In a recent contribution, Biesta has called for a “world-centred education”, encouraging teachers to turn the students’ gaze towards the world. However, introducing the student to the world within increasingly diverse societies uncovers a set of educational paradoxes. Should teaching represent the perspectives of minority groups to provide recognition, inclusion, and empowerment or should it rather aim at representing universal aspects, where culture, race, and privilege are irrelevant? This essay will investigate the foundational question of how we are to represent the world in multicultural schools and societies, thereby facilitating Bildung processes for all children. Although we acknowledge that defining the social and cultural world inclusively in multicultural schools is challenging, we will argue that this is an essential feature of good education and that the conscious selection of content and teaching materials should be at the forefront of educational practice. The essay concludes that we need to focus on the teacher as an agent of inclusion and Bildung, exercising judgement in the encounter between the curriculum and the students in multicultural classrooms. The essay thus calls attention to the necessity of teachers developing what we conceptualise as multicultural tact.

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Multicultural Tact: Teaching and Bildung Promotion in the Culturally Diverse Classroom

  • Tommaso Rompianesi,
  • Line Torbjørnsen Hilt

摘要

In a recent contribution, Biesta has called for a “world-centred education”, encouraging teachers to turn the students’ gaze towards the world. However, introducing the student to the world within increasingly diverse societies uncovers a set of educational paradoxes. Should teaching represent the perspectives of minority groups to provide recognition, inclusion, and empowerment or should it rather aim at representing universal aspects, where culture, race, and privilege are irrelevant? This essay will investigate the foundational question of how we are to represent the world in multicultural schools and societies, thereby facilitating Bildung processes for all children. Although we acknowledge that defining the social and cultural world inclusively in multicultural schools is challenging, we will argue that this is an essential feature of good education and that the conscious selection of content and teaching materials should be at the forefront of educational practice. The essay concludes that we need to focus on the teacher as an agent of inclusion and Bildung, exercising judgement in the encounter between the curriculum and the students in multicultural classrooms. The essay thus calls attention to the necessity of teachers developing what we conceptualise as multicultural tact.