Multicultural Education Policies in Canada and the United States uses a dialogical approach to examine responses to increasing cultural and racial diversity in both countries. It compares and contrasts foundational myths and highlights the sociopolitical contexts that affect the conditions of citizenship, access to education, and inclusion of diverse cultural knowledge and languages in educational systems.
Reva Joshee is an associate professor of educational theory and policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Lauri Johnson is an associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Buffalo.
Contributors include Carol Agocs; Adrienne Chan; Catherine Cornbleth, Rinaldo Walcott, Carlos Ovando, and Terezia Zoric; Tracey M. Derwing & Murray Munro; David Gillborn; Michelle Goldberg; Karen M. Gourd; Jan Hare; Augustine McCaffery; Carlos J. Ovando and Terrence G. Wiley; Yoon K. Pak; Christopher M. Span, Rashid V. Robinson, and Trinidad Molina Villega; John W. Tippeconnic III and Sabrina Redwing Saunders; Edward Taylor; Charles Ungerleider; and Sue Winton.
Through comparative multicultural education policy analyses, Joshee and Johnson offer in this insightful book, a reflexive and provocative opportunity for us to engage critically in the discussion. After reading this book, we have a better understanding of how multicultural education policies and racist practices in educational institutions and society in Canada and the US have historically become a strong and invisible barrier to minority groups in these countries. […] I recommend this book not only to Canadian and American educators, but to every person concerned about racism and social justice everywhere. In these times of neoliberal globalization, it is crucial to have the option of more informative, critical and inspiring books such as Joshee and Johnson’s.
The book offers a bracing critique of much of what passes for multicultural policy in both countries, and the authors ground their critique very effectively in carefully delineated historical contexts. […] This book should prove invaluable in introducing graduate students to big-picture thinking about the complexities of multicultural polices, and will be valuable both to academics and school administrators as a useful antidote to technocratic policymaking which seeks to pursue multicultural policies in an ahistorical and decontextualised manner.
This volume is an invaluable resource for educators, policy developers, scholars and activists in the fields of equality and diversity.