Research and Multicultural Education

This book is written to encourage research into multicultural education and to help scholars think through some of the problems and issues inherent in doing research in this area. Presently, multicultural education is receiving major national and international attention, not only within the educational community, but within society at large. Demographic changes in society are requiring people who never had to deal with one another to work together. This contact among and between different groups of people is taking place in political, social and economic contexts that are dominated by an ever-widening gulf between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.
Schools now more than in the recent past are being required to respond to the challenge of educating different groups of students about each other and to making schooling equal and equitable for all. Educators at all levels and in all roles are having to confront the racism, sexism and classism that they have, in a large part, ignored but that has continued to hound them with an increasing intensity. Quality research is needed to help educators understand and resolve this quagmire and to help schools become portals to life opportunities and choices for all students. This volume is intended to facilitate the production of this research.
Whilst this volume is not a primer for doing multicultural research, it includes discussions about many important areas that must be considered when doing multicultural research. It responds to the felt needs of a number of scholars, who have a serious interest in researching and writing in this area; these researchers are often frustrated because there is a lack of discussion, directions and support for doing multicultural research. Similarly, these scholars have criticized the paucity of multicultural education research studies. This book is an attempt to respond to both of these valid criticisms. It offers chapters about doing research in multicultural education and makes contributions to the research base in multicultural education by including chapters that are themselves studies in multicultural education and it critiques national and state multicultural policy initiates.