Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 204
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4422-1637-2 • Hardback • July 2012 • $167.00 • (£129.00)
978-1-4422-1638-9 • Paperback • July 2012 • $77.00 • (£59.00)
978-1-4422-1639-6 • eBook • July 2012 • $73.00 • (£56.00)
Thomas E. Wren is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, where he directs the graduate program in social philosophy. He holds graduate degrees in education and English literature as well as philosophy and has published extensively on moral education and other educational themes. He is on the editorial boards of Theory and Research in Education and The Journal of Moral Education.
Preface
Chapter 1. Defining Culture and Multicultural Education: How To Do It, and Why
Chapter 2. The Concept of Culture in the Social Sciences
Chapter 3. Topical, Structural, and Functional Conceptions of Culture in the Professional
Literature of Multicultural Education
Chapter 4. Historical, Normative, and Behavioral Conceptions of Culture in the Professional
Literature of Multicultural Education
Chapter 5. Cognitive, Symbolic, and Critical Conceptions of Culture in the Professional
Literature of Multicultural Education
Chapter 6. Beyond the Critical Turn
References
With elegant clarity, distinguished philosopher Thomas Wren incisively analyzes the conflicting conceptions of 'culture' that underpin contrasting models of multiculturalism as well as their pedagogic and political assumptions. This book is a substantive resource for students of culture and for anyone implementing, researching, or critiquing multicultural education.
— Helen Haste, Harvard Graduate School of Education
This clearly written book delivers on its title by placing multicultural education as its proper historical perspective connecting current disagreements to long-standing differences in the social sciences over the meanings of culture, society and enculturation. Only a philosopher could have offered the perspective that Wren provides. In this wonderful book, Wren offers educators the keys toward unlocking the hidden assumptions behind the arguments over multicultural education and provides them with the intellectual tools needed to forge their own well-informed perspectives.
— Larry Nucci, University of California, Berkeley
This is a wonderfully instructive book.Wren addresses a blind spot in the literature and pedagogy of multicultural education — the underexamined concept of culture — and in doing so provides a model of cogent interdisciplinary analysis.This is essential reading for anyone interested in multicultural education.
— Randall Curren, University of Rochester
In chapter 1, Wren (philosophy, Loyola Univ.) explores both formal and informal definitions of culture as they are framed in terms of overlapping practical agendas in the classroom. In the second chapter, he explores conceptions of culture in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, providing students of multicultural education with resources for reading and research. In chapters 3-5, he develops an analysis of the nine major conceptions of culture featured in the foundational literature of multicultural education. In the final chapter, Wren describes how these conceptions of culture provide a tool for the future analysis of the concept of culture in global society. Conceptions of Culture is a valuable resource for teachers and students of multicultural education as they explore conceptions of culture in multicultural education in times of cultural hybridity in the classroom. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections.
— Choice Reviews
- Demonstrates the reciprocity between theory and practice in multicultural education, where pedagogical agendas shape educators' conceptions of culture and vice versa
- Examines the history and current state of culture theory in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and education
- Analyzes the socially constructed character of culture and traces its development over the last 250 years
- Distinguishes nine paradigms of culture operating in the literature of multicultural education
- Uses analytical tools from philosophy and the social sciences in an in-depth textual analysis of dozens of formal and informal definitions of culture found in recent textbooks and scholarly works written by multicultural educators
- Provides a fascinating preview of the next, "post-critical" stage of multicultural education theory and practice