Working definitions: educational organization and the meaning of multiculturalism

Abstract

I draw on interviews with seventy-six English professors in four U.S. universities to document emerging definitions of multiculturalism and connect them to organizational conditions in each department. Findings indicate that English professors assigned meaning to the ambiguous and contested word, multiculturalism, according to principles of organizational convenience rather than political conviction. The four categories of meaning assigned to multiculturalism (canons, value, diversity, and pedagogy) demonstrate clear connections to the occupational interests of English professors. Definitions drawing on single categories of meaning are characterized as "abstract" and are more malleable in public debate. Less abstract meanings, those drawing on multiple categories of meaning, are more "grounded" in pre-existing habits and work routines. In this study, grounded definitions were less volatile than the abstract definitions employed by cultural critics. This finding emphasizes the power of institutional routines for withstanding ideological challenges and illuminates the mechanisms through which that resistance operates. However, I hypothesize that top-down cultural change is possible when meanings are successfully grounded in existing patterns of everyday life while the ideas are still in the public sphere. New or oppositional meanings that are both grounded and widely accepted stand a better chance of surviving inside established social institutions.Education is the primary mechanism through which we, as a nation, attempt to enact positive social change. We look to education as a great equalizer that offers all children an opportunity to become valuable and productive citizens. We use the educational system to correct our past mistakes, to respond to current challenges, and to prepare for the future. It should be noted, therefore, that education is a cultural institution. Its product is the transformation of human minds. In short, Volume 22 Number 1/2/3 2002

De-Institutionalization of High Culture? Realized Curricula in Secondary Education in Flanders, 1930–2000

“…For example, Frank et al (1994) find that, in the period from 1910 to 1990, history curricula at US universities became broader, for example by including a wider range of social subgroups in the covered material. Also, in the 1960s and 1970s, minority groups started fighting the absence of literature by their members in the canon (Corse and Griffin, 1997; see also Bryson, 2002). A similar trend is observed in music education, where popular genres such as rock and pop were included in music education during the 1970s (Dyndahl and Nielsen, 2014).…”