Rethinking Multicultural Education For The Next Generation

Rethinking Multicultural Education for the Next Generation builds on the legacy of social justice multicultural education, while recognizing the considerable challenges of reaching today’s college students. By drawing on breakthrough research in two fields – neuroscience and animal studies – Nadine Dolby argues that empathy is an underlying element of all living beings. Dolby shows how this commonality can provide a scaffolding for building an exciting new approach to developing multicultural and global consciousness, one that has the potential to transform how our students see and relate to the world around them. This book features classroom vignettes and reflections, discussion of research with pre-service teachers on the concept of empathy, and pedagogical suggestions for fostering the new empathy in students. Incorporating discussions of animal emotions, sustainability, and our responsibilities to all living creatures and the planet, Dolby challenges multicultural educators to rethink both curriculum and pedagogy and to begin new and bolder conversations about how empathy for humans, animals, and the planet must be part of a new approach to teaching.

This new and expanded edition collects the best articles dealing with race and culture in the classroom that have appeared in Rethinking Schools magazine. With more than 100 pages of new materials, Rethinking Multicultural Education demonstrates a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education. Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp! Book Review 1: “If you are an educator, student, activist, or parent striving for educational equality and liberation, Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice will empower and inspire you to make a positive change in your community.” -- Curtis Acosta, Former teacher, Tucson Mexican American Studies Program; Founder, Acosta Latino Learning Partnership Book Review 2: “Rethinking Multicultural Education is both thoughtful and timely. As the nation and our schools become more complex on every dimension–race, ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexuality, immigrant status–teachers need theory and practice to help guide and inform their curriculum and their pedagogy. This is the resource teachers at every level have been looking for.” -- Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor & Dept. Chair, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children Book Review 3: “Rethinking Multicultural Education is an essential text as we name the schools we deserve, and struggle to bring them to life in classrooms across the land.” -- William Ayers, teacher, activist, award-winning education writer, and Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired)

Korn and Bursztyn and their contributors examine the cultural transitions that children make as they move between the cultures of home and school. To better understand these transitions, they explore how educators understand their students' shifting experiences and examine how educators also negotiate transitions as they too move from home to school each day. The narratives or case studies reflect this shifting gaze: from child, to teacher, to parents, and take up the various relational configurations that these can form, amongst and between each other. They turn a critical eye toward instances of classroom practice and school life, connecting personal knowledge with school change. In some cases, the authors draw directly on autobiographical material, linking these to a reflective approach to teaching. Avoiding the celebratory tone that often attends discussions of multiculturalism, the authors address how diverstiy engages us in continual renegotiation of the personal and social. The perspectives of educators and of teacher candidates are presented, and the construction of cultural identity and its impact on schools, explored. In illuminating the complicated nature of cultural transitions and the obligation of schools to create places in which children and families of diverse backgrounds can thrive, they highlight how multiculturalism can play a transformative role in the lives of children and schools. A must reading for educators and graduate students in education, school psychology, guidance and counseling.

From book bans, to teacher firings, to racist content standards, the politics of teaching race and culture in schools have shifted dramatically in recent years. This 3rd edition of Rethinking Multicultural Education has been greatly revised and expanded to reflect these changing times, including sections on “Intersectional Identities,” “Anti-Racist Teaching Across the Curriculum,” “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “K-12 Ethnic Studies,” among others. Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Education can help current and future educators as they seek to bring racial and cultural justice into their own classrooms.

Moving beyond a simplistic focus on heroes and holidays, foods and festivals, Rethinking Multicultural Education demonstrates a powerful vision of anti-racist social justice education. Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Education reclaims multicultural education as part of a larger struggle for justice and against racism, colonization, and cultural oppression-in schools and society. The book features 40 chapters, split into 4 sections: Anti-Racist Orientations; Language, Culture, and Power; Transnational Identities; Multicultural Classrooms; and Confronting Racism in the Classroom. Winner of the 2010 Skipping Stones Honor Award.

This book aims to bring together two movements - multiculturalism and anti- racism - which, though having aims in common, have been at arms length in the past. Differences of emphasis have meant that classroom practice has been the natural realm of multiculturalism, while anti-racism has been dissatisfied with an approach that accentuates life-style at the expense of challenging or changing the racism that minority students experience. In these debates, there has been a concentration on culturally specific topics and this book goes beyond national boundaries to find how international concerns and contexts might provide answers to problems faced in single countries. Leading figures in the USA, Canada, South Africa, the UK and Australasia write on the issues.

As technology becomes more widespread and the world continues to change in many other ways, teachers have adapted to allow education to evolve with the 21st century. This book provides theoretical foundations and highly practical strategies for classrooms tackling modern challenges, drawing in part on the ideas and experiences of practising teachers. The authors highlight how crucial education is for equipping future generations with the skills for individual, societal and planetary wellbeing, while still considering the pressures of ‘teaching to the test’. Every teacher balances a range of priorities as they enter a classroom which this book addresses: •Teaching for personal development, including autonomy, resilience, critical thinking, mental health and overall wellbeing •Teaching for social development, for the workplace but also for community participation and social life generally •Teaching for equity, inclusion and political and global/environmental commitment •Teaching for digital knowledge and skill, in ways that are technologically advanced and substantively relevant •Enhanced teacher identity, professionalism and wellbeing The book will be an essential companion for teachers, particularly those at the start of their training and in preservice roles, with plenty of practical suggestions and strategies. “Classroom Teaching in the 21st Century is a gift to school leaders and teachers who are looking for sound advice to improve teaching and learning.” Pak Tee NG, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore “If you are looking for fresh ideas about teaching for meaning and well-being, as well as for competence and content, look no further.” A. Lin Goodwin, Dean, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong “This is an important new book which will make a substantial contribution to the literature on education and schooling.” Keith F Punch, Emeritus Professor, Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia, Australia Clive Beck is Emeritus Professor in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/University of Toronto, Canada, teaching courses for preservice and in-service teachers and engaging in empirical research on teaching. He is a past-Coordinator of Graduate Studies at OISE and past-President of the American Philosophy of Education Society. Clare Kosnik is Professor in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/University of Toronto, Canada, past-Director of Elementary Teacher Education at OISE and past-Director of the Jackman Institute of Child Study. She has researched extensively on teaching and teacher education, and has received University-wide Awards for Excellence in both teaching and graduate supervision.

In tracing the origins of the modern human-rights movement, historians typically point to two periods: the 1940s, in which decade the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly; and the 1970s, during which numerous human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), most notably Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières, came into existence. It was also in the 1970s, Sarita Cargas observes, when the first classes in international human rights began to be taught in law schools and university political science departments in the United States. Cargas argues that the time has come for human rights to be acknowledged as an academic discipline. She notes that human rights has proven to be a relevant field to scholars and students in political science and international relations and law for over half a century. It has become of interest to anthropology, history, sociology, and religious studies, as well as a requirement even in social work and education programs. However, despite its interdisciplinary nature, Cargas demonstrates that human rights meets the criteria that define an academic discipline in that it possesses a canon of literature, a shared set of concerns, a community of scholars, and a methodology. In an analysis of human rights curricula in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Cargas identifies an informal consensus on the epistemological foundations of human rights, including familiarity with human rights law; knowledge of major actors including the United Nations, governments, NGOS, and multinational corporations; and, most crucially, awareness and advocacy of the rights and freedoms detailed in the articles of the UDHR. The second half of the book offers practical recommendations for creating a human rights major or designing courses at the university level in the United States.