Cultural plunge: a critical approach for multicultural development in teacher education

Abstract

This report utilizes a qualitative methodology to investigate an educational approach designed to promote critical consciousness and multicultural understanding among undergraduate and graduate students in teacher education. The approach, referred to as a ‘cultural plunge’, involves intense exposure to social and cultural settings in which the students' norms are clearly in the minority. Initial encounters were followed by personal reflection and subsequent small‐group and whole‐class analyses. The findings revealed courage in the face of fear, social criticism and critical reflection, and identification with and empathy for others. The evidence suggests that the approach may indeed provide opportunities for critical growth and multicultural development. However, there are also potential liabilities related to use of the cultural plunge as an educational approach, including the possibility of reducing the ‘other’. Strengths and limitations are examined in detail, and implications are discussed for theory and practice in teacher education.

Keywords:

• multicultural development
• teacher education

Notes

1. In this paper I define culture broadly, encompassing race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth.

2. Of course, there is no absolute distinction between ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’. To a certain extent, these conditions are relative and context‐specific.

3. Within the ethnographic tradition, anthropologists have sought insights regarding unknown others (seeking to ‘make the strange familiar’) while attempting to view themselves anew through the eyes of those others (‘making the familiar strange’).

4. Although the written reports were not individually graded, they did factor into the students' overall grades at the end of the semester. Thus, it may not be surprising that most of the participants at least gave the impression that they took this assignment seriously. Perhaps for similar reasons, class discussions also reflected interest and concern. Nonetheless, varied sources of evidence, including anonymous course evaluations, suggest that the cultural plunge was clearly valued by a majority of the participants.