Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education
- JoAnn Phillion - Purdue University, USA
- Ming Fang He - Georgia Southern University, USA
- F. Michael Connelly - Ontario Institute of Education Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, University of Toronto, Canada
The special quality of the work in this book that distinguishes it from other work in multicultural education is the emphasis on understanding experience and transforming this understanding into social and educational significance. This work tends to be less prescriptive and more intensely focused on the meaning of experience from the perspective of individuals and groups. Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education directly addresses this change both conceptually for thinking about possibilities for multiculturalism, and methodologically for the study of multiculturalism.
This book, by prominent scholars in the field of multicultural education and narrative inquiry, provides compelling stories that raise questions, advance understandings, and promote insight into the challenges and hopes of teaching for diversity and democracy. The works contained herein are compelling for the stories they tell and, as such, there is value in their presence. That the thoughtful reader can glean important lessons with respect to multicultural education and the value of narrative inquiry as academic disciplines is intellectual ‘icing-on-the-cake.’
New researchers in the likes of Phillion, He, and Connelly bring a fresh and positively skewed perspective to bear. This is a wonderful combination. The writing is solid and the research grounded. The inclusion of chapters that deal with classroom realities elevate the text for education teacher candidates above those existing volumes that tend to deal with multi/inter-cultural issues in the abstract. One of the strengths of this volume is that it will resonate with new and experienced classroom practitioners.
The work is a very exciting, important and badly needed piece of scholarship offered by some of the most leading-edge professors in the field. The diversity and diverse viewpoints it would present is unparalleled in the field of education.
The content certainly provided me with material to reflect on in relation to the experience of teaching in a multicultural situation. I would describe it as a powerful experience and certainly memorable material.
The authors do a fine job of pulling together disparate elements, retrieving story, and providing a font for an exposition of what has been referred to as ‘dangerous memory.’ I found myself very much caught up in the authors’ experiences, as well as their reflections on the meaning of those experiences.
The narratives in this book allow readers to put a human face to an issue related to multicultural education. The authors embrace the reader and a reflective reader will begin to see himself/herself in the narratives of the text.
This book was a little too theoretical for my purposes. Excellent book - but I'd use it more with graduate students than undergrads.
