Cultural studies, pedagogy and reimagining multicultural education : working with teachers to effect change in schools

Early policies of multiculturalism were premised on notions of distinct and cohesive ethnic communities, a view that has similarly influenced their application within schooling. Intergenerational change, cultural adaptation, increasing globalization, and mass migration, however, have led to a questioning of such bounded and static notions of culture and for the need to consider, not only more hybrid forms of identity but multiple senses of belonging that are no longer so narrowly aligned with that of the nation. Teachers, therefore, require the necessary resources to make sense of this complexity to allow them to move beyond the cultural essentialism so characteristic of much policy and practice in this area (Tellez 2007; Watkins 2015a). Drawing on recent research which involved training teachers to undertake this task in the form of site-specific action research, this chapter explores their receptiveness toward rethinking categories of culture and identity and engaging with the intellectual skepticism that cultural studies promotes—a pedagogic mode designed to encourage a questioning of the normative assumptions that can frame our view of the social world. While examining the responses of teachers in a number of schools, it focuses on those two in particular and the degree to which they were able to apply these understandings in the process of reimagining how multicultural education is practiced in their schools.