Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World

Critical Perspectives on Multicultural Education

Megan Watkins, Greg Noble

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350013025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World explores the challenges facing multicultural education in the 21st century. It argues that the ideas fashioned in 1970s 'multiculturalism' are no longer adequate for the culturally complex world in which we now live. Much multicultural education celebrates superficial forms of difference and avoids difficult questions around culture in an age of transnational flows and hybrid identities. Megan Watkins and Greg Noble explore the understandings of multiculturalism that exist amongst teachers, parents and students. They demonstrate that ideas around culture and identity don't match the complexities of the social contexts of schooling in migrant-based nations such as Australia, the UK, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World draws on comprehensive research undertaken in Australian schools. It examines how a diverse range of schools address the challenges that 'superdiversity' poses, considering how the strengths and limitations of each school's approach reflect wider logics of traditional multiculturalism. In contrast, the authors argue for a transformative multiculturalism involving a critically reflexive approach to understanding the processes, relations and identities of the contemporary world.
With a Foreword by Fazal Rivzi, Emeritus Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA and Professor of Global Studies in Education, University of Melbourne, Australia.

CHAPTER 1

‘Thinking’ Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education

There can be no analysis of multicultural education without discussion of the meanings of multiculturalism. Many studies have shown ongoing support for multiculturalism in Australia and elsewhere (Berry, 2013; Markus, 2019; Poushter, 2017). However, these studies also show a degree of confusion over what multiculturalism means, despite the term being part of political discourse for many decades (Dunn et al., 2004; Goot & Watson, 2005). This confusion has flowed into the field of education. As discussed in the Introduction, much has been written on the nature and consequences of ‘multiculturalism’, from both advocates and critics of various political persuasions, and in terms of policy applications and philosophical perspectives, in education and elsewhere. As the Introduction made clear, multiculturalism is not a single thing but involves an array of programmes and rationales, reflecting what we refer to as the diverse logics of multiculturalism. This complexity affects the choices practitioners make in institutions like schools.

The aim of this chapter, then, is to explore the ways multiculturalism is understood in schools. It draws on data from the state-wide survey of NSW teachers and focus groups in the fourteen project schools to consider what teachers, students and parents mean when they talk about multiculturalism and how this shapes the ways they perceive the goals of multicultural education. We do this not only to examine the competing understandings that typify multicultural discourse generally but to explore whether there are similarities and differences in perspectives between teachers as professionals and the wider school community of students and parents, and to make sense of the perceptual schemas that shape school practices. We argue that multiculturalism is most typically foregrounded across all groups as a descriptive fact of ethnic diversity and as a moral disposition towards exotic difference, which de-emphasizes the educational capacities students need to understand a culturally complex world and the professional capacities teachers need to help students do this.

The Logics of Multiculturalism

Considerable effort has been given over many years to unpack and debate the meaning(s) of multiculturalism: scholars have shown that there are variations between nations, shifts in meaning over time and contestation between groups about what multiculturalism is (Lentin & Titley, 2011; Schwarz, 2007). Research shows that while there is general public support for multiculturalism, it varies depending on context, and that there is also some ambivalence about multicultural policies and their effects on social cohesion (Ang et al., 2002; Markus, 2019). There are many sources of this confusion and ambivalence, but we want to focus here on several issues that are significant for examining perceptions of multiculturalism in school communities.

The first is the extent to which multiculturalism is used as both a descriptive term, which simply points to the ‘fact’ of ethnic diversity in many contemporary societies, born of migration programmes that have drawn migrants from many countries, and a prescriptive term, which refers to the set of policies which manage that diversity and foster a particular ethos around diversity (Kalantzis, 1988, pp. 91–2). Of course, the ‘fact’ of diversity deriving from migration does not guarantee the existence of a political strategy of ‘multiculturalism’ (Kenny & Lobo, 2014, p. 105), so we should avoid collapsing them. Moreover, migration itself doesn’t constitute the diversity valorized in multiculturalism. A migration programme of only White British migrants, for example, would not make Australia ‘multicultural’. Particular (exotic) differences matter more than others in constituting ‘diversity’.

