Multicultural Principles Research Articles

Multiculturalism and human rights in civic education: the case of British Columbia, Canada

Background: This paper considers how textbooks resolve the tension between contradictory goals of promoting a cohesive national identity while teaching respect and equality among diverse social groups in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada. Purpose: The article presents preliminary results of a larger study examining the content of required civic education textbooks in Canada to examine whether and how notions of national identity incorporate the principles of human rights and multiculturalism. Sample: The study draws on curricular material for required high school social science courses in B.C. The sample includes textbooks starting the first year of high school (Grade 8) and covers each year through high school graduation (Grade 12). The central analyses examine the content of 17 core textbooks approved by the provincial government for these courses. Design and methods: This research systematically examines the content of currently approved textbooks for high school social science courses in B.C. Aquestionnaire designed using the principles of content analysis measures textbook emphases on content relevant to human rights, multiculturalism and national identity. Results: This study finds that traditional notions of national identity are reshaped in response to the rise of emphases on human rights and multiculturalism. Rather than depicting national identity as stemming from a common race, ethnicity, language or history, the government pursues four main strategies to simultaneously promote human rights, multiculturalism and a shared national identity: (1) framing human rights and multiculturalism as part of national identity; (2) using pedagogical approaches that promote multiple perspectives; (3)celebrating social and scientific figures and accomplishments as a main source of national pride; and (4) drawing on exogenous sources to affirm state legitimacy. Conclusion: In a context that values diversity and human rights, contemporary sources of national identity can stem from facets of society that can transcend many cultures and emphasise organisational aspects of the nation-state. A main implication is that the inclusion of principles of human rights and multiculturalism into civic education is changing traditional conceptions of national identity.

Canada and Multinational Federalism: From the Spirit of 1982 to Stephen Harper's Open Federalism

Since the end of the Second World War, principles of diversity and multiculturalism have increasingly been codified in international law. The present article takes a closer look at the evolution of Canada's attitude towards the recognition of its multinational character over the past 25 years. The article shows that the more recent idea of “open federalism” put forward by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government as a recognition of multinationalism closely resembles the monist idea of the state that was promoted by former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Thus, contrary to what is being portrayed in political discourses, nothing much has changed over the last 25 years. Stephen Harper's “open federalism” remains largely inspired by philosophical elements of monism and does not contribute to making Canada a truly multinational state.

Infusing Multicultural Principles in Urban Teacher Preparation

Infusing Multicultural Principles in Urban Teacher Preparation

Less than Equal: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Privilege

Less than Equal: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Privilege

Should Universalism Trump Cultural Relativism in Counseling?

Certain cultural customs and practices are viewed as abhorrent by many people, yet contemporary American counselors rarely criticize any specific culture. In this article, the authors explore why counselors abstain from such criticism. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that universalism, often regarded as a politically incorrect and an academically archaic philosophy, is manifestly prevalent within the world's religious and political realms, as well as within the counseling profession. The authors assert that universalism should be prevalent within the counseling profession and that it can be integrated with multicultural principles. Finally, the authors suggest a procedure for identifying universal principles and practices.

The challenge of diversity: The national curriculum statement and foreign languages

In this paper I will demonstrate that the South African vision of multiculturalism as it is expressed in the National Curriculum Statement is limited and that it is not preparing young South Africans for the twenty-first century. I will argue that to achieve a broader multiculturalism, the educational system needs to further foreign languages actively. Twelve years ago, education was faced with the challenge of designing a curriculum which affirmed the diversity of South African cultures, religions, ethnic and racial groups while unifying people within this diversity. Policy was thus underpinned very firmly by the principles of multiculturalism. However, South African multiculturalism is inward-looking, it does not prepare learners for the realities of a nation composed not only of a heterogeneous population of South Africans but which also comprises a growing number of non-South Africans. South African multiculturalism must be broadened to go beyond local cultural diversity to include world cultures. Education must open learners to the Other: to South Africans of different cultural groups, as well as people of other nationalities. I will argue that this discovery of the Other and of Otherness can best be made through the learning of foreign languages.

Bravas, Permitidas, Obsoletas

The author explores how dichotomous representations of women and Indians came into play in Chilean print media representations of Mapuche women from 1997 to 2003, at the height of conflicts between the Mapuche people, the state, and elites in southern Chile. The author finds there were three competing representations of Mapuche women, which reproduce assumptions not just about them but about the people as a whole. Together, they accentuate, and simultaneously complicate, dichotomous views of Indians and women. These media portrayals are significant because they reflect and reinforce the central principles of neoliberal multiculturalism—the prevailing form of governance in contemporary Latin America—which promotes diversity while perpetuating the marginalization of indigenous peoples and many of their rights. This analysis of images in print media contributes to understandings of how race and gender ideologies continue to inform debates over national belonging in contemporary Latin America.

Feminist Therapy

SUMMARY Feminist therapy is a compelling framework to use with women who are survivors of domestic violence due to its focus on power and oppression in women's lives. However, feminist frameworks have been criticized for their lack of attention to the experiences of diverse groups of women, a shortcoming that multicultural frameworks have attempted to address. Very little scholarship exists on the use of feminist therapy with South Asian women, and with Asian American women in general, particularly on its use with domestic violence survivors. The work that does exist suggests that Asian values are in contrast with the principles of feminist therapy for a variety of reasons. Using interviews with practitioners who work with battered South Asian women, this paper suggests that practitioners enact feminist and multicultural principles in their work, by their attention to sociocultural context, their focus on women's empowerment and voicing women's lived experiences, and their consideration of the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship. They hold patriarchy in its complexity accountable for domestic violence in the community. Although the term “feminist” was rarely used, in contrast to work that suggests that Asian women would not identify with self-based models of therapy, practitioners articulated that women do benefit from insight-based therapy, and attempted to work against cultural stereotypes that they often see functionally used to evade addressing trauma and grief.

The Agony of the Translated Subject

Preparing to write this response to the first edition of Transtext(e)s Transcultures little over a month after the London bombings, I am unable to dismiss from my mind how the political debate in Britain has quickly turned to the formerly unquestioned principle of multiculturalism in the United Kingdom. The debate has not always been measured and in all too many cases, the xenophobia and suppressed racism that underlies many sectors of British society has re-emerged, permeating the void opene...

Editorial: Some initial thoughts on a heritage based behavioral approach to the counseling of juvenile delinquents.

Traditionally, and for good reason, the field of counseling has been dominated by multicultural approaches. Multicultural approaches focus on the internalization of multicultural principles. They observe levels of enculturation for a person in the culture of origin and use this assessment to understand unique features of the person's pattern of responding. For behaviorists, the conditioning of these principles makes perfect sense and opens the counselor to explore how such values and beliefs are shaped by environmental forces (see Skinner, 1972). In this view, society (most importantly the family environment) establishes contingencies around behavior patterns of people to encultured them to behave in a certain way. For counselors such forces lead to the discussion of power, privilege, and contextual factors that impact the client's life and way of living. For juvenile delinquents, this approach may not be additive to traditional approaches. Indeed, recent research in the area of juvenile delinquency suggests that cultural tailoring is not necessary for such programs (Wilson, Lipsey, & Soydan, 2003). In addition, some research exists that families may actively train children in antisocial rules (Snyder, McEachern, Schrepferman, Zettle, Johnson, Swink, & McAlpine, 2006) and thus the instillation of these values and rules might be counter productive for the overall adjustment in the current culture. Such findings suggest that maybe it is time to explore an alternative approach to delinquency. An alternative approach may allow for the creation of a dialectic through which an ebb and flow may allow counseling to meet the needs of greater number of clients. Thus, instead of starting with the culture of origin and determining enculturation, a logical counter point would be to start with the current culture and determine enculturation. In addition, this approach could establish goals of greater effective functioning in the current culture (e.g. teaching ways to recognize contingencies in place for the current culture and how to increase levels of reinforcement). For lack of a better term, this approach will be called a heritage-based approach. Heritage approach reflects on the values that are passed down from generation to generation in the local culture (in the US--American culture). These values are passed down from preceding generations and tradition through the same cultural contingencies such as the family, the legal system, the school, and the community. This approach would also be consistent with Skinner (1972) in that it holds to social conditioning shaping behavior. Indeed, as Skinner (1972) pointed out what a society values is what it reinforces. In the US, these values would be highlighting things like leadership, self-control, individual responsibility and civics. Unlike a multicultural approach, which explores the culture of origin, level of enculturation, and tries to use metaphors that evoke various relational frames (Blackledge, 2003; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2005) from that culture, a heritage based approach uses metaphors and images to evoke relational frames of the common current culture to explore values (rules the person lives by) and symbols of the common culture to help collaboratively set goals for therapy. Skinner (1972) discussed the power of using such symbols as art, music, and cultural images in general but applied to therapy they can become a strong and energizing force for change. As with a multicultural behavioral approach draws on the seven standards of behavior analytic therapy to formulate its case conceptualization and intervention plans: (1) a behavior analytic model of child development (Bijou & Baer 1961; Novak and Pelaez, 2004) and a focus on developing behavioral cusp skills (Bosch & Hixson, 2004); (2) a comprehensive ideographic functional assessment, collaborative creation of behavioral goals and clear, specific behavioral objectives and linking intervention to function (positive behavioral support) (3) behavioral activation (Lewinsohn, 1975; Kanter, Baruch, & Gaynor, 2006; Spates, Pagoto, & Kalata, 2006) and contingency management (operant conditioning of EEG patterns, point systems, level systems, community reinforcement); (4) trigger analysis (5) use of respondent conditioning procedures as needed; (6) a strong focus on the therapeutic relationship as derived from Functional Analytic Psychotherapy; (7) the disruption of faculty rule control focusing on acceptance (Hayes, Strossel, & Wilson, 1999) and forgiveness (Cordova, Cautilli, Simon, & Axelrod-Sabag, 2006) and (8) a commitment to living a valued life similar to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes, Strossel, & Wilson, 1999) and behavioral activation (9) helping the client to see how their behavior has been shaped by current environmental contingencies (i. …

