This book examines issues of identity and difference, both theoretically and as represented in curriculum materials. Here debates over the cultural character of the curriculum are characterized as debates over the American national identity. The editors argue that historically, cultural conservatives have failed to appreciate that the United States is, in a fundamental and central way, an African and African-American place. European Americans are, in a cultural sense, also black, and the failure to teach sequestered suburban (usually Caucasian) students about their (cultural) African and African-American heritage perpetuates their delusion regarding their deeper identities. A curriculum which reflects the non-synchronous identity of Americans is sketched in the last section. Such a curriculum involves not only the inclusion of African and African-American content, but interracial intellectual marriage as well. Contributors to this book include Peter Taubman, Susan Edgerton, Beverly Gordon, Alma Young, Wendy Luttrell, Cameron McCarthy, Patricia Collins, Roger Collins, Brenda Hatfield, Marianne H. Whatley, and Joe L. Kincheloe.

Perhaps not since Ralph Tyler's (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction has a book communicated the field as completely as Understanding Curriculum. From historical discourses to breaking developments in feminist, poststructuralist, and racial theory, including chapters on political theory, phenomenology, aesthetics, theology, international developments, and a lengthy chapter on institutional concerns, the American curriculum field is here. It will be an indispensable textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses alike.

In Are You Mixed?, Sonia Janis explores the spaces in-between race and place from the perspective of an educator who is multi-racial. As she reflects on her own experiences as a seventh grade student up to her eventual appointment as a school administrator, she learns of the complexity of situating oneself in predetermined demographic categories. She shares how she explores the intricacies of undefined spaces that teach her to embrace differences, contradictions, and complexities in schools, neighborhoods and communities. Exploring the in-betweenness (Anzaldua & Keating, 2002; He, 2003, 2010) of her life as a multi-race person problematizes imbedded notions of race, gender, class, and power. The power of this memoir lies in its narrative possibilities to capture the contradictions and paradoxes of lives in-between race and place, “to honor the subtleties, fluidities, and complexities of such experience, and to cultivate understanding towards individual ... experience and the multicultural/multiracial contexts that shape and are shaped by such experience” (He, 2003, p. xvii). This memoir creates new ways to think about and write about in-between experience and their relevance to multicultural and multiracial education. Janis challenges educators, teachers, administrators, and policy makers to view the educational experience of students with multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual backgrounds by shattering predetermined categories and stereotyped classifications and looking into unknown and fluid realms of the in-betweenness of their lives. This challenge helps create equitable and just opportunities and engender culturally responsive and inspiring curricular and learning environments to bring out the best potential in all diverse schools, communities, neighborhoods, tribes and societies.

Each chapter of this book is devoted to a separate concept, which is analyzed in terms of its major features. Follow-up questions at the end of each chapter are designed to challenge the reader to reflect further on the specific issues raised.

Removing the Margins works to identify and challenge many of the cultural and systematic paradigms that perpetuate racism and other forms of oppression in mainstream schooling. The authors pursue the ideal that education should not simply affirm the status quo but should produce knowledge for social action. This philosophical and theoretical resource also moves beyond the study of educational failure to explore the new and creative ways schooling barriers have been confronted. The focus is placed on the factors of representation, family and community, staff equity, language integration and spirituality as fundamental to school reform. Removing the Margins is the product of five years of research and writing in the search for best practices in inclusive education. The authors address the philosophical and theoretical bases for inclusivity in this book, while laying out the practical approach in the accompanying volume Inclusive Schooling: A Teacher's Guide to Removing the Margins.

This book examines the history of standardized testing in Ontario leading to the current context and its impact on racialized identities, particularly on Grade 3 students, parents, and educators. Using a theoretical argument supplemented with statistical trends, the author illuminates how EQAO tests are culturally and racially biased and promote a Eurocentric curriculum and way of life privileging white students and those from higher socio-economic status. This book spurs readers to further question the use of EQAO standardized testing and challenges us to consider alternative models which serve the needs of all students.