Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education

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 wave of new social science thinking about human experience. The studies focus on the lives of students, teachers, parents, and communities, and bring forward experiences seldom discussed in the literature. The authors are diverse and their inquiries are far ranging in terms of content, ethnic groups studied, geographic locations and other contexts.
The special quality of the work in this book that distinguishes it from other work in multicultural education is the emphasis on understanding experience and transforming this understanding into social and educational significance. This work tends to be less prescriptive and more intensely focused on the meaning of experience from the perspective of individuals and groups. Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education directly addresses this change both conceptually for thinking about possibilities for multiculturalism, and methodologically for the study of multiculturalism.

JoAnn Phillion is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto at the Centre for Teacher Development with Michael Connelly. She was awarded the AERA Division B Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2000. She is past Chair of Division B Equity Committee and member of AERA Affirmative Action Council. She is Editor of Curriculum Inquiry. Her research interests are in narrative approaches to multiculturalism, teacher knowledge, and teacher education. She teaches graduate courses in curriculum theory and multicultural education, and an undergraduate course in pre-service teacher development. She is involved in international teacher development in Hong Kong and Honduras. She published Narrative Inquiry in a Multicultural Landscape: Multicultural Teaching and Learning with Ablex Publications in 2002. Ming Fang He is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University. She received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto at the Centre for Teacher Development with Michael Connelly. She taught English as a Foreign Language in P. R. China and English as a Second Language to immigrant adults and children in Toronto, Canada. She currently advises doctoral students, directs doctoral dissertations, and teaches graduate courses in curriculum studies, multicultural education, and qualitative research methods. Her preservice teacher education courses are in foundations of education. She has also taught doctoral level courses in Hong Kong, and currently advises doctoral students and serves on dissertation committees, for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education cohort-based doctoral program for Hong Kong Institute of Education faculty members. Her work is on cross-cultural narrative inquiry of language, culture, and identity in multicultural contexts, cross-cultural teacher education and curriculum studies. Her book, A River Forever Flowing: Cross-Cultural Lives and Identities in the Multicultural Landscape, is published with Information Age Publishing. She is Professor of Curriculum, an editor of Curriculum Inquiry, and an associate editor of Multicultural Perspectives. F. Michael Connelly is Professor Emeritus, and formerly Director, Centre for Teacher Development, and Chair, Department of Curriculum, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto (OISE/UT). He is Director of a Hong Kong Institute of Education/OISE/UT Doctoral Program, and a founder and editor of Curriculum Inquiry. Professor Connelly was the recipient of the 1987 Outstanding Canadian Curriculum Scholar Award of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, the 1991 Canadian Education Association Whitworth Award for Educational Research, the 1995 Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Outstanding Teaching Award, and the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award in Curriculum Studies from the American Educational Research Association. He has written widely, with his collaborator Jean Clandinin, in science education, teaching and teacher knowledge, curriculum and narrative inquiry.

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.