This article presents an interview with Ronald Takaki, a prolific and respected author and a successful teacher who wrote a number of important histories that explore the cultural diversity of the United States of America, including "From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America" (1994), "Strangers from a Different Shore: A…

Focusing on community as a key element in teacher education, this paper highlights the importance of new teachers embarking on their careers with a vision for social justice. Paying specific attention to the need for effective teachers in America's urban schools, the author stresses purposeful development of this vision for social justice…

This article explores youth participatory action research as a promising instructional practice with the potential to reverse the depoliticizing and "softening" of multicultural education. It demonstrates how, with its explicit commitment to action, youth participatory action research can help to improve the educational experiences and outcomes…

Two recent, highly rated movies depict central characters who are involved in killing members of groups despised in their societies. In "Milk" and "The Reader," the characters of Dan White and Hanna Schmitz, respectively, are treated with empathy and a search for understanding. Their personal sufferings and confusions are highlighted, and the…

Is what preservice teachers say about issues surrounding culture and diversity actually what they believe? Using a short critical analysis of "The Three Little Pigs," the author engages students in an anonymous writing activity that reveals dissonant opinions and leads to opportunities for discussion.

Using methods of naturalistic inquiry, this study examines preservice teachers' conflict with classroom management strategies used in a predominantly African-American urban elementary school. It highlights the theory/practice dilemma, focusing on the tensions between the democratic strategies taught in university classes and the more authoritarian…

Two recent movies, "The Visitor" and "Slumdog Millionaire," exemplify very different ways of dealing with the pains of inequality in modern life. Popular culture celebrates the successes of meritorious individuals from backgrounds of victimization and oppression, but it struggles to find positive themes when social arrangements continue to…

As children begin to construct an understanding of human differences and similarities during their earliest years, early childhood teachers are challenged to be culturally responsive to the diversity of the children and families. Based on our review of the literature and other existing tools, this article discusses a framework for thinking about…

This article reports on a narrative inquiry with two teacher-researchers of opposite ethnic, social class, and gender backgrounds about how their oppositions became an asset for their multicultural education. The study calls for educators to consider cultural creativity as a pertinent feature of multicultural education in today's polarized…

This qualitative case study focuses on White prospective teachers' exploration of their cultural identities. Through writing, as a tool for reflection, 46 teacher education students exposed their understandings about what it means to be White. Deconstructing whiteness became a starting point to reflect on issues about race and cross-cultural…

The current difficulties of making challenging humor while respecting the legitimate sensibilities of stigmatized people are discussed. Two very different movie comedies include jokes about people. One is received with outrage on behalf of the group that is made the butt of the jokes, people who are "mentally challenged"; the other, about…

This article analyzes current education policy initiatives from the political Right in the United States, focusing on initiatives at the federal level (standards and testing), the state level (funding), the local level (alternative certification), and the campus level (censorship). Each initiative has received wide bipartisan and public support,…

The effects of high-stakes, standardized testing on the curriculum are discouraging the teaching of multicultural, anti-racist content. Test-influenced educational environments contribute to the reproduction of racial and cultural inequality in education. Using the lens of sociolinguistics, the author asserts that high-stakes, standardized tests…

This article describes four teacher education programs and their student teachers' responses to why some students in their classrooms were not doing well. The responses and programs fell into two categories: education for replication of inequities and education for transformation. If teacher education programs want their prospective teachers to be…

This study explored the ways in which undergraduate students intentionally navigate complex curricular and co-curricular choices in preparation for engaging in a diverse democracy. Our study examined these choices among students at a university that lacks formal structures to facilitate these choices. Four curricular and co-curricular pathways…