The (Im)possible Multicultural Teacher (A Critical Approach to Understanding White Teachers' Multicultural Work)

The (Im)possible Multicultural Teacher: A Critical Approach to Understanding White Teachers’ Multicultural Work provides a nuanced examination of what committed and critical-minded White teachers can do to transform educational inequities in their racially and linguistically diverse classrooms. Drawing from an ethnographic research study with three White teachers working at elementary, middle, and high school levels, this book provides a theoretical frame for understanding teachers’ multicultural practices as well as three detailed case study chapters that document the teachers’ attempts at implementing multicultural practices.

Within each case study chapter, the author defines the sociopolitical context in which the teachers work and that ultimately shapes the (im)possibilities of their multicultural practices. The ethnographic research data show that the teachers’ processes of implementing multicultural education are characterized by not only transformative pedagogies, but also pedagogical practices that take up and (re)produce the racial ideologies that make their multicultural endeavors difficult, if not impossible, to actualize. As the title of this book suggests, the author seeks to examine both the possibilities and impossibilities—the (im)possibilities—of White teachers implementing multicultural education.