Chapter 10: Narrative and Critical Explorations of Voice in Intercultural Experiences

The foreign-born population has been expanding in the United States and in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2007; United States Census Bureau, 2013). Therefore, schools are increasingly becoming intercultural landscapes where students and teachers from various cultural and language backgrounds interact to shape and be shaped by teaching and learning. Such shifts in education are intricately associated with issues of equity, equality, and social justice (Cummins, 2001; Equity Department of the Toronto District School Board, 2001, 2005). Educators and administrators, who generally represent the nation’s hegemony, are charged with the responsibility of creating and maintaining school communities where students of diverse backgrounds feel welcome and engaged. However, they must do so for students whose experiences these teacher and administrators often do not understand in-depth. As a result, there is a critical need for research examining the experiences of immigrant students and intercultural schools (Chan, 2007). There is a lack of educational research focusing specifically on students (Cook-Sather, 2002) and educational investigations of intercultural students are not well-documented (Chan & Schlein, 2010). Moreover, very little of this work has been completed by researchers with international and intranational intercultural experiences (Schlein, 2009, 2010).