students’ understanding of racism while facilitating the development of their racial identities.     

Women and gender studies and multicultural education: Building the agenda for 2000 and beyond

Abstract

Multicultural education has always been contested terrain, yet within the last five years a significant consensus about its scope and function has evolved. The discourse about multicultural education has not adequately attended to the debates surrounding the terms “gender” and “sex” or the multiple feminist theories that focus on the more critical aspects of a social change agenda. This article focuses on some of the tensions between women and gender studies and multicultural education such as: understanding gender as a category of analysis, theoretical constructions of feminism, and building an educational agenda for social justice in an effort to further the agenda for 2000 and beyond.     

Intercultural education and teacher education in Sweden

The Swedish school is a meeting place for different cultures. Gender and class variations have been recognized for many years. More recently, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity has also entered Swedish classrooms. This article examines these new educational circumstances in three parts. The first section defines some multicultural terms in Swedish context and briefly describes Sweden as a multicultural society. The second section discusses different pedagogical strategies in Swedish multicultural classrooms where cultural diversity problematizes traditional education. The final section addresses the need for an intercultural perspective in teacher education.     

Culture and Technology: implications for multicultural teacher education

ABSTRACT

American classrooms are experiencing a rapid growth in cultural and ethnic diversity, as well as an increase in educational classroom computing. Because culture directly affects classroom organisation and classroom learning, teachers need to understand, incorporate, and support their students’ cultures. Furthermore, since educational computing is not culturally neutral, teachers in culturally diverse settings must integrate the computer culture, the classroom culture, and students’ learning preferences. To meet the need for culturally and technologically competent multicultural teachers, teacher education programs must first define both cultural competency and computer competency. After examining the relationship between culture and educational computing, the paper explores some essential components of cultural and technological competency for multicultural teachers. Finally, it indicates the need for further research on the interaction of culture and technology in the multicultural classroom.     

Aporias, responsibility, and the im/possibility of teaching multicultural education

Drawing upon Jacques Derrida's notions of aporia and responsibility, this essay discusses the dilemmas of multicultural education and the pedagogical responsibility of multicultural educators. Derrida emphasizes that there is no responsibility without experiencing aporia as the possibility of the impossible. To promote personal transformation and social justice in the multicultural classroom, we must acknowledge the aporias of teacher authority and student agency, self and other, center and margin, and intellect and emotion, and refuse to reduce them to any easy resolutions. The Derridean notions of aporia and responsibility ask us to approach multicultural education as a poetic experiencing of contradictions in order to invent new modes of subjectivity for both teacher and student. The complexity of teaching about social differences calls for creative pedagogy in which identity and community are destabilized while ambiguity and paradoxes are embraced, thus allowing us to imagine the world otherwise.     

Toward a white teachers' guide to playing fair: Exploring the cultural politics of multicultural teaching

Multicultural education in teacher preparation programs can emphasize the study of whiteness so as to make whiteness visible, analyze white privilege, and offer ways that white privilege can be used to combat racism. While white race consciousness has been seen as part of the multicultural education agenda for some educators, recently the efficacy of such an approach has been questioned. White race consciousness or antiracist pedagogy has not been shown to bring about teacher competence in diverse classrooms or to raise the academic performance of students of color and poverty. I suggest here that the social relations in the larger society, deeply embedded with notions of deficit thinking, are mapped onto the reality of a largely white professorate preparing a largely white public school teaching force, thereby ensuring the academic failure of certain children. To play fair, then, requires that white teachers recognize when their classroom practices assume assimilation into the dominant culture and their actions exclude the contributions of diverse individuals and groups. I argue for a multicultural education discourse that includes a recognitive view of social justice for guiding white educators in the practice of fair play in diverse classrooms.     

Valuing Diversity in the Schools: Learning from Multicultural Counseling for Teachers in the Greek Educational Setting

This paper explores the challenge of diversity in an increasingly multicultural world, and adopts the position that the valuing of diversity can be taught – especially within the context of teacher training and education in general. It gives an overview of major components of diversity training within the context of multicultural counseling, and stresses what counseling can offer teacher training in regard to diversity issues and competencies for the Greek educational setting. Finally, it examines key notions of difference and ‘otherness’ in Greek thought, which can inform contemporary discourse on diversity and multicultural counseling theory and practice.     

Social constructivism: Infusion into the multicultural science education research agenda

This article focuses on (a) theoretical underpinnings of social constructivism and multicultural education and (b) aspects of social constructivism that can provide frameworks for research in multicultural science education. According to the author, multicultural science education is “a field of inquiry with constructs, methodologies, and processes aimed at providing equitable opportunities for all students to learn quality science.” Multicultural science education research continues to be influenced by class, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, and different lifestyles; however, another appropriate epistemology for this area of research is social constructivism. The essence of social constructivism and its implications for multicultural science education research includes an understanding of whatever realities might be constructed by individuals from various cultural groups and how these realities can be reconstituted, if necessary, to include a scientific reality. Hence, multicultural science education should be a field of study in which many science education researchers are generating new knowledge. The author strives to persuade other researchers to expand their research and teaching efforts into multicultural science education, a blending of social constructivism with multicultural science education. This blending is illustrated in the final section of this article. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Towards the decolonisation of religion education in a pre-service education classroom

