Education, multiculturalism and the market : A perspective on developments in Australia

Abstract

This paper argues that a number of competing interpretations of multicu1turalism and education have emerged during the 1980s and 1990s in response to issues ofethnic and cultural difference in Australia. Drawing on the work of otherresearchers such as Kalantzis et al. (1990), the article traces the changing nature of governmental discourses and their effects in the education field, from cultural pluralist models through to perspectives which stressed broad institutional change and the social in clusion of marginalised 'ethnic minority' groups. The paper extends previous work by examining the ways in which the language of neo-liberalism has displaced the categories of race, ethnicity and culture as key concerns in the development of educational policy and programs by the end of the 1990s. It suggests, that these new trends have transformed multiculturalismin education into a 'choice' of establishing separate schools and systems along ethno-specific lines, but with no guarantee of improving educational outcomes. Concluding, the piece argues that an alternative agenda would build on the insights gained in the earlier processes of reform, which focused on broad institutionaI change. However, it is also proposed that there is a need to linkt hese insights to a critical analysis of the ways in which the emerging types of knowledge, institutionaI arrangements and teaching strategies are producing new forms of exclusion within the ethnic and culturai spheres of our 'Iife-worlds'.