Conceptions of Culture: What Multicultural Educators Need to Know

The concept of culture stands, clearly but unsteadily, at the heart of multicultural education. This book provides a systematic, in-depth understanding of the role that culture plays in the massive literature of multicultural education as multiple and antithetical definitions of culture exist. The book also shows multicultural educators how to discern the definition used in any particular book or article. Thomas Wren deploys methods and concepts from philosophy and the social sciences to provide an analytic framework within which the history and current state of culture theory can be understood both for its own sake and for its educational significance. Although the book is full of theory, it is not a theoretical book in the usual sense. It is a road map, accompanied by the related theoretical information and tools that graduate students and faculty need to (1) navigate the complex terrain of multicultural education literature, (2) apply the book’s analytical framework to that literature and to their own future practice, and (3) anticipate the social changes and accompanying conceptual changes in our notions of culture that are now occurring as part of the cultural hybridity of today’s students.