Abstract
This article racializes educational change by examining literature on the history of educational approaches to diversity in the United States and Ontario, Canada to demonstrate how their respective national myths for engaging with diversity—the melting pot and mosaic—have impacted their educational policies and practices over three definable eras of educational change. The educational policies and practices of the two countries are evaluated in relation to four significant and—within the existing literature—widely used political and educational strategies for responding to racial and ethnocultural diversity in schools. The paper cautions that the current era of curriculum standardization and high stakes assessments that reflects a melting pot approach to education reinstitutes and reinforces an inequitable vertical mosaic structure of schooling experiences and outcomes for diverse student populations. It urges policy makers to consider how the current movement toward post-standardization, which reflects a mosaic approach, is presently influencing educational policy and practice in international contexts and achieving more just and effective learning outcomes for diverse student groups.
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Notes
(In Vought 2004, pp. 238–239).
In 2001, interracial unions and marriages made up 3.2% of Canada’s 14.1 million couples, or 451,200 couples. Consideration of absolute population numbers reveals the inclusive attitudes which underpin the relationship between marriage practices and racial diversity. With just 13% (about 4 million) of Canada’s 29.5 million residents belonging to visible minority groups, the percentage of interracial couples takes on considerable significance as a measure of diversity. In contrast, the United States’ 2000 census data showed that interracial unions and marriages accounted for 6% of the roughly 60 million couples, representing a total of 4,165,000 couples. However 25% of the 281 million United States residents, or roughly 70 million, were of racial minority backgrounds. Therefore, marriage as a social measure of diversity shows Canadian attitudes and practices as more inclusive than the United States’.
This section draws strongly on a detailed historical analysis of 30 years of educational reform and its impact on eight secondary schools in both countries (see Hargreaves and Goodson 2006 for further details).
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Skerrett, A. Racializing educational change: Melting pot and mosaic influences on educational policy and practice. J Educ Change 9, 261–280 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-008-9071-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-008-9071-0