Critical and Emerging Discourses in Multicultural Education Literature: A Review (Critical Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Multicultural education in Canada was conceived as a response to cultural pluralism in society. It is linked to immigration and represents a shift in Canadian social policy that parallels dramatic shifts in immigration policy (Ghosh and Abdi 2004). As a result of Canada's historical immigration patterns and policies, as well as public responses to immigration, Canadian social and educational institutions differ significantly from those of other immigrant-receiving countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and France, among others. Although these unique patterns influenced the singular development of Canadian educational policies, research, and practices (Lund 2003), a noticeable cross-fertilization of theoretical frameworks has developed in these countries, both in their implications for multicultural education practices and the critique of these practices. Mitchell (2001) states that most contemporary liberal thought in educational theory deems that democratic practice in Western education occurs in and through communal efforts to work through problems in an essentially multicultural student body. She points out that "within this theoretical framework, by virtue of collective, plural education, Americans and Canadians simultaneously endorse both democratic possibility and the ongoing maintenance of national unity and identity" (68).