Multicultural education : contemporary heresy or simply another doxa

Megan Watkins

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    3 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In response to Georgina Tsolidis, this paper considers whether multicultural education is itself a doxa. While acknowledging a post 9/11 backlash against multiculturalism and the emergence of a discourse around social cohesion within the public sphere, it questions whether this is simply a return to integrationism or more a reaction against the tired and perhaps outmoded identity politics that, from the 1980s, has increasingly framed multiculturalism as public policy. It explores how multiculturalism is performed in schools often fashioning culture or ethnic diversity as a form of exoticism through pedagogies of difference that, while well meaning, tend more towards exclusion than inclusion. Drawing on recent research in schools, it reveals how such forms of multicultural education may promote a kind of unreflective civility that, while providing a gloss of acceptance, often yields little more than a superficial community harmony that when tested reveals its fragility. The heresy inherent in this response is its questioning of the current doxa of multicultural education. It calls for a rethinking of policy and practice to encourage an ethics around difference that avoids essentialising that difference in the process and equips students with the tools for effective social participation to deal with the cultural complexity of the world in which they live.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationControversies in Education: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Policy and Practice
    EditorsHelen Proctor, Patrick Brownlee, Peter Freebody
    Place of PublicationSwitzerland
    PublisherSpringer
    Pages129-137
    Number of pages9
    ISBN (Print)9783319087580
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

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