Chapter 8: Transformative Pedagogies in Multicultural Education: Teaching Sensitive Topics in Troubled Times

There is no gainsaying that the United States has witnessed a major surge in hate crimes since 2016 (Beirich, 2019). The crimes are perpetrated mostly by fringe elements who are members of the dominant groups against the dominated groups, related to race, immigration, LGBT, and religion. Students commit some of these hate crimes. A legitimate question as to whether these students are receiving quality education that prepares them to live in harmony with people of all racial and cultural backgrounds in a pluralistic society has to be asked. How are teacher education programs preparing preservice teachers to teach K–12 students about diversity and social justice? What effective pedagogic methods are needed to educate preservice teachers in ways that transform the quality of their own learning experience in diversity and equity issues so that they can, in turn, transfer quality knowledge about human diversity to their own students? Grounded in transformative learning theory (Mezirow et al., 2000; Cranton, 2006) dialogic discourse (Bakhtin, 1981), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; McLaren, 1989), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), and attraction theory (Ortlieb, 2014; Schachter & Singer, 1962), this chapter discusses a myriad of critical instructional strategies. These strategies promote transformative learning during these troubled times in a required multicultural education course offered in a predominantly White university in the Midwest to mostly preservice teachers with sophomore standing. The teaching philosophy undergirding these transformative pedagogies is predicated on our belief that effective teachers are most often reflective thinkers. To attain veritable transformative learning outcomes in these troubled times, instructors need to adopt a radical approach to teaching that deviates from the outmoded transmission instructional approach by embracing a multifaceted constructivist approach to teaching which is learner-centered and learner-driven. Drawing from attraction theory (Ortlieb, 2014; Schachter & Singer, 1962), this chapter offers curricular and instructional activities that attract and retain students’ attention to the issue at hand. No matter how sensitive and infuriating topics in a multicultural education course are to students, a reflective instructor is capable of designing the lessons in a way that attracts and stimulates students’ attention as well as captivates their minds to think critically. Vygotsky (1956) asserts that effective teaching can only occur when it “awakens and rouses to life those functions which are in a stage of maturing” (p. 278). Thus, within this backdrop in our instructional setting, the instructor assumes the role of an engaged facilitator guiding the dialogue by asking probing questions and providing historical and social contexts through relevant texts, scholarly articles, current events, statistics, and attention-getting video clips followed by critically reflective discussions. Given the limited scope of this chapter, we focus on two major themes of our pedagogy in a multicultural education course: Diversity News Digest and documentary viewing. Thus, these two main pedagogic tools discussed in the subsequent paragraph constitute the nexus of this chapter.