Cultural Diversity Pedagogy and Meta-Case Design

A New Approach to Diversity in Education

Neal Dreamson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367560690
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000339758
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Responding to the growing need for educators to have a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, this book provides a theoretically-rich and empirically-sound analysis of diversity education, to develop a new cultural diversity pedagogy. The author deconstructs and navigates the complex field of diversity education, arguing for a more socially engaged approach, in which educators and researchers develop their perspectives on cultural diversity by examining their own assumptions, values, and beliefs. This is explored through a series of 10 case studies based in primary school settings demonstrating that teaching and learning environments are crucial to the success of cultural diversity.

1Theory

Metaphysical pedagogy for cultural diversity

In responding to culturally diverse society, various educational forms have emerged such as multicultural education, cross-cultural education, intercultural education, and transcultural education. These forms are often perceived as complementary or opposite to each other. For example, researchers argue that multicultural education is complementary to intercultural education in that the ultimate aims of both are identical, which is to educate students to have competence in recognising cultural and ethnic differences and participating in dialogic interactions (Meer & Modood, 2012). Other researchers criticise that multicultural education reifies our understanding of culture and thereby interrupting authentic interactions between cultures (Barrett, 2013). Geographically, ‘multicultural’ is dominant in North America and Asian countries, whereas ‘intercultural’ is prominent in European communities. Interestingly, Australia’s government policy uses ‘multicultural’, whereas their curriculum introduces ‘intercultural understanding’ for teachers’ general capability (Holim & Zilliacus, 2009; Tarozzi, 2012).

The literature tends to focus on debating which one is more effective, which could encourage us to forget a fundamental and pedagogical question, how to view cultural diversity in and for education. In practice, when cultural differences become a primary concern in developing lesson plans, cultural diversity is often paid no or less attention, thus, resulting in no cultural diversity in teaching and learning. Furthermore, the quality of multi−/inter-cultural lesson plans could become heavily reliant on individual teachers’ knowledge, capacity and mindset. Thus, it is highly likely that a critical review of multi−/inter-cultural pedagogy remains unexplored, in particular from perspectives of non-dominant cultures. In this context, fundamentally, the entrenched belief, which is a frame of ‘us’ and ‘them’, cannot be tackled by ‘other cultures’, and consequently, ‘us’ is always prioritised. This epistemological dualism could also prevent teachers from reviewing their teaching practices from other cultural perspectives and encourage them to focus on their uncritical perceptions of ‘individuals’ who have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In teaching processes, ‘us’ is excluded, and transformation is always targeted at ‘them’ only, which (could be unintentionally or unconsciously but) could result in upholding culturism, nationalism, or cultural chauvinism (in emotional or passive ways). This ideologically framed otherness works to exclude ‘us’ from culturally diverse reality as well as the ‘-ities’.

In this chapter, first, I argue why cultural diversity education has to be metaphysical – to tackle epistemological dualism and discover the authenticity of cultural diversity using an ontological question, ‘how it exists’ rather than ‘what it is’. Second, I critically review each educational ‘-ity’ (intra-, multi-, cross-, inter-, and trans-) and their relationships with cultural diversity. Its process is inevitably metaphysical because their underlying assumptions about cultural diversity are hidden or implicit. Third, I convert pedagogy for cultural diversity into a methodological process to discover the authenticity of cultural diversity, which is called pedagogicalisation, and then, I discuss a new pedagogical form for cultural diversity by addressing its metaphysical dimensions. Fourth and last, I justify three units of cultural diversity (value unit, virtue unit, and ritual unit) which represent dualistic, monistic, and holistic cultures. I also present a framework of metaphysical pedagogy for cultural diversity that is expected to reshape teaching and learning strategies for cultural diversity.

Cultural diversity as a metaphysical approach

In the book (2016), Reinventing intercultural education: A metaphysical manifest for rethinking cultural diversity, I argued metaphysical tensions between cultures and three aspects of cultural diversity based on a critical review of postcolonial literature. First, cultures have their own unique identities that have to be addressed in intercultural interactions (see Said’s (1979) orientalism, Spivak’s (1985, 1988) othering, Hall’s (1989, 1993) authentic ethnicity, and Gilroy’s (1993, 2004) double consciousness of cultural exchange). These researchers assume that there are unchanging, collective, uninterrupted, and permanent features of ethnic cultures that cannot be commensurable with other cultures particularly Western culture. As Hall (1989) and Spivak (1988) argued, furthermore, Western binary oppositions of cultural ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Background: Why cultural diversity education
• About the project
• Chapter 1: Theory: Metaphysical pedagogy for cultural diversity
• Chapter 2: Methodology: Meta-case design for cultural diversity pedagogy research
• Chapter 3: Post-case design 1: Learning goals for cultural diversity
• Chapter 4: Post-case design 2: Relational peer assessment
• Chapter 5: Post-case design 3: Relational motivation and shared responsibility
• Chapter 6: Post-case design 4: Empathetic learning
• Chapter 7: Post-case design 5: Culturally inclusive critical thinking
• Chapter 8: Post-case design 6: Cultural privilege as a pedagogical process
• Chapter 9: Post-case design 7: Divergent thinking and perspective-taking
• Chapter 10: Post-case design 8: Authentic classroom ownership through spatiotemporality
• Chapter 11: Post-case design 9: Co-participatory formative assessment
• Chapter 12: Post-case design 10: Multiple methods of asking questions
• Conclusion: Meta-case design
• Index