ABSTRACTThe necessity to include multicultural education policies and practices in schools and teacher education has been widely recognized both in Finland and internationally. However, terms such as ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘multicultural education’ have contested and vague meanings in educational discourse. This paper investigates discourses on multicultural education from critical multicultural education and postcolonial theoretical perspectives. The focus is on the teacher education policies of all the eight primary teacher education programmes in Finland. Discourse theory analysis revealed six diverging discourses within a framework of conservative, liberal and critical multicultural education. The results show that it should not be taken for granted that policies including multicultural education contribute to social justice in education and teacher education. Consequently, policy-makers need to question the rhetoric regarding multiculturalism and to focus on how inequality is reproduced and upheld in discourses in teacher education and schools, and how this can be challenged.

Global, cross-cultural, meta-cultural, poly-cultural, transcultural, multicultural, intercultural. These terms are the intellectual framework – and sometimes the very cornerstones – of countless co...

Internationally multicultural education research has pointed to the need to move from superficial to social justice-oriented multicultural education. However, realising this goal in policy and practice is a challenge. This study takes Finland as a case and examines the discursive developments of multicultural education in its national curriculum 1994–2014. Despite being a country which is known for emphasising equity and equality in education, superficial forms of multicultural education have prevailed. However, the results of this study show that the curricular discourse is clearly moving towards social justice education where multicultural perspectives are an integrated part of the curriculum. The 2014 curriculum, which came into effect 2016, emerges as a policy which aims to foster ethical and respectful students with a sense of fairness and an open attitude towards all kinds of diversity. The challenge for Finland is to ensure implementation and advance transformativeness in future curriculum reforms.

Despite their growing numbers and influence, there is limited research on African immigrant youth in the U.S. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the multiple identities that first and 1.5 generation African immigrant college students enact in their online worlds. By developing a deeper understanding of how these youths enact and perceive their online identities, educators and administrators may be better able to support their educational and professional goals. Open-ended questionnaires were administered and an analysis of social media accounts was conducted to understand the shifting identities that the participants performed in their online worlds. This nuanced understanding of the participants’ online lives may enable educators and policy-makers to better design educational opportunities for first and 1.5 generation African immigrant youth.

This paper reports a research study of Omani EFL learners’ motivation to engage in social technologies through the medium of English, adopting Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System as the main theoretical framework, whilst exploring other emergent context-sensitive motivational driving forces. The purpose of the research study was to explore identities and self-perceptions of Omani nationals using social media to learn English, an under-researched context. Reflective focused group discussions were conducted with 14 university-age students, along with individually composed language learning histories. The data of the research lend substantial support to the relevance of the L2 Motivational Self System in the Omani context, highlighting, in particular, the emerging collective national and religious identities of young Omani nationals. The paper argues for the need to deepen and broaden our understanding of the association of English social technologies and the national and religious affiliations of learners.

The first time multiracial individuals were afforded the opportunity to identify with more than one race on the US Census was in the year 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, the black-white multiracial subpopulation was the largest and fastest growing within the two or more races category. The identities of many within this particularly youthful group are being formed within the digital world of social media, what has become a platform for individuals to share their personal truths with real and imagined audiences. Thus, a mapping of the current identity expression landscape must consider uses of digital media. This article takes up this task through a critical discourse analysis through a critical discourse analysis of a selection of YouTube video commentaries posted by black-white biracial individuals. As individuals describe experiences had in educational spaces, they also communicate beliefs about their identities – the ways they see themselves and the ways they want to be seen.

This study responds to a need for research in a fast-growing and significant area of study, that of exploring, understanding and documenting the numerous ways that multiply marginalized LGBTQ youth use social media as part of their everyday experiences in an attempt to safely navigate their lives through learning, participating, engaging, communicating and constructing identities in digital spaces. The research question examined whether digital spaces, such as Facebook, provide safe spaces for multiply minoritized LGBTQ youth to express and explore issues of sexuality and gender. In addition, the study explores and categorizes multiple ways that participants interact with social media. Findings suggest that social media are an important aspect in most participants’ lives. Participants’ accessibility to social media, frequency of activity within Facebook, use of social media as a connection and exploration strategy, levels of commitment to social media and perceptions of comfort online are described. Analyses suggest that social media have become a safe space for multiply minoritized LGBTQ youth to explore issues of sexuality and gender. Because previous studies of this kind focused around this population do not exist, this study provides a baseline for continued research in the intersection of Queer studies, multicultural education and digital spaces.

ABSTRACTThis study examined how socio-demographic factors related to the levels of cultural and non-cultural prejudice among college students from Korea, China, and Japan. We used data collected from the Asian Value Survey. The main findings are as follows. First, Chinese students showed the lowest levels of cultural and non-cultural prejudice. Second, those who had higher cultural prejudice also showed higher levels of non-cultural prejudice. However, while Korean and Japanese students had significantly higher levels of cultural prejudice than non-cultural prejudice, a statistically significant difference was not found among Chinese students. Third, while levels of cultural prejudice were explained by the country of origin and income, those of non-cultural prejudice were explained by the country of origin, gender, and the size of the areas in which students resided during childhood. Future directions for research and multicultural education were suggested based on the findings.

This study focuses on teachers in schools with large numbers of new arrival immigrant pupils in a provincial school district in mid-Sweden. Drawing from focus group interviews and examples from the teachers’ lessons, we examined the views of the teachers regarding the challenges experienced in responding to the pedagogical needs of new arrival pupils in culturally and linguistically heterogeneous classrooms. The findings reveal the structural and organisational problems at the city council and at the school and classroom levels as the major challenges. These include the pressure to create inclusive and safe classrooms for diverse cultural and linguistic pupils in an atmosphere where there is limited resources and emphasis on standardised assessment and teaching for tests within a prescribed curriculum However, the teachers’ pedagogical practices demonstrate attempts at intercultural teaching that build on the pupils cultural and linguistic experiences and compares well with principles of cultural responsive pedagogy.