Taiwanese teachers' beliefs about student self-determination: Implications for multicultural education.

Abstract

A critical ethnographic methodology based on constructive epistemological assumptions was used to investigate the perspectives of five Taiwanese teachers from different ethnic/language groups. Interview data were further sustained by an observation and a survey. The findings suggest that: (1) unexamined connections exist between social domination, education, and self-determination, and (2) these conditions influence teachers' abilities and willingness to promote self-determination among themselves and their students. In light of these findings, I recommend a multicultural educational approach that promotes: (1) critical consciousness of the destructive relationships between domination, self-determination, and education, and (2) critical pedagogical action that supports the promotion of multicultural appreciation, negotiated autonomy, and meaningful intragroup and intergroup interaction.

This study explores Taiwanese teachers' perspectives on existing relationships between domination, education, and self-determination, and it considers implications for autonomous identity development in and through education in general. The findings were interpreted through a lens of critical multicultural education, which holds that critical consciousness is essential to the development of autonomously negotiated human identity. Although the study was located in Taiwan, the investigation addressed a widespread historical phenomenon with implications for educators throughout a variety of international social and political settings.