Publication date:
19 July 2012Length of book:
204 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442216389
The concept of culture stands, clearly but unsteadily, at the heart of multicultural education. This book provides a systematic, in-depth understanding of the role that culture plays in the massive literature of multicultural education as multiple and antithetical definitions of culture exist. The book also shows multicultural educators how to discern the definition used in any particular book or article. Thomas Wren deploys methods and concepts from philosophy and the social sciences to provide an analytic framework within which the history and current state of culture theory can be understood both for its own sake and for its educational significance. Although the book is full of theory, it is not a theoretical book in the usual sense. It is a road map, accompanied by the related theoretical information and tools that graduate students and faculty need to (1) navigate the complex terrain of multicultural education literature, (2) apply the book’s analytical framework to that literature and to their own future practice, and (3) anticipate the social changes and accompanying conceptual changes in our notions of culture that are now occurring as part of the "cultural hybridity" of today's students.
With elegant clarity, distinguished philosopher Thomas Wren incisively analyzes the conflicting conceptions of 'culture' that underpin contrasting models of multiculturalism as well as their pedagogic and political assumptions. This book is a substantive resource for students of culture and for anyone implementing, researching, or critiquing multicultural education.