Multiculturalism and a committment to an ideology of cultural pluralism has been both a high profile and contentious government policy since its origin in Canada in the early seventies. Multiculturalism has also influenced educational practices and opened the way for multicultural and race relations education. With continuing high immigration, successfully meeting the challenges of cultural pluralism in society and education, and gaining support for its commitments from the public, is increasingly important. This study examines these challenges by considering the ideals, strengths, weaknesses, evolution and misconceptions of a philosophy of multiculturalism with emphasis upon educational implications. Three fundamental elements of multiculturalism are considered: ethnic identity, social integration and intergroup relations. This research contributes to the literature by providing a qualitative component focusing upon the experiences and perceptions of immigrant youth who are experiencing social integration into the Canadian multicultural society. The above themes are examined through the relevant literature and an exploratory study. Group discussions were held with adolescents, mostly immigrants, in homogeneous or similar ethnic/cultural groups--Latin Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese and South Asians. The conversations focused upon ethnic identity development, acculturation, intergroup relations and the youths' perspectives on North American culture and multiculturalism--particularly in the context of secondary schools in Vancouver. Three of the groups were held in the mother tongue. The themes are discussed by respective ethnic/cultural groups and comparisons and commonalties between the groups are explored. The interviews emphasize the development of "new ethnicities" as the youths engage in "cross-cultural analysis" and accommodate their new environment without forfeiting their ethnic identities. The latter part of the study exposes misconceptions around multiculturalism and, supported by the findings from both the literature and the interviews, illustrates both the evolution and potential of multiculturalism as an approach to managing cultural diversity. The final section examines the implications of the findings for schooling in a culturally pluralistic society. Although the study is set in the Canadian context, it has applicability for various culturally diverse nations concerned with social integration, intergroup relations and their educational implications.

This dissertation describes how and why high school students in a developing country may resist educational processes intended to make them into modern citizens. The research set out to illuminate in-school processes which affected students' academic engagement and to help explicate an eight-year decline on the Grade 10 School Certificate Examination in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. The report is based on one year of ethnographic research conducted in Pere village on the southeast coast and two high schools in Lorengau, the provincial capital, in 1994-95. I claim that at the time of study a shift away from the village in critical economic resources, rising unemployment, the ongoing viability of the subsistence base, and a need to maintain a degree of control over those living in towns led many Pere Villagers to be discouraged about the value of educational investment and to make claims to a somewhat invented "traditionality." In the high schools in Lorengau, students were aware of the limited opportunity structure after grade 10, and that they could return to their villages after finishing school and make their living from subsistence economics. A critical mass of students rationalized that school success, with its unlikely rewards, was not worth its requirements of hard work and conformity to rules. These students pursued social experience in school, resisted teachers, and valorized an egalitarian village-based identity within the student culture. I argue that the ongoing construction of this identity led these students to conduct routine surveillance of their peers for signs of acting "extra:" Appropriating Western behaviors which were associated with hierarchical status positions in the cash economy, or making strident efforts in school to obtain such a position. Accordingly, I show that Manus high schools functioned as social fields for the negotiation of Melanesian personhood. I conclude that people in Pere and Manus high schools lay claim to a moral "good" inherent in Melanesian egalitarianism, and that these were creative and rational responses which both critiqued the tendency of capitalist development to create hierarchical status differences and served to maintain these peoples' sense of worth in contexts of increasing powerlessness.

