Reconstituting teachers’ professional knowledge: using Cultural Studies to rethink multicultural education

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the utility of drawing on Cultural Studies to aid teachers in reassessing understandings and approaches to multicultural education; how engaging with notions of cultural complexity, hybridity and essentialism offers a critical tool box around issues of cultural difference that ultimately provides a better understanding of school communities in a global context. We revisit teachers involved in the Rethinking Multiculturalism, Reassessing Multicultural Education project from a decade ago who, at the time, expressed the greatest sense of impact of the professional learning they received in the project. We asked these teachers to reflect on that experience, and whether the theory employed in the training continued to influence their teaching practice. This is contrasted with current, more instrumentalised, approaches to teacher professional learning raising questions about the nature of professional knowledge, the relationship between theory and practice and the broader utility of Cultural Studies in education.