ABSTRACT

In this article, I reflect on my attempts to decolonise religious education at a historically white university in a post-apartheid South Africa. This pre-service education project conducted in 2017 happened against the backdrop of two events, namely, a renewed curriculum policy, Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and the #RhodesMustFall (RMF) and #FeesMustFall (FMF) protests. These events encouraged me to reflect on my academic role as a teacher-educator preparing pre-service teachers to teach religion in schools. This led to me asking many questions such as, what is the effect of my teaching religious education?, How do teacher-educators prepare religious education pre-service teachers for a multicultural and multireligious society?, How does my teaching align itself with the decolonisation of education? and How do I redress the colonial past in my religious education classroom? The data which included reflective reports, student experiences and self-reflexivity acknowledged the findings that religion education served as a unifying factor in building social cohesion. The significance of this paper lies in the argument that decolonisation becomes an imperative if one is striving for social justice and intends to commit oneself to a more equitable society where crossing borders must be a seamless act.     

Entrance examinations and remedial education in Japanese higher education

We are witnesses to two major shiftsin Japanese higher education – the changing roleof entrance examinations and the growth ofremedial education. The universalization ofhigher education and decreasing numbers oftraditional college-age youth are alteringlong-established notions about entranceexaminations and education itself. Thisarticle examines the function of entranceexaminations at private institutions andoutlines the newly established position ofremedial education in higher education.     

The stories we must tell: Developing a research agenda for multicultural and bilingual special education

Disproportion in special education based on race, ethnicity, language, and class persists. In this paper, we argue that to address this and other perpetual problems of underachievement for culturally and linguistically diverse children and youth requires examination of disability within its full sociocultural context and inclusion of the stories of those who are most affected by educational research, policy, and practice. We conducted a qualitative analysis of the existing professional literature of multicultural and bilingual special education published over 27 years in major special education journals to document omissions in the empirical research and conceptualize a research agenda around four themes: authenticity, legitimization, and multiplicity of voices; validation of culturally and linguistically responsive special education service delivery models and intervention; multicultural preparation of special educators; and underserved populations in special education.     

Between thick and thin: responding to the crisis of moral education

This article presents a moral orientation that can serve as a commonly shared foundation for developing moral consciousness in (postmodern) multicultural democratic societies. To this end, I distinguish between two prevailing generic views of moral education—‘thin’ and ‘thick’—and claim that the tensions between them contribute to the sense of crisis of moral education (and public schooling in general). I begin by showing these tensions through a discussion of representatives of each side of the thin–thick dichotomy, as well as through Lickona’s integrative account. After discussing the complications of each view, I present PARTS—Postconventional Authentic Relation-to-Self—as a normative perspective that is able to reconcile the two generic views. I show the merits of PARTS by discussing the notions of moral judgement and motivation.     

Multiculturalism: An "as if" phenomenon

Multiculturalism has come to have multiple meanings depending on the context and voice it is given. In higher education it has become a symbol for particular notions about minority and majority groups, and their places in the institution. While multicultural affairs and concerns at academic institutions appear to be genuinely supported and give the impression of commitment, they are, on closer inspection, a superficial and reactionary response to environmental pressures. Multicultural initiatives are not integrated into the very heart of the institution, but, rather, relegated to a cursory importance that, while genuinely intended, maintains the status quo. This paper attempts to closely examine the process of multiculturalism in small liberal arts colleges from the perspective of a minority faculty and administrator. That is, from a simultaneous position of subject and object.     

Power and control in education 1944–2004

Abstract

This article examines the prospects for education over the next decade in the context of an analysis of the last fifty years of conflict and consensus over education policy. It begins with a look into the future and then turns back to 1944 to study the distribution of power under the Butler settlement. It then examines the pressures which broke up the Butler settlement and created the conditions for the market revolution of 1988 to 1994. It argues that in 1994 the education system stands at a turning point where a number of significant choices have to be made. If good policy choices are made in the next two to three years it argues, then the education system has the potential to achieve very high levels of success within the next decade.     

Undermining critical consciousness unconsciously: Restoring hope in the multicultural education idea

The main goal of multicultural education is to transform the structural factors in the educational system in order to redress inequalities and inequities for historically underprivileged populations (Banks 1997). This article addresses theories and practices that frame multicultural education in teaching and learning contexts. How do teachers interpret the purpose of multicultural education? I suggest that educators are more likely to interpret multicultural education using the functionalist meta-theoretical framework (Burell and Morgan 1979) and the positivistic epistemology (Turner 2006). Ironically this kind of interpretation subverts the original goals of multicultural education as a transformative movement. The process of transforming curriculum and instruction in learning contexts encounters what I would call a “double jeopardy.” On one hand, curriculum processes run into political impediments that are often pervasive, complex, and invisible, whereas on the other hand they encounter a positivistic epistemology that reduces complex phenomena to simplistic, neutral, objective, and universal standards. I make a case for a radical humanist paradigm that privileges the investigation of social and political relations of power and places critical consciousness at the center of educational structures and pedagogy. I attempt to make critical consciousness visible and to show how it can be employed to change schooling opportunities and the lives of those who fall in the “Other” category of social theory.