With partners:
Critical Educationalist Research and Postcolonial Theory
In addition to CRT [1], the transformative multicultural approach to education adopted in this project is influenced by critical educationalist research and postcolonial theory.
Critical educationalists emphasize learning for empowerment. This promotes the benefits, rather than deficits, of cultural difference and encourages schools to transform power structures and challenge patterns of privilege, both within the classroom and in wider society.
With its emphasis upon structures, critical education is somewhat akin to anti-racist education and other forms of radical educational theory. However, critical education affirms the possibility of transforming society through education to a greater extent: “critical pedagogy is positioned as that which attends to practices of teaching/learning intended to interrupt particular historical, situated systems of oppression”. [2] Critical education, particularly with a cultural focus, does not see power relations as “irreducible forms of domination”. [3] Rather, schooling is a potential point of cultural change, in which “different groups in their dominant and subordinate positions struggle to both define and realize their aspirations” through contests over language, representation, symbolism, ways of life and control of institutions. [4] Critical education theorists argue that education can, and should, seek to transform rather than reproduce cultural stereotypes, dominant histories and power dynamics.
The multidimensional transformative multicultural model is also rooted in postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has shown itself to be of great relevance to those attempting to analyse the current limitations of education in culturally diverse societies, and for envisaging creative solutions to those problems. Postcolonial pedagogy can enable one to challenge dominant histories: identity forms and knowledge sets reproduced in schools. There are power relations that exist as a carry-over from a colonial past.
Western education systems are steeped in an imperial heritage. [5] Not only are institutions shaped along colonial lines, but dominant epistemologies carry implicit Western assumptions with little or no opportunities for students to explore other epistemological forms. In this sense, schools actively reflect the power dynamics that mark a post-colonial Australia:
“The kind of school which, from a postcolonial perspective, I see as ‘culturally problematic’ is one in which the school’s culture uncritically reflects and perpetuates Anglocentrism. This assimilationist approach caters in a narrowly ethnocentric way for Anglo-Celtic children, and does emotional and intellectual violence to students who are not ‘Anglo’.” [6]
As explored earlier, education involves many factors, sites and dimensions. Education is more than the school’s curriculum. Education is gained through: a combination of curriculum learning, assessment and feedback; social engagements and extracurricular activities; informal and formal dialogue encompassing teachers, students, families and communities; classrooms, playgrounds, sports training sessions, music and artistic groups, student representative bodies, canteens and locker rooms; and occurrences outside classrooms before, during and after school. A multidimensional approach to multicultural education considers the many dimensions that make up a student’s education, and allows a multicultural perspective to influence each of these dimensions.
A curriculum-focused model may have limited effects on the other dimensions of education, and therefore limited success in overall outcomes. In the broadest terms, advocates of multi-dimensional models do not attribute lower levels of educational attainment for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background and minority students to any one factor. Instead they argue that a complex interplay of causal factors may hinder the educational access of some students, and that responses to these barriers need to reflect this interplay of causes. In this view, schools are not neutral bodies. Schools not only exist as “a microcosm of society, but play an active role in perpetuating prevailing hegemonic societal attitudes through a socialization process”. [7] Thus a multidimensional approach will promote change on a widespread level, in an attempt to transform the school’s role from one of a socializing agent which perpetuates the marginalisation of minority ethnic groups, to one that helps critically disrupt, deconstruct and reorient this socialization process.