Shirley R. Steinberg - Critical Multiculturalism

Critical Multiculturalism

Critical Multiculturalism is an idea that draws upon the evolving theoretical position emerging in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in the 1920s, The framework for Critical Multiculturalism was laid out in Steinberg's 2001 book, Multi/Intercultural Conversations: A Reader, but originally discussed in Kincheloe's and Steinberg's book, Changing Multiculturalism and further refined in her book, Diversity: A Reader, (2009). In Dr. Stephen Bigger's 1998 review of Changing Multiculturalism, he writes, "Multiculturalism, a problematic term, is clarified into a position called ‘critical multiculturalism’, described with approval inasfar as it explores “the way power shapes consciousness” (p. 25) and has an “emancipatory commitment to social justice and the egalitarian democracy that accompanies it” (p. 26) in contrast to “a moral emptiness to pedagogies that attempt to understand the world without concurrently attempting to change it”. Teachers need to have experienced transformation if they are to teach transformatively. The pedagogy comes out of the concern with the intersection of power, identity and knowledge (p. 29).