Intercultural Education: Critical Perspectives, Promising Practices, and Contentious Challenges

Book excerpt: Intercultural Education: Critical Perspectives, Pedagogical Challenges, and Promising Practices, co-edited by Cinzia Pica-Smith, Carmen N. Veloria and Rina Manuela Contini, is an edited volume that brings together scholars from across the globe who delve critically into the frameworks of interculturalism and intercultural education to go beyond the European context, to reorient our perspectives on the frameworks and engage in new conversations across various institutional contexts and countries. The scholars in this volume explore and critique intercultural education on localized alliances, epistemologies, pedagogy, multi-sector collaborations, and language policies. Some scholars contextualize this phenomenon by acknowledging the on-going struggles for recognition, representation, and heritage language maintenance; while others write about the institutionalization that brings about warped narratives, produces challenges and tensions, and the interplay of power dynamics that impacts practice which is ultimately felt most by practitioners and students. Finally, authors move beyond this critique by working with diverse communities, expanding the dialogue to include multiple perspectives, and promoting the adaptation of indigenous practices in new ways.The scholar-practitioners in this collection engage with the theory and practice of intercultural education to describe, interrogate, critique, and put forth recommendations for future iterations of policy and practice. They do not stop at historicizing, contextualizing, and problematizing the conceptual framework. These scholars go beyond analysis and provided us a roadmap to real-life possibilities for changes to the framework of intercultural education that will manifest in policy and curricula that will impact the institution of schools, translating, ultimately, into real-time change in the lives of children and their communities.