‘Bahia Pêlo Negro’

This article revisits the theme of representation by examining the relationship between difference and transparency. I argue that the current purchase of multiculturalism and diversity marks the ‘officialization’ of the 1980s politics of difference, which refashioned previous formulations of racial and cultural difference without challenging their ontological premises. Through a reading of the Bloco Olodum’s 1988s carnival lyrics, I chart the articulation of signifiers of Africanity, as a marker of cultural difference, which writes the black Brazilian as subaltern subject without producing a particular version of a (self-)transparent (interior/temporal) African subject. Instead, in this emancipatory text, Africanity delimits a region of subalternity, one inhabited by Africans and economically dispossessed blacks in the diaspora, which is defined in terms of a political struggle that marks their existence in post-Enlightenment social configurations. Not only does the interpretive strategy I deploy show how an attention to social scientific knowledge’s role in production of modern (post-Enlightenment) subject is crucial for a critique of the notion of difference informing the global principles of multiculturalism and diversity. More importantly, it also indicates why the logic of exclusion, the prevailing account of social subjection has been now added to the arsenal of racial subjection.

Israel As a Multicultural Democracy: Challenges and Obstacles

The purpose of this paper is to examine possible implications should Israel incorporate multicultural principles in its ‘basic structure’. The paper divides into two main sections. In the first section I will embark on a short theoretical discussion concerning the relationship between claims of recognition and claims of distribution. In the second section I will assess the implications of this discussion for Israeli society, focusing on the main schisms characterizing Israeli society (Israeli Palestinian and Israeli Jews, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and non-religious Jews, veterans and immigrants, and gender relations). One of the main arguments of the paper is that the separation of claims of recognition from claims of distribution presents insurmountable difficulties. These claims are very often inextricable. The fusion of these claims, however, underscores the utmost importance of the multicultural project. It shows that claims of distribution cannot be accommodated by a social system purporting to secure equality for all members of society irrespective of race, gender and cultural differences. This conclusion is valid either for societies whose basic political principles claim cultural neutrality or for societies whose principles forfeit such neutrality but promise universal inclusion of all members of society.

Warts and All

In their comments regarding Goodman, Liang, Helms, Latta, Sparks, and Weintraub’s article “Training Counseling Psychologists as Social Justice Agents: Feminist and Multicultural Principles in Action,” Kiselica, Palmer, Thompson and Shermis, and Watts offered a number of useful suggestions for elaborating on social justice theory, practice, and training. Their reactions and feedback challenged Goodmanet al. to revisit and clarify their thinking about several related issues, including(a)the importance of student and faculty self-examination,(b)the need to ground our social justice theories and practice in organizing philosophies, (c) the difficulties of educating students about social justice work, and (e) the imperative to collaborate across professions. In this reply, the authors discuss each of these issues in turn, noting points of agreement and disagreement with their colleagues.

The Call to Social Justice

The theories and tenets of multiculturalism and feminism require psychologists to extend awareness, knowledge, and skills for competent practice, research, and teaching. In addition, these theories and tenets challenge us to become social change agents. In the article “Training Counseling Psychologists as Social Justice Agents: Feminist and Multicultural Principles in Action,” Goodman, Liang, Helms, Latta, Sparks, and Weintraub have carefully crafted an experience-informed template that will assist training programs in becoming active agents for social justice. This commentary raises questions and challenges that extend collaboration across and within disciplines to achieve a broader platform to support specific social justice agendas. Questions are raised and explored regarding the engagement and retention of student interest in engaging in social justice activism.