This is a report of an ethnographic study of a graduate level Methods course for ESL/Bilingual teachers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The course is organized around task-based, small group, facilitative and collaborative learning. One of the intriguing aspects of the course is the opportunities it provides for students to identify, understand and critique the ways that they share power and authority with each other and with the course professor. This research investigates the early inception of the role of facilitator within this complex educational practice. The role is purposefully under-defined so that facilitators can experiment with it, and turn it into something that has meaning for them. My research questions address the enactments or "dance" of authority--how it is experienced, voiced and shared by facilitators and students in this classroom community. I have developed a theoretical framework for three concepts or "modes" of authority and their consequent acts. They are: compassionate authority, involving the act of imaginatively taking up positions for one another (Jones, 1993); scholarship authority--the act of reframing and generating theories of the facilitation practice in order to understand and critique this pedagogy (Christ, 1987); and inventive authority--the act of creating, finding and remembering the substance of discourse (Lefevre, 1986). These modes of authority are mutually sustaining, and when converged steer us away from conceiving of authority dichotomously. Drawing on the notions of positioning (Carbaugh, 1994b) and intertextuality (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993), I highlight the distinctive social positions that are created discursively when students uphold, reject and resist these modes of authority. The findings reveal that authoritative relationships at this site are contingent, patterned in moment-by-moment changes and often asymmetrical. The findings also reveal that the interactions constitute a balancing act--a power of balance--among the three modes of authority. Ultimately, this study should provide insights into discourses of compassion, critique and invention in multicultural and multilingual education.

The problem. Teachers have been given responsibility for providing the academic, social and vocational education necessary for students to function as whole and healthy citizens in society. In the United States, public schooling has stood at the center of viable democratic processes. This study examines the extent to which one large, urban school district with a multicultural population, provides multicultural educational opportunities to classroom teachers. Scope of study. The primary questions this study seeks to address include: (1) What multicultural staff development opportunities are available to teachers in the District of Columbia school system? (2) Are teachers given release times to participate in multicultural staff development training? (3) What incentives are provided to encourage teachers to participate in multicultural staff development training? and (4) What resources have been made available to assist teachers with training and development in multicultural education? Chapter one outlines the statement and background of the research topic and research questions. The significance of the study and study's assumptions and limitations are described. In addition, definitions of the key terms used in the study are provided. Chapter two provides a review of the literature on multicultural education. Research on teacher education and staff development and multicultural curriculum development is also reviewed. Chapter three outlines the research design. This includes a description of the data collection and analysis procedure, the population of the study and the methodology used in the data analysis. Chapter four presents the study's findings and chapter five provides a summary of the conclusions, implications and recommendations of the study. Method. A six-point Likert type scale questionnaire consisting of 27 items was designed to measure four categories related to multicultural education training and development opportunities for middle school teachers in three randomly selected middle schools. Subsequently, a total of 57 out of 65 respondents returned questionnaires. In conclusion, an overall review of the qualitative data reveals the level and frequency of participation of middle school classroom teachers within three randomly selected middle schools in multicultural staff development activities. Further, the analysis of the data will serve as a guide for subsequent planning with system-wide training.

Barely a quarter century in this country, the Hmong are among the newest Americans. Since 1975, when United States' troops pulled out of Laos, more than 170,000 Hmong refugees and their children have adopted this as their new land, settling primarily in the cities of California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Products of an agrarian economy and a clan-centered, historically preliterate, homogeneous, insulated culture, they arrived in American airports ill-equipped to deal with a capitalistic, technological, industrial, heterogeneous, media-saturated culture. Overnight, their world had changed. They had to meld two contrasting worlds if they were to become part of their adopted country. As the children of refugees, Hmong teenagers have had the intensified challenge of responding to cultural change as they are learning how to be part of American youth subculture and school communities. Because of their cultural heritage, Hmong students may have learned to perceive and approach tasks differently than their non-Hmong classmates, using cognitive processes supported in their families but not reinforced in American schools. In families, they have learned primarily through observation and demonstration, cooperative problem-solving strategies, deductive reasoning, and reliance on contextual cues for meaning. Their approach to learning has been characterized by extrinsic motivation, sensitivity to others, and social responsiveness. In the daily transition from home to school, they confront the standards and expectations sanctioned in most high schools: that students will learn primarily through lecture and print materials, individual problem-solving strategies, inductive reasoning, and reliance on analysis and logic; and that students will be intrinsically motivated and desire personal recognition. The confrontation between different modes of learning and cultural values sanctioned by the Hmong and American worlds poses challenges for Hmong high school students and for educators who assist them in learning. This study identifies cultural values and practices, examines cognitive approaches to learning, and describes instructional practices judged to be effective by educators and/or students in promoting learning in Hmong high school students. It suggests practical improvements individual schools, as socializing institutions, may pursue in working with Hmong students reconciling culturally influenced modes of learning with longstanding American educational practices.