The second is that the ethnic diversity arising from migrant flows is significantly different to diversity arising from colonial occupation (Kymlicka, 1995). Multiculturalism is conventionally used to refer to the former but not the latter in settler-colonial nations like Australia, where Indigenous issues are separated. This raises the issue of what we mean by ‘culture’ in multiculturalism – whether we are referring to a whole way of life or an ancestral heritage, an issue we explore in Chapter 2. Arguably, while many migrants have brought aspects of their customs with them, Australia has only had a true plurality of cultures as whole ‘ways of life’ in terms of the fundamental difference between the historical modes of production of Indigenous populations and those who have arrived in waves of migration over the last two centuries (Castles et al., 1990, p. 124). These are complex conceptual issues, not just empirical questions, and yet they are rarely articulated in policy or interrogated in practice, educational or otherwise.

A third set of issues points to the coherence of multicultural policies. Even though some see multiculturalism as a unified policy with a single ethos, multiculturalism in practice ‘describes a variety of political strategies and processes which are everywhere incomplete’ (Hall, 2000, p. 210). Multiculturalism entails different policies, claims and modes of accommodation: forms of assistance, exemptions, internal and external constraints, self-government, relations of recognition and so on (Levy, 2000). While many commentators are primarily interested in the role of cultural rights in accommodating pluralism, following Kymlicka’s (1995) group-based rights approach, there is another way of thinking about these diverse objectives and programmes.

Some scholars have argued that multiculturalism is just one mode of drawing migrants into the host society – in Australia it is typically contrasted with assimilation and integration (Jupp, 2011) – but multiculturalism itself entails different forms of ‘inclusion’. These don’t simply represent a messy ‘patchwork of initiatives, rhetoric and aspirations’ (Lentin & Titley, 2011, p. 2) but embody competing logics. These forms involve d ifferent orientations of purpose and practice which compel institutional responses in particular ways. From the early days of multiculturalism, a focus was on providing migrants with the assistance needed to settle. It was often attached to events, such as citizenship ceremonies, which are about symbolically binding the migrant to the nation and to certain rights and services. We call this a logic of incorporation – not in the sense that earlier policies required migrants to forego claims to the homeland but in the sense that migrants need to acquire particular resources (the dominant language, an understanding of political processes and social mores) to function in the host society. While ‘incorporation’ may retain, for some, the problematic idea of the ‘mainstream’, it frames the process of settlement in terms of equity and access to social services, shifting the responsibility for this from the migrant to the state. Historically, however, it was realized that many migrants need informal and formal networks of support to settle well, and these networks are often provided by diasporic communities. Thus, multiculturalism also contained a logic of recognition – formalizing and funding the role of ethnic community organizations and encouraging the maintenance of the mother tongue and homeland customs (to an extent). Such a logic often assumes the coherence of the ‘ethnic community’ being recognized – a problem we address in Chapter 2. At the same time, it was also understood that large-scale migration required changes within the wider society, not just among migrants. The development of anti-racism strategies, cultural awareness programmes and practices that mark the importance of ethnic diversity within mainstream society entail a logic of civility that expects all citizens to learn how to work and live together cooperatively in shared social space. This is often stressed as the ethos of multiculturalism, but it can dissolve into moralizing mantras calling for cultural harmony and an unreflexive valorization of difference.

Each of these logics can contain competing visions of social justice, national community, ethnic difference and moral imperatives, as well as contrasting views of the consequences of migration and the purpose of governmental policy. As Triandafyllidou et al. (2012, p. 3) argue in the European context, the way states pursue the inclusion of ethnically diverse populations varies widely. Current debates around social cohesion and interculturalism continue to work around these logics. But they are competing logics in the sense that they emphasize different policy goals, different ‘problems’ and objects of action, and different mechanisms for addressing these problems that may be in tension: social justice as the recognition of difference or the redistribution of social resources, inclusion into the national family or via the embracing of a cosmopolitan vision beyond nation and so on. These logics can be seen across all national formations of multiculturalism.

In the Australian context, while it represented a significant shift from the White Australia Policy, multiculturalism soon became a system of governance which, while addressing pressing social justice issues, locked community organizations into systems of funding and political representation based on simplistic notions of ethnic community (Jakubowicz et al., 1984). By the 1990s, the focus on programmes promoting participation and equity was increasingly framed by a well-intentioned identity politics which often promoted a reductive sense of diversity and identity (Hage, 2003; Ho, 2013; Schwarz, 2007). This was complicated by emerging policies of neoliberalism (Kymlicka, 2013) which eroded projects of social justice but retained the political appropriation of ethnic politics. Multiculturalism was always a ‘compromise formation’, articulating divergent interests and meanings (Rizvi, 2014, p. 8), but it was also a ‘compromise’ because it aimed to address different kinds of problems. Schools are social institutions where, as we’ll argue later in the chapter, these compromises have to be worked out practically.