Diversity and the Modeling of Multicultural Principles of Education in a Teacher Education Program

In this study, we examined preservice teacher perception on the modeling of principles of multicultural education at a university of predominantly White students. Preservice teachers (N = 79) at the end of a multicultural education course responded to a survey based on the principles of multiculturalism. The students conducted an 8-week evaluation of the modeling or integration of multiculturalism in their teacher education classes. Statistical analysis indicated that 95.4% of preservice teachers perceived an integration of instructional principles of multicultural education, whereas 69% perceived integration of curricular principles of multicultural education. Findings suggested that diversity is a critical element of multiculturalism in the teacher education program needing attention.

'No Number Can Describe How Good It Was': Assessment issues in the multimodal classroom

Within an outcomes based educational system built on the principles of redress, social justice, multilingualism and multiculturalism, issues of equity in teaching, learning and assessment are increasingly on South Africa's educational agenda. This article locates itself within debates concerning the politics of representation in mainstream classrooms, in which written standard English is the dominant mode and language through which students' meanings are read and assessed. The authors, consisting of English and Art educators, have been implementing forms of 'multimodal pedagogies' in different classrooms in Johannesburg in a move to challenge the existing narrow constraints of representation permitted in mainstream schooling. Through a case study discussion of a multimodal project with disaffected Soweto youth, the authors argue that new criteria for assessment need to be developed in order to address the complexity of thinking about communication as a multiple semiotic practice and students as designers of meaning. Such criteria place human agency and resourcefulness at the centre of meaning-making, and focus on the recruitment of resources, generativity across modes, linkages and connections across modes and genres, voicing of self, community and culture, the processes of making and reflectiveness, as well as taking account of the 'community of arbiters'.

Teaching in the Global Village: Notes Towards a Religious Studies Rhetoric

The author describes her participation in a religious studies teaching workshop where she was asked to think creatively about the art of teaching, what implications result from changes in the field, and the relationship of religious studies to other fields. General conclusions endorse pedagogies that are dialogic, participatory, and experiential and invite possibilities provided by changes in the field that encourage courses that are more inclusive of marginal voices and attentive to multicultural inflections. In assessing the relationship of religious studies to other fields, the author draws on her interdisciplinary background in religion and literature to apply Aristotelian rhetoric to the interpretation of a short story, thereby providing an actual model of how disciplines can complement each other while also highlighting aspects of the pedagogical and multicultural principles endorsed by the workshop participants. The application of Aristotelian principles of logos, ethos, and pathos becomes for the workshop participants a religious studies rhetoric: a provisional model for how to interpret classroom conduct.

Unflinching Empathy: Counselors and Tortured Refugees

In the article “Refugee Survivors of Torture: Trauma and Treatment,” W. Gorman (2001) consolidates liberation theory, multiculturalism, and traumatology into a treatment framework that draws from P. Freire (1973); A. J. Marsella, M. J. Friedman, E. T. Gerrity, and R. Scurfield (1996); and J. L. Herman (1992). This article focuses on several questions addressed by Gorman: What is the impact of torture on refugees; what multicultural principles are relevant to treatment; and what can sequenced models of trauma treatment offer to the torture survivor? It concludes with suggestions for counselors to consider regarding acculturation, resilience, and the role of mind and body in the treatment of tortured refugees.

Preschool Teachers’ Perceptions of and Responses to Differences: Disability, Family, and Racial/Cultural Variation

The multicultural education movement has made tremendous progress towards the recognition and acceptance of diversity. More remains to be done, especially at the preschool level when children are just becoming exposed to and aware of differences. Specifically, three primary needs remain: 1) a clearer definition by teachers of what is meant by “difference,” 2) a better understanding of how multicultural principles are being translated into classroom activity, and 3) an evaluation of the above areas in light of the impact of the characteristics of the children, teachers, and preschool. Preschool teachers and directors from Special Education, Headstart, public and private daycares completed a questionnaire in which their perceptions of and resources utilized in relation to diversity were assessed. Results indicated that children with “differences” should be treated like “children,” and that children with “differences” were defined by the majority as “children with and without disabilities.” Race related resources were utilized the most across all programs. The characteristics of the children, and programs, not those of the educators, were related to the definition of “difference,” and the resources implemented.

Multiculturalism in the classroom: Discovering difference from within

Critics and proponents alike have voiced concerns about the difficulties of practicing multiculturalism in today's criminal justice classrooms. In this essay we present strategies for using the lived experiences of students as a tool for discovering diversity inside the classroom, as well as for finding value in it. We then use our students' discourse to talk about the impact these strategies can have. Our experiences, as well as those of our students, suggest that principles of multiculturalism can be achieved without having to sacrifice the core curricula; and that one of the more valuable resources for teaching multiculturally is the lived experiences that students, teachers and guests bring into the classroom.