Reimagining multicultural education: Postcolonial approach

Abstract

This paper tries to re-imagine the multicultural education with the theoretical perspective of postcolonialism. For this end, we have reviewed what colonialism and postcolonialism means and the three most famous postcolonial theorists: Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. After that, contemporary multicultural education and its limits are examined, which finally leads to the re-imagination of education from postcolonial perspective. Based on the thorough theoretical inquiry on contemporary and postcolonial education, we have suggested the following paradigm shifts: First, shift from cultural diversity to cultural difference. Second, shift from nationalistic dualism to hybridized multicultural citizenship. Lastly we have re-imagined the future of education, which consists of the following four aspects: Curriculum, students, teachers, and evaluation.