Abstract
Since their inception in Australia in the 1970s, multicultural policies have been met with general but qualified public support (Ang, Brand, Noble and Sternberg, Dunn et al., 2004). The national and international contexts since 2001, however, have heightened anxieties around immigration and social cohesion, evoking the claims of ‘crisis’ around multiculturalism (Lentin and Tilley, 2011). This has exacerbated a longstanding lack of clarity about what multiculturalism actually means, both here and overseas (Parekh, 2006; Modood, 2007). In 2001, however, against the international trend, the Australian Government (2011) reasserted its policy commitment to multiculturalism. Yet, multiculturalism is still in a moment of uncertainty and re-evaluation, not just because of criticism from conservative commentators (Donnelly, 2005), but because there is some concern that policies developed in the 1970s and 1980s may no longer be as relevant in Australia’s increasingly transnational, culturally complex and technologically mediated societies (Modood, 2007). Within this wider context, multicultural education has faced challenges to its relevance, framework and modes of delivery. This chapter emerges from a series of projects reassessing multicultural education – its concepts, practices and goals – to ensure schooling practices can function more effectively in promoting cultural inclusion and social justice. It argues that multiculturalism has always entailed ‘logics’, in which demands for cultural recognition existed alongside imperatives towards social justice. However, this is a difficult balance to maintain and in the last 20 years we have seen an increasing emphasis on cultural difference in defining multicultural education. The schemes of cultural difference that structure teachers’ professional practice may, therefore, shape classroom teaching in sometime problematic ways, producing particular kinds of reduced student identities. The chapter concludes then on the need for professional development programs to engage teachers – not just students – in developing the critical capacities for understanding a culturally complex world.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Advancing Race and Ethnicity in Education |
Editors | Richard Race, Vini Lander |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Palgrave |
Pages | 162-177 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781137274755 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |