The Global Institutionalization of Multicultural Education as an Academic Discourse

Abstract

Multicultural education has been widely recognized as an educational approach to deal with social and cultural diversity towards a more inclusive and just society. Conventional perspectives tend to assume that multicultural education would be of greater interest as a research topic in countries with growing levels of diversity. However, based on a macro-phenomenological perspective, this study accounts for influences from the wider institutional environment that gives collective meaning and value to legitimize multiculturalism as an academic discourse topic. Using a cross-national research design, this study examined the national-level characteristics associated with the formation of academic discourse on multicultural education. Scholarly articles on multicultural education published in the field of education by 2020 were collected using the research platform Web of Science. A total of 105 countries with 14,220 articles were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Our results showed that countries with stronger ties to global civil society were more likely to have articles on multicultural education, indicating a higher institutionalization level of relevant academic discourse within the country. These findings suggest that the popularity of multicultural education as an academic discourse may not solely be in response to national-level societal demands but rather may be an institutional embodiment of universalistic norms and values.