Defining and Designing Multiculturalism

Pepi Leistyna is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the author of Presence of Mind: Education and the Politics of Deception and coeditor (with Arlie Woodrum and Stephen A. Sherblom) of Breaking Free: The Transformative Power of Critical Pedagogy.

• ForewordMulticulturalism Revisited: Pepi Leistyna's Politics of the ConcretePeter McLaren Introduction Part One: Theoretically and Historically Contextualizing the Study 1. Critical Mulicultural Education: What is It?2. A History of Changeton and its Public Schools3. Facing Oppression: Youth Voices from the Front4. The Formation of the Multicultural Central Steering Committee (CSC): Its Basic Processes, Functions, and Structures Part Two: The Work of the Multicultural Central Steering Committee 5. The Development of the Multicultural Central Steering Committee's Mission Statement6. Professional Development: Raising Consciousness among the Faculty and Staff7. Curriculum Development and Instruction8. Diversifying the Faculty and Staff9. Creating a Partnership between the School and the Public Part Three: The Impact of Multicultural Education in Changeton over the Years 10. In the Aftermath: A Dialogue with Three Changeton Teachers11. Two Letters to Changeton Educators12. Challenges for the Future Appendix / Research MethodologyNotesBibiliography

"An active engagement with Leistyna's work will help educators, administrators, and community activists to break ranks with the misleading conceptions of mainstream multiculturalism, and to lay the groundwork for the development of a critical multiculturalism." — from the Foreword by Peter L. McLaren"What does it take to make a school system truly multicultural, in reality as well as in name? Few scholars have taken on this difficult problem, and Leistyna is one of a handful we can turn to for direction. With both insight and generosity, Leistyna points to the tensions and possibilities inherent in designing a school system that affirms all students and their families at the same time that it confronts difficult and troubling questions of structural inequality and deep-seated biases." — Sonia Nieto, author of Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, Third Edition and Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives for a New Century