Authors in this issue of Multicultural Perspectives encourage teachers, teacher educators, and other community-based educators to continue to critically re-think and re-imagine the ways in which they think about the pedagogies, curriculum and assessments they use in their work in schools and local community settings. In particular, the authors examine closely how to disrupt colonial discourses used in classroom settings, how to assess multicultural education courses through portfolio assessment, how to desegregate and integrate gifted and talented education for students of color, and how teachers and teachers conceptualized and operationalized how to engage transnational students inside Mexican university classrooms.
Advancing the Conversation
In “Disrupting Colonial Discourses: Anticolonial Academic Language Development for the Elementary Classroom,” Valdez examines the practical application of anticolonial academic language development strategies in an elementary classroom. Drawing from decolonial theory, the study analyzes pedagogical strategies in challenging the normalization of colonialism within language instruction.
Creating Multicultural Classrooms
In “Evaluating Multicultural Education Courses: Promise and Possibilities for Portfolio Assessment,” Young describes how she utilized a Multicultural Education Teaching Portfolio (METP) as a means to inform the measurement of her instructional quality and effectiveness. This article provides an overview of current challenges to assessing quality within Multicultural Education courses and provides an outline of possible components of the METP for further consideration.
In “A Matter of Equity: Desegregating and Integrating Gifted and Talented Education for Students of Color,” Ford, Wright, & Trotman share data on the under-representation of two student groups of color, Black and Hispanic students, along with desegregation and integration barriers. The work of the authors is guided by equity rather than equality. The authors call for accountability and deliberate efforts to desegregate and integrate gifted and talented education with excellence and equity fundamental for change.
In “The Engagement of Transnationals in Mexican University Classrooms: Points of Entry towards Recognition among Future English Teachers,” Kasun, Hernandez, & Montiel describe how three university professors discuss their pedagogies and ways of knowing as they engage transnational students inside Mexican university classrooms for future teachers of English. Toward the aim of improving the way transnationals access and experience formal education, the three professors provide recommendations for improving pedagogy and expanding research.
Personal Perspectives
In “I Have a Voice: Reexamining Researcher Positionality and Humanizing Research with African Immigrant Girls,” Lee examines her own positionality through the stance of humanizing research in multiethnic youth communities. The author reexamines positionality by revisiting two subjectivities in a three-year qualitative case study with African immigrant girls and re-considers the ways in which the researcher and the participants participated in dialogic consciousness-raising within these two subjectivities that were personal and interconnected with stems of inequality due to social and cultural powers.
The authors in this issue ask readers to look closely at current practices in use in classrooms including how to use anticolonial academic language development strategies in an elementary classroom and how to think differently about assessment for multicultural education classrooms through portfolio assessment. The authors also ask us to advocate for equity rather than equality in thinking about how to desegregate and integrate gifted and talented programs for students of colors. They ask us to consider further the types of strategies we could use with transnational students and how we should reflexively consider our own positionality and work at humanizing research in multiethnic communities. Finally, the authors ask us to look self-reflexively at our positionalities and subjectivities as we engage in humanizing research with multiethnic youth communities. As teachers and teacher educators continue to think about how to create critical spaces for multicultural education, the work of the authors in this issue deliberatively push us forward in our thinking in all facets of our work, scholarship, and advocacy.