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 ... Read moreon 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.
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