This dissertation reports findings from a study of the social interactions of second graders as they engaged in daily periods of classroom free play. The purposes of the study were: (a) to examine how students used oral language and literacy practices to construct social identities and status relationships; and (b) to analyze how these everyday literacy practices and peer relations on the local level of the classroom were linked to broader, macrolevel social relations. The study focused on a group of children—consisting primarily of working-class Latina and African American girls—who played regularly in a play office that was set up in the comer of a Spanish-immersion classroom within an urban elementary school. Data collection included thirty-one hours of audio and videotape. Analysis consisted of thematic analysis fieldnotes, taped data, and students’ written artifacts, and microanalysis of key peer-play events. The microethnographic analysis combined Fairclough’s (1989; 1992) approach to critical discourse analysis with Bloome and Egan-Robertson’s (1993) framework for analyzing intertextuality as a social construction. The findings show that children used literacy practices, and formed complex play identities and relationships, which drew upon multiple discourses, including domestic family life, the adult workplace, the peer group, and romantic love. The results of the study were ambiguous and contradictory: girls defined themselves as strong females in their interactions with boys and in their fantasy play as ‘bosses’ of their own ‘companies’. However, their conceptions of being ‘boss’ were closely bound to performing clerical tasks and child care. Girls both sustained and resisted traditional love ideologies in the contradictory ways that they appropriated popular-culture texts. The results of the study indicate that peer-play literacy practices and social interactions are not politically neutral, but rather are deeply connected with how children form identities, status relationships, and ideologies of gender and class. Social theories of discourse need to develop more dynamic terms for adequately describing the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory processes in which subjectivities and relationships are constructed in children’s everyday peer play.

Spain has had a significant influence on the Americas since Christopher Columbus landed at Hispañola in 1492, sailing in a Spanish ship with a Spanish crew. That event began a period of conquest that left Spain in control of much of Latin America and dominant in the territory that would become much of the southwestern and western United States. Much has been written about the conquistadors and explorers who came to the “New World,” but after this period there is little mention of Spanish immigrants in the United States. This country experienced a period of mass immigration during the end of the 19th century and the first quarter of this century. Spaniards were among them, but accounts of this immigration rarely mention this fact. Several thousand Spaniards immigrated to West Virginia, drawn primarily by jobs in the coal mines. However, this story is virtually unknown because no one has documented it, like so much of America's past that is ignored in the “official history” of the country. This study fills a gap in knowledge about Spaniards who came to West Virginia while addressing the broader question of who is included and who is excluded in our history. The study employed oral history interviews and a review of documents and records to explore and document the experiences of the Spanish immigrants. It found that Spaniards immigrated primarily from the southern region of Andalucia and the northern regions of Galicia and Asturias. They left Spain for economic, political and social reasons and many lived in other countries and states before settling in West Virginia. Most labored in the coal mines, struggled in their day-to-day lives and experienced the sting of prejudice. They maintained their culture in many ways, including language, food ways and by starting a Spanish club in 1938, the Ateneo Español. The study suggests ideas on how the stories of the Spanish immigrants can be used to make a social studies class more multicultural through oral history. It also includes a survey of social studies educators and an analysis of textbooks.

