190091 SE Special Ethical Questions (2020W)

As our classrooms become more diverse, central tenets of teacher education become how to incorporate elements of multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and social justice into curriculums and conversations to best serve all student populations. This course provides a theoretical and practical introduction to affirming diversity by looking at selected research and theory from the fields of Critical Whiteness Studies, Critical Pedagogy, and Multicultural Education. The class also sets out to question and critically reflect the participants’ own identity positions and standpoints as white (or non-white) individuals and how this awareness helps to look at society in different ways. While most scholarly literature and media examples will be taken from a U.S. context, a culturally diverse society that is considered an example for how to (and how not to) navigate diversity in classrooms, we will also attempt to see how diversity needs to be seen differently in a European context, specifically in Austria and Germany. The class thereby establishes the relevance for critical awareness of privileges and for 'unpacking invisible knapsacks' (McIntosh) beyond race and ethnicity. This is particularly important in light of increasingly diversified classrooms which require teachers’ sensibility for their personal blind spots with regards to their own standpoint in society. This seminar thus seeks to blend theoretical concepts with practical applications for the students’ own teaching and learning environments, particularly by affirming diversity and a critical approach to multicultural education.