تعلیم و تربیت چندفرهنگی

The purpose of the present research is to analyze and critique the implications of multicultural education with an emphasis on Michel Foucault's views. To achieve this goal, conceptual and critical analysis methods have been used. Foucault, as a postmodernist theorist, proposes a kind of education in which the issue of culture and justice is important. While criticizing power relations in educational systems, he has provided significant implications for multicultural education. In his view, the basis for education should be based on democratic and non-authoritarian methods, and the interests of the members and various components of society, including other cultures, should be taken into consideration. Foucault criticizes the textbooks as functions of history, society, and power, and believes that texts have always been used as tools of power. By examining Foucault's educational opinions, it can be admitted that his implications for educational and cultural justice will be. Nevertheless, criticisms can be made, such as the criticality of the revelation of reality, the emphasis on epistemological relativism, the divergence of education policies, the lack of presumptions in the discussion of discourse, and the lack of solutions to educational issues.

This study aimed to investigate the epistemological foundations of multicultural education. Qualitative method of the kind of philosophical research and conceptual analysis was applied. Related books, magazines, and writings included the realm of the research for collecting the information; moreover, accessible published writings and electronic books were used, too, due to the vast numbers of the sources in the field. In order to collect the data, researcher-designed receipts were utilized. By means of content analysis, content interpretation, and theoretical inference, data were analyzed. The research findings indicated that the two major philosophical and fundamental roots of multicultural education were as: Post-modernism and Critical Theory. The research' results, also, suggested that believing in relativism, rejecting any fixed (absolute) truth, believing in local truth based on public observation or methodological principles or scholar's and scientist's researches, rejecting the idea of objective knowledge or objectivity and accepting the theory of mutual understanding, rejecting absolutism and accepting positivistic methodology in the realm of scientific methodology, neglecting the artificial boundaries between the disciplines of human knowledge and supporting the interdisciplinary approach were the epistemological foundations of multicultural education .