Using Multiculturalism as a "New Way of Seeing the World": Ontario Aboriginal Educational Policy According to Foucault

• Published in: International Journal of Multicultural Education
• Main Author: Cherubini, Lorenzo
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Eonsei University 2011
• Subjects: Indigenous education; policy analysis; Canadian multicultural policies; Foucault; multiculturalism; inuit
• Online Access: http://www.ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/430; https://doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v13i2.430

By considering the Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Policy Framework (2007) from a Foucauldian perspective, the paper presents a policy discourse of knowledge, power, and identity from a multicultural education framework. Through Foucauldian theoretical perspectives, the paper creates alternate possibilities in confronting the ways to understand public educational policy – considered the purpose of multicultural education. This paper invites teachers, administrators, district leaders, and policy makers to consider how educational policy in one Canadian province strategically situates Aboriginal peoples in a historical context, exercises Foucauldian notions of power and care and potentially endorses the subjectification of Aboriginal peoples through recommendations of self-identification practices.