Proceedings of the World Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Education,
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Reclaiming Multiculturalism: An Academic Education College’s Model for Creative Coexistence
Advocate Zaki Kamal, Professor Randa Khair Abbas, Dr. Hiba Hamarshi, Dr. Esmael Salman
ABSTRACT:
We live in changing societies where people from different cultures interact. The term multiculturalism describes this encounter and its characteristics. In recent decades, tens of millions of people have migrated to other countries because of wars, famine, and the search for a better life. Many host countries, originally motivated by the humanitarian impulse to help, have become overwhelmed, lacking adequate resources to serve immigrants’ needs, and lacking the educational knowledge and resources to build a new educational system that honors both the new immigrants’ cultures and the host countries’ values, culture and history. Other countries stress the dominance of the majority culture, neglecting the identities of minority groups. A new kind of multiculturalism is needed, what Modood (2020) calls “multicultural nationalism,” a mode of integration that “remakes national identity so that all can have a sense of belonging to it” (p. 308). This does not mean upturning a country’s culture; it means enlarging and enriching it to make a home for all. Education is the way to do this, and teacher education is the key. We at the Arab Academic College in Haifa have developed a unique, living educational model for creative co-existence. This presentation will describe our model.
keywords: creative co-existence, culture, integration, multicultural nationalism, teacher education