Yet multiculturalism is seen to encompass an overarching ethos which often obscures these interests and meanings. The 2017 Australian Government statement Multicultural Australia extends the self-congratulatory tone of the 2011 policy, seeing Australia as ‘the most successful multicultural society in the world’, built on shared values of respect, social cohesion, equality and freedom, emphasizing the commitment to national security and the economic role of migration. As the prime minister at the time announced, ‘The glue that holds us together is mutual respect’ (Australian Government, 2017, pp. 3, 9). It is easy to dismiss these bland claims, but the important issue is how such a statement entangles the rival orientations in political discourse around ethnic diversity: the free market, social welfare, national identity and homeland attachments. The value of focusing on these competing logics is to sidestep the endless debates over whether multiculturalism has failed, and whether it has produced a ‘successful’ society or is racism by another name (Lentin & Titley, 2011) – these are important issues, but we are more focused here on what gets done in the name of multiculturalism and how understandings of multiculturalism shape what happens in schools, especially given that none of these ‘logics’ has a clear or explicit educational approach.

Surveying Teachers on Multiculturalism

Once we appreciate that multiculturalism is a complex contradictory formation, it is no wonder that, as a social ideal, it has been met by both public endorsement and confusion. Multicultural education provides an illustration of how these logics manifest in practice. As suggested in the Introduction, multicultural education covers a range of strategies which aim to prepare all students for participation in an ethnically diverse society and to meet the particular needs of LBOTE students. We are arguing not just that these programmes are diverse, but that they follow different logics and have different objectives: some are about equipping students with the resources they need to function in Australia, some are about maintaining the linguistic and cultural resources of diasporic communities, some are about training all citizens to be respectful of ethnic differences, some are about the specific needs of minority groups and so on. While this ensemble of programmes is seen to be held together by an overarching vision, in practice it raises a number of questions:

• How do schools implement programmes which seem to follow competing logics – social equity, cultural maintenance, community liaison, anti-racism, cultural awareness?

• Given the scarce resources and time that schools have, how do the y prioritize?

• Are meanings and the goals of multiculturalism shared by teachers, students and parents?

• Do assumptions built into multiculturalism match the lives of students in contemporary societies?

• Are teachers and schools well prepared to address these demands?

To answer these questions, we need to examine the public and professional understandings of multiculturalism and the rationales and practices of multicultural education as they are realized in school communities. As indicated, in this chapter we draw on data from two of the three stages of the RMRME project outlined in the Introduction – the survey of NSW government school teachers and focus groups with teachers, parents and students in the fourteen project schools – to see what school communities think they are doing when they ‘do’ multiculturalism.

While the RMRME survey¹ elicited responses to a wide range of topics – on the backgrounds of teachers, their professional experience, their teaching practices in the area and their needs around multicultural education – it also asked questions around their understandings of and attitudes towards multiculturalism and multicultural education. The survey was crucial because teachers are professionals who work in institutions where multiculturalism has been adopted as a policy that informs many programmes and activities as well as offering an overall ethos to interethnic interaction. While studies across the world show that teachers and trainee teachers are generally very positive towards multiculturalism and more so than the wider population (Forrest et al., 2016; Hachfeld et al., 2011; James, 2004), some ambivalence persists among teachers (McInerney, 2003). Existing research on teachers’ attitudes, however, tends to focus on pre-service training and is based on relatively narrow attitudinal surveys. Few studies actually enquire into what teachers and trainees understand by multiculturalism, but when they do, they demonstrate variable understandings of multiculturalism, ethnic diversity and multicultural education (Burridge & Chodkiewicz, 2010; Neuharth-Pritchett et al., 2001).

In our survey, teachers were most likely to define multiculturalism as the ‘celebration of all cultures within one society’ (31 per cent) and ‘a society made up of many cultures’ (25 per cent), with smaller numbers opting for ‘a mixing of national backgrounds, languages and religions’ (15 per cent), ‘policies which manage diversity through goals of social equity and cultural maintenance’ (15 per cent) and ‘a nation where people from all cultures are free to follow their own beliefs’ (13 per cent) (Watkins et al., 2013, p. 54).² They show that there is no agreed defin...