Refusing to be co-opted: revolutionary multicultural education amidst global neoliberalisation

Abstract

In this article, I explore how neoliberalism dictates the terms of debate about education reform and equity in the U.S. and abroad. In particular, I explain how two paradigmatic reforms – the edTPA evaluation for preservice teachers in the United States and the global initiative Teach For All – have co-opted the discourse of multicultural education in an attempt to advance their own priorities and not those at the heart of the field, thus jeopardising the possibility of real justice. Finally, I envision a way forward, through a theory of revolutionary multicultural education, as we seek to reimagine the terms of debate about the goals of educating all students.

Keywords:

• Multicultural education
• neoliberalism
• edTPA
• Teach For All
• social justice

Notes on contributor

Alyssa Hadley Dunn, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her research interests include urban education, multicultural education, and social justice.

Notes

1. For brevity and consistency’s sake, I use the term multicultural education throughout the article instead of using both or alternating between multi- and intercultural education. This choice is based on ‘multicultural’ being the predominant term in United States literature on which I draw from the most.

2. This article was originally written in April 2015. Since then, the political context in the U.S. has changed with the election of Trump, but it is beyond the scope of this publication to address fully the ways that his election has exacerbated the politics and policies discussed throughout.

3. Because this article was originally written and accepted for publication in early 2015, new scholarship on the edTPA has emerged since then. Though beyond the scope of this article to include those pieces in a full analysis, I would recommend reading the work of Dover and colleagues about the edTPA in Illinois. See, for example: Dover and Schultz (2016); Dover, Schultz, Smith, and Duggan (2015a); Dover, Schultz, Smith, and Duggan (2015b). Also recommended is Tuck and Gorlewski (2016).