Learning from Difference: Comparative Accounts of Multicultural Education: (16 Multilingual Education)

This book analyses the experiences of multicultural education in nine very different international settings uncovering insights from a vast variety of educational contexts.   Taking a multi-critical approach in reporting and discussing problems faced by increasingly multicultural and multilingual societies the nine case studies reflect radically different assumptions about what counts as ‘ difference’ and what should be the appropriate ways for education systems to respond to differences.   While each country’s approach seems unique, analysis of the divergent treatments of internal population diversity elicits a genuinely global instance of the increasingly shared phenomenon of cultural pluralism.   Discussing various successes and failures of policy enactment, theory, pedagogy and  management of diversity, the book isolates both the differences and similarities in the unique geopolitical and socio-historical contexts of the countries investigated.  A key valueof the book is that it greatly expands the range of settings, experiences, epistemologies, ontologies and practical experiences that are typically encountered in mainstream discussion of what counts as 'multicultural education'. In effect, all societies are in some way ‘dealing with difference’ – this volume helps widen the scope of reflection and thus facilitates increased, global ‘learning from difference’.    

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Difference: its Expansion and Consequences by Aydin Bal and Joseph Lo Bianco.- Multicultural Education in The Australian Context: An Historical Overview by Joseph Lo Bianco.- Multicultural Education, Diversity, and Citizenship in Canada by Reva Joshee, Carla Peck, Laura A. Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Alan Sears.- Multiculturalism and Multilingual Education for Minority Ethnic Groups in China: Examples of Southwest China and Xinjiang Uygur Regions and the Goal of Educational Equality by Yongyang Wang, Hong Ye & Andrew Schapper.- Educational Responses to Ethnic Complexity in Education: Experiences from Denmark by Christian Horst.- Multiculturalism In The Brazilian Education: Challenges And Perspectives by Helena Coharik Chamlian and Daniele P. Kowalewski.-  The Character of the Multicultural Education Discussion in South Africa by Crain Soudien and Carolyn McKinney.- Multicultural Education Perspective in Turkey: Possibilities and Dilemmas by Seçkin Özsoy and SabihaBilgi.- From Difference to Deficit: Policies, Outcomes, and Potentials for Multicultural Education and Systematic Transformation in the United States by Aydin Bal and Amy Stambach.- Recognizing diversity: The incipient role of intercultural education in Thailand by Joseph Lo Bianco and Yvette Slaughter.- Learning From Difference by Joseph Lo Bianco.