This qualitative research inquiry explores the development of intergroup relationships across race and ethnicity in a college classroom. The study describes the conditions that support the development of positive intergroup contact among members of racially and ethnically diverse groups and identifies the factors that impede intergroup relationships. College faculty are searching for effective ways to work with diverse racial and ethnic populations in college classrooms and for interventions when faced with challenging intergroup dynamics. Issues of differential status among students often impact their ability to develop intergroup relationships. The literature in the field of intergroup relations lacks an analysis of social inequality to balance the literature on intergroup difference. This study positions intergroup relations within a framework of social justice education that acknowledges issues of inequality as well as difference. Focus groups were the primary methodological tool for this study, complemented by additional data sets drawn from field notes and student writing that was used as confirming data. The constant comparative analysis approach was useful for the emergent style of the data, as patterns and themes guided the process of analysis. Five significant themes emerged from student reports regarding their perceptions and experiences with racial and ethnic difference. Distinctions between the responses of White students and Students of Color reflected the impact of different lived experiences and perspectives shared by their racial and ethnic differences. Allport's Contact Hypothesis (1954), particularly his emphasis on equal status roles, was used as one of the frameworks for analysis, supplemented by social justice theory. The findings in this study suggest that equal status roles cannot be achieved between members of unequal social groups in a classroom but that positive intergroup relationships among students are achievable by the presence of a number of other environmental factors. Participants identified conditions in the classroom setting and the role of the teacher as enabling factors that supported their ability to develop intergroup relationships. Educators can enhance the learning outcomes for their students when attention is given to the diverse racial and ethnic identities in the classroom population and the development of relationships among students.

This dissertation aims to foster a discussion among adult education practitioners on the connections between transformative learning theory and ethnoculture-based community service learning. Based on the concept of perspective transformation described by Jack Mezirow (1991), the study explores how perspective transformation occurs in a ethnoculturally based community service-learning course whose focus is on helping students to understand themselves within the context of their ethnic and cultural identity. As a practitioner of adult education I am looking for ways that my research, teaching, and practice are connected. The dissertation employed qualitative research, in particular drawing on ten in-depth interviews, and participant observation, and reflection papers to examine a variety of perspectives in order to analyze the implications of transformative learning theory for practitioners working with refugee and immigrant students. My research data consistently speaks of a heightened sense of cultural identity and personal development, a greater mastery of leadership skills, an enhanced self-esteem, and more complex patterns of thought in the form of critical reflection. Most of the immigrants and refugee students expressed that CIRCLE expose to a large and diverse immigrants and refugee community had significant and positive effects on their identity development process. In summary, my study suggests that the ethnoculturally-based community service can and often does have a transformational impact on participants.

Limited attention has been given to Black teachers' attitudes toward school-based diversity initiatives. This study focuses on African American educators' responses to strategies to promote academic achievement and anti-racist education in predominantly White schools. Their perceptions are offered about racism's educational ramifications for African American students and families. This inquiry has significance for in-service staff development and pre-service teacher trainers because it illustrates a setting where educators of different races explicitly address racism and factors of student achievement. This study examines African American educators' experiences in an extended professional development course funded by a multi-district consortium created to support Black student achievement. The study focused on Black perceptions of curriculum investigating racial identity development theory, White privilege and the influence of racism in classroom practices. The methodology included ethnographic data, in-depth interviews and analysis of documents from a 52 hour, year long course. The analysis examines Black educators' attitudes on what facilitates or obstructs schools' capacity to provide equitable and anti-racist education. This study finds that Black educators want staff development that provides comprehensive and reflective approaches to address racism. This type of experience is supported by a curriculum that explicitly addresses White privilege, racial identity theory, and social dynamics that perpetuate racism. To carry out this experience instructors need to be experienced in facilitating anti-racist training and indicators of individual and institutional commitment to anti-racist staff development goals must be recognized. This research recommends staff development planners and facilitators working in predominantly White settings recognize distinctive professional conflicts African American educators experience and the significance of having a critical mass of Black participants present in the training experience. It further recommends support for on-going communication for Black and other racial minority members via affinity groups. Finally, this study supports organizational analysis that informs strategic interventions promoting student achievement and active anti-racist programming. From inception to conclusion this study asserts the need to solicit the perceptions of African American and other educators of color regarding institutional commitment to inclusion and educational equity.