Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-2011
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
Education
Major Professor
Allison D. Anders
Committee Members
Gina U. Barclay-McLaughlin, Tricia McClam, Leslee A. Fisher
Abstract
This dissertation presents a conceptual bricolage that explores complex, reflexive, and interrelated dimensions of educational praxes. My work is grounded in the assertion that the ever-changing, local-global nature of contemporary societies requires new approaches to curricula, pedagogies, policies, and practices in U.S. schools to meet the challenges and opportunities of a global era. Presenting my research and findings as four articles, I begin with a dialectical analysis of theoretical and pedagogical literatures to develop an adaptable framework for decolonial multicultural education. In Article 1, I demonstrate how this framework synergizes aspects of social reconstructionist and critical multicultural, global, and decolonial educations, while re-emphasizing possibilities for relational learning in local-global classrooms. In Article 2, I examine a unique local-global context: the matriculation of resettled refugee children into host country schools. This project integrates the decolonial multicultural framework with literatures on ecological interventions for refugee students to address grief, trauma, loss, poverty, acculturation, and host culture hostilities. The theoretical frameworks are infused with considerations concerning children’s lived experiences as complex beings rooted in multiple, fluid, and intersecting contexts. In Article 3, I present a pilot case study on students with refugee status who attended a public school in the South. I discuss qualitative data from participant observations and staff interviews. Using the framework I developed in Article 2 for ecological, decolonial multiculturalism, this study discusses the emergent themes of teacher training, ecological interventions, deficit and assimilationist approaches, and hostile school peer relations. Finally, in Article 4 I argue for a shift in the teacher professional role to include systemic support for ongoing teacher research as a way to address the complexity, multiplicity, and reflexivity of local-global classrooms. I propose postcritical ethnography and feminist praxis-based methodologies as tools to help teacher-researchers learn about and respond to their students. My dissertation thus entails four articles interconnected by the theme of decolonial multicultural education, and enriches framework considerations by exploring the local-global contexts of students with refugee status, specific refugee students in a U.S. school, and potential uses of postcritical and feminist qualitative methodologies for decolonial multicultural teacher-researchers.
Recommended Citation
Sprecher, Katharine Matthaei, "Decolonial Multiculturalism and Local-global Contexts: A Postcritical Feminist Bricolage for Developing New Praxes in Education. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2011.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1129
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Educational Psychology Commons, Educational Sociology Commons, Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration Commons, Elementary Education and Teaching Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Other Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons, School Psychology Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons, Student Counseling and Personnel Services Commons, Urban Education Commons