Multicultural Capital in Middle Schooling

Abstract

This paper introduces the new notion of 'multicultural capital', drawing on economic theory and sociology to illuminate empirical data from middle schools. This paper identifies five types of capital (physical capital, human capital, natural capital, social capital, and cultural capital) from the literature. Further, the authors integrate these five types of capital with notions of "culturally problematic" and "interculturally proactive" schools (Hickling Hudson, 2003) to assist the assessment of multicultural assets of schools. This qualitative, exploratory study reports three major findings. First, each school has its own unique multicultural capital and this influences whether a school can be described as "culturally problematic" or the degree to which it is "interculturally proactive". Second, principals and teachers play an important role in the conceptualisation of a school's multiculturalism. Third, analysis indicates that the multicultural capital of each school influences the pedagogic choices made thereby affecting how the school enacts what we see as a form of multicultural education. Finally, the article acknowledges the study's major limitation, which is the small size of the sample and its urban nature. Therefore further research is recommended to continue the discussion on multicultural capital initiated here.