Many educators are considering ways to increase student intercultural competence and support student identity development as they seek to create more inclusive and equitable schools and contribute to more just societies. This study provides analysis of one type of learning experience intentionally designed around intercultural…

Background: Teacher education programs (TEPs) have a mandate to prepare teachers qualified to educate culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. In addition, the demographic imperative compels TEPs to recruit preservice teachers from underrepresented communities; yet, just as youth of color are marginalized in schools, so too are…

Background: Contemporary dominant discourses surrounding (un)documented migration in the United States are commonly divided into two polarized frames--those immigrants who are hard workers seeking a better life, and others who are border-crossing criminals. For teachers in the Southeast, developing an understanding of immigrants becomes critically…

Purpose/Objectives/Research/Focus of Study: This qualitative study investigated online instructors' perceptions of cultural diversity in the online classroom and the challenges that instructors of online courses encounter in their efforts to incorporate cultural diversity and multicultural learning contents in the online learning environment. An…

Background/Context: As a result of migration processes, schools in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium) are notably ethnically diverse. This evolution has coincided with an increasing number of studies focusing on ethnic-minority pupils' experiences of ethnic prejudice from their ethnic majority counterparts. Purpose/Objective/Research…

Background/Context: Ladson-Billings's concept of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for African American children has been widely reinterpreted in various contexts for racialized students. In this reflective essay, I consider its challenges in Canadian contexts. Focus: I use my early ethnographic work to illustrate important aspects of culturally…

This chapter provides a critique of the post-racial discourse that emerged after the election of President Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States. Using personal narrative, I extend this critique of the post-racial within the context of a multicultural education graduate program.

Background/Context: There is a pressing need to consider how citizens should live together, especially in societies that are increasingly ethnically and politically diverse. Even though multicultural education is constructed very differently and serves very different purposes in different national contexts, relatively little attention has been…

Background/Context: This article considers issues related to the intersection of mental health and education. Typically, in both educational and noneducational settings, atypical mental health conditions are described and treated as "disorders." The author challenges conventional understandings of mental health and how to address it, particularly…

Background/Context: In regard to preparing prospective teachers for diverse classrooms, the agenda for teacher education research has been primarily concerned with identifying desired outcomes and promising strategies. Scholarship in multicultural education has been crucial for identifying the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed by teachers to…

Background/Context: Many scholars in the fields of teacher education, multicultural education, and bilingual education have argued that children of recent immigrants are best served in classrooms that have teachers who understand the cultural background and the home language of their students. Culturally knowledgeable and responsive teachers are…

Background/Context: Educating pre-service teachers to develop multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills for teaching diverse students is a major responsibility of teacher education program coordinators and teacher educators. Numerous studies have discussed and explored the characteristics of teacher preparation that improve pre-service…

Background: How best to serve a racially and ethnically diverse student body has been a topic of intensive theory development for the past 30 or 40 years. We have strong theoretical models regarding the need for and practice of multicultural education, the goals of which include both increased educational achievement for students of color and…

Responds to the New York State Commissioner of Education's paper calling for multicultural, historically accurate public school curricula. The paper emphasizes the importance of students being able to recognize the relationship between the historian's perspective and his/her shaping of the historical narrative in textbooks. (SM)

Because the concept of tolerance is so crucial to the goal of multicultural education in particular and education in general, educators should not confuse tolerance with permissiveness or broadmindedness. The author addresses the fundamental risk of clarifying the concept of tolerance. (MT)