Examining a Multilingual Educator’s Path to Multicultural Awareness: A Case Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 104
  In Roundtable Session: Multicultural Education and Diversity in the Caribbean and Africa

Abstract

In this descriptive case study, I examined a multilingual Anglophone Caribbean educator’s path to multicultural awareness through an examination of his experiences with language in diverse contexts. I utilized sociocultural theory as inclusive of social constructivism, functional/sociolinguistics, participation theory and critical theory to undergird this inquiry. Through semi-structured interviews, I identified three distinct recursive “pathways” representative of the educator’s experiences. These were his processes of attitude transformation, strategy use and identity formation. The results of this study reveal the importance of critically examining the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse educators as a means of enriching our understandings of how such educators develop the abilities and dispositions required for multicultural awareness.

Author

• Patriann Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign