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Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education
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Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education

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March 2005 | 336 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

"Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education 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 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.'"
—Francisco Rios, University of Wyoming

"This 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 presents are unparalleled in the field of education."
—Cheryl J. Craig, University of Houston

"The narratives in this book allow readers to put a human face to an issue related to multicultural education.  A reflective reader will begin to see himself/herself in the narratives of the text."
—Edmundo F. Litton, Loyola Marymount University

"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."
—Jon G. Bradley, McGill University

Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education explores the untapped potential that narrative and experiential approaches have for understanding multicultural issues in education. The research featured in the book reflects an exciting new way of thinking about human experience. The studies focus on the lives of students, teachers, parents, and communities, highlighting experiences seldom discussed in the literature. The authors are diverse and their inquiries are far ranging in terms of content, ethnic groups studied, and geographic locations. They also bring their personal experience to the inquiries, actively participate in the lives of the people with whom they work, care deeply about the concerns of their participants, and search for ways to act upon these concerns. Most importantly, the work emphasizes the understanding of experience and transforming this understanding into social and educational significance.

Key Features

• Addresses new ways to explore multicultural issues in education; rather than relying on theoretical generalizations, the book focuses explicitly on individual and group experiences
• Emphasizes the transformation of experience into education, especially through the study of complex multicultural issues
• Challenges readers' assumptions of multicultural issues by offering numerous narrative accounts and research studies for work with various ethnic groups

Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education is designed for use in courses in multicultural education and qualitative research, especially in departments of education, anthropology, and sociology. Professional educators, researchers, and consultants will also find this a valuable introduction to narrative research and a welcome addition to the literature.


JoAnn Phillion, Ming Fang He and F. Michael Connelly
Preface
JoAnn Phillion, Ming Fang He and F. Michael Connelly
Chapter 1: The Potential of Narrative and Experiential Approaches in Multicultural Inquiries
 
Unit One: Personal Narrative, Community Narrative and the African American Experience
Saundra Murray Nettles
Chapter 2: Examining School-Community Connections Through Stories
Meta Y. Harris
Chapter 3: Black Women Writing Autobiography: Autobiography in Multicultural Education
 
Unit Two: Latina/Latino Communities, Families, and Children
Alma Rubal-Lopez and Angela Anselmo
Chapter 4: Being Educated in the Absence of Multiculturalism
Sofia A. Villenas
Chapter 5: Between the Telling and the Told: Latina Mothers Negotiate Education in New Borderlands
 
Unit Three: Social Justice, Equality and the Education of Native Americans
Mary Hermes
Chapter 6: White Teachers, Native Students: Rethinking Culture-Based Education
Donna Deyhle
Chapter 7: Journey Toward Social Justice: Curriculum Change and Educational Equity in a Navajo Community
 
Unit Four: Multicultural Teacher Education in International Contexts
Lourdes Diaz Soto
Chapter 8: Teachers as Transformative Healers: Struggles With the Complexities of the Democratic Sphere
Freema Elbaz-Luwisch
Chapter 9: How is Education Possible When There's a Body in the Middle of the Room?
Grace Feuerverger
Chapter 10: Multicultural Perspectives in Teacher Development
 
Unit Five: Narrative Inquiry in Multicultural Education
Carola Conle
Chapter 11: The World in My Text: A Quest for Pluralism
Chris Liska Carger
Chapter 12: The Art of Narrative Inquiry: Embracing Emotion and Seeing Transformation
 
Unit Six: Democracy, School Life, and Community in Multicultural Societies
F. Michael Connelly, JoAnn Phillion, and Ming Fang He
Chapter 13: Narrative Inquiry Into Multicultural Life in an Inner-City Community School
Janice Huber, M. Shaun Murphy, and D. Jean Clandinin
Chapter 14: Creating Communities of Cultural Imagination: Negotiating a Curriculum of Diversity
Ming Fang He, JoAnn Phillion, and F. Michael Connelly
Chapter 15: Narrative and Experiential Approaches to Multiculturalism in Education: Democracy and Education
 
Index
 
About the Editors
 
About the Contributors

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.’

Francisco Rios
University of Wyoming

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.

Jon G. Bradley
McGill University

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.

Cheryl J. Craig
University of Houston

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.

Joanna Mensinga
Central Queensland University, Australia

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.

Frederick L. Yeo
Southeast Missouri State University

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.

Edmundo F. Litton
Loyola Marymount University

This book was a little too theoretical for my purposes. Excellent book - but I'd use it more with graduate students than undergrads.

Dr Christopher Weiler
Elementary Education Dept, Kutztown University
April 14, 2015
Key features
  • Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education addresses new ways to explore multicultural issues in education.
  • Draws together new work which focuses explicitly on individual and group experience and explores the nuances of multicultural life.
  • Provides exemplary work done by experienced qualitative researchers.
  • Places an emphasis on understanding experience and transforming this understanding into social and educational significance. 
  • Provides the nucleus of a complementary, new, way of understanding the complexity of multicultural issues in education.
  • Contains new conceptual approaches--reflexive, experiential, and practical--that complement texts with narrative accounts, which offer specific research examples and a critique of the standard texts.
  • Uses research studies that offer new insights into their particular multicultural topics and they offer explicit methodological examples for researchers interested in the area. 
  • Research takes places in diverse contexts nationally, internationally, and with different ethnic groups (i.e. African Americans, Native Americans, Arabs, Israelis, etc.).
  • Challenges students' assumptions about multiculturalism, helps them link theory with practice and develop a critical, reflective, view of how theory can be applied to particular contexts.  

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