Approaches to Multicultural Education in Preservice Teacher Education: Philosophical Frameworks and Models for Teaching

The authors in this article connect teacher education to multiple theoretical frameworks around the ongoing debate and issues of multicultural education. Connecting conservative, liberal, and radical theories of multicultural education particularly to preservice teachers, the authors argue that a more eclectic theoretical avenue must be striven and struggled for if there exists any hope in transforming schools, particularly, as they note, in urban environments. Practical avenues are discussed that promote such a multilayered interpretive/analytical approach to social change.     

Self and community in a fourth-grade global education project: Necessary conditions for the emancipatory agenda

This naturalistic study focuses on a global education project in a fourth-grade class. The concepts of self, community, generalized other, and intersubjectivity are elaborated on and connected to the data. The analysis suggests that by understanding the dynamics of these concepts within classroom acts, both teachers and students have the potential to resist values of the dominant ideology, such as negative competition and individualism. In conclusion, a counterhegemonic platform is proposed that incorporates these concepts as a challenge to mainstream consciousness.     

Institutional and cultural political resistance: Necessary conditions for the transformative intellectual

This naturalistic case study of a group of eighth grade middle school teachers depicts them asresistant in two areas: institutional politics and cultural politics. These resistances are first described and then analyzed. Resistance is then connected to what counts as the transformative intellectual. The conclusion suggests that both types of resistances may lead to a teacher commitment in acting to counter ideological barriers. Counterhegemonic possibilities, then, becomes a real potentiality.     

The politics of similarity within difference: A pedagogy for the other

The cultural political struggles of five female teachers in a heavily populated minority urban school in Southern California depicts bothsimilarity anddifference. Similarly, each teacher struggles to help overcome her own and students' oppression, subordination, and alienation. Through understandingsimilarity, different teacher and student voices make understanding the other easier. It is argued that understanding similarity within difference opens space for a democratic imaginary, that, while not clearly articulated at any one moment, acts to variously challenge the oppressive forces existing within and outside of schools.