Processual Approaches to Multicultural Education

Although “multicultural education” has been implemented in school districts across the country for more than two decades, these approaches generally have relegated notions of “culture” to observable surface markers of folklore, food, and holidays. Practitioners have been in-serviced with new sets of stereotypes that assume that all members of a particular group share a normative and an integrated view of their own culture. Processual approaches to culture that take into account ambiguity and multiple perspectives can reorient educators to consider the everyday lived experiences of their students. The households from which students emerge are intersected by multiply mediated constructs that can belie a harmonious and homogeneous set of shared cultural forms. Data from an educational project that exposes practitioners to alternate views of cultural processes are presented and analyzed in terms of classroom practice.