A Diagnostic Shift: How Banks’s Knowledge Typology Gave Voice to Multicultural Education Theory, Research, and Practice

• In Event: James A. Banks: A Pioneer for the Advancement of Social Justice in a Global World

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine Banks’ (1993) five-part Knowledge Typology (Personal/Cultural Knowledge, Popular Knowledge, Mainstream Academic Knowledge, Transformative Knowledge, and School Knowledge) in the Canon Debate, and its use as a diagnostic tool in education scholarship. We employ critical social theory, emphasizing—in a meta sense—the nature of truth; how knowledge is mediated by structural and historical conditions of power (Delgado Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Popkewitz & Fendler, 1999). We employ text analysis (Bazerman, 2006) to examine the Canon Debate, Banks’ (1993) response, and subsequent diagnostic application of his Knowledge Typology. We review the research literature referencing Banks’ (1993) work through JSTOR and Google Scholar search for “Banks canon debate.” In this paper, we exclude all references made by the author, and examine the impact the typology of school knowledge has had on the academy. Given our language limitations, we chose to only review English-written papers. We find that Banks’ (1993) knowledge typology remains a crucial diagnostic tool for scholars seeking to challenge dominant, mainstream education paradigms and practices. The knowledge typology provides a method for examining how school knowledge is constructed, creating an opportunity for formal examination of epistemological differences and the possibility of greater inclusion of marginalized voices. Banks’ (1993), “The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education” offers a diagnostic tool for examining the doxa within educational institutions. Banks sought to transcend the bickering over inclusion in academic circles, offering a method to critique what constitutes “knowledge” in education. Written during an era when debates raged between the Dead White Men canon and the possible inclusion of non-White scholars into the academe, Banks crafted a Weberian typology to critically examine the arguments between Western traditionalists (Hirsch, Bloom, D’Souza, in Banks), multiculturalists (Butler, Walter, Grant, in Banks) and Afrocentrists (Asante, in Banks) to examine the knowledge construction process itself. Banks’Knowledge Typology continues to inform education scholarship in the U.S. and globally (China in Chu, 2015; England and Sweden in Ward & Quennerstedt, 2015; Israel and Ethiopia in Gilad & Millet, 2015).

Authors

• Dennis Lance Rudnick, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Konstantine Kyriacopoulos, University of North Carolina - Wilmington