Critical Multicultural Education in Foundations Courses: Navigating Self and the Curriculum
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Using first-person accounts of classroom experiences, five professors examine the intersection of foundations and critical multicultural education (CME) and efforts to engage pre-service students in social foundations courses as critical educators. The authors present this paper in two parts, the first of which provides examples of using a CME approach to foundations activities within the classroom and the second of which provides illustrations of moving this knowledge beyond the classroom. In each case, authors show the interwoven nature of pedagogy, identity, knowledge, and experience as they begin to build bridges between theory and practice. These pedagogical reflections provide examples of practices that can serve to meet the growing demands from schools and communities for culturally competent, socially aware teacher-leaders. All of the institutions represented herein have majority white populations, and many fail to reflect the diversity of the communities in which they are situated. The need for critical multicultural practices in foundations courses is urgent in these areas. Pre-service educators need to understand, respect, value, and celebrate their students and without critical multicultural foundations courses to raise awareness, many k-12 students in America’s schools remain invisible.
