Multicultural Education Review

ISSN: 2005-615X (Print) 2377-0031 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmer20

Professional judgement and cultural critical

consciousness: the dynamics of teachers’ decision-
making for teaching controversial cultural issues

Hyunhee Cho

To cite this article: Hyunhee Cho (2018) Professional judgement and cultural critical
consciousness: the dynamics of teachers’ decision-making for teaching controversial cultural
issues, Multicultural Education Review, 10:4, 253-273, DOI: 10.1080/2005615X.2018.1532709

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2018.1532709

Published online: 12 Oct 2018.

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MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW
2018, VOL. 10, NO. 4, 253–273
https://doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2018.1532709

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Professional judgement and cultural critical consciousness:

the dynamics of teachers’ decision-making for teaching
controversial cultural issues
Hyunhee Cho
Department of Education, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In a multicultural democratic society, the increasing demographic Received 29 January 2018
diversity within and across nation-states calls attention to peda- Revised 16 July 2018
gogical knowledge and skills needed to engage students in dis- Accepted 27 August 2018
cussing controversial cultural issues (CCIs). Woven in the KEYWORDS
intersection of democratic education and multicultural education, Professional judgement;
this qualitative study sought to unravel the nature and process of controversial cultural issues
teachers’ decision-making for their instruction of CCIs by taking a (CCIs); cultural critical
closer look at the experiences of three South Korean elementary consciousness; democratic
teachers. The findings highlight how the teachers’ conceptions of education; multicultural
certain cultural issues have changed over time with the nation’s education; teacher
education
growing demographic diversity, how the shift in their perspectives
has affected their professional judgement for the instruction of
such issues, and how the teachers’ cultural critical consciousness
impacts their professional judgement.

In a multicultural democratic society, the increasing demographic diversity within and

across nation-states calls attention to student abilities to understand and participate in
controversial cultural issues (CCIs). As Dewey (1933) situated the controversy as the pivot
of reasoned and reflective thinking, CCIs are inherent to multicultural democratic
education. Scholarship in the field has examined diverse instructional methods for the
instruction of CCIs (e.g. Evans, Avery, & Pederson, 1999; Jeon, 2013; Lim, 2015;
MacArthur, Ferretti, & Okolo, 2002); and defined deliberation as one of the most power-
ful tools for the teaching and learning of controversial issues (e.g. Hess, 2002; Parker,
2006), but it has typically taken a methodological perspective. Another important and
even more controversial question is, ‘What qualify as legitimate CCIs that help students
become informed and reflective citizens in a multicultural democratic society?’
With growing recognition that teachers, as gatekeepers, play a pivotal role in determin-
ing the extent to which specific controversial issues are discussed in the actual practice of
teaching and learning, there have been research studies on teachers’ identification of CCIs
(e.g. Chilcoat & Ligon, 2000; Choi & Mo, 2007; Hess, 2002; Ku, 2011; Misco, 2012) and
different perspectives on the controversiality of certain issues (Oh, 2014). These studies

CONTACT Hyunhee Cho hyunhc@uw.edu 145, Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, College of Education Building #328,
Seoul 02841, South Korea
This article was presented at the 2017 Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME) International Conference.
In this version, parts of the sections have been revised.
© 2018 Korean Association for Multicultural Education
254 H. CHO

have found that controversial issues are socially constructed and thereby what constitute
CCIs may vary across time, space, and even individuals. However, little research has
examined why and how an issue is included, excluded, or positioned as secondary by
teachers in their curriculum decision-making. Although Misco (2012), in a series of com-
parative case studies conducted in international settings including the US, Latvia, China,
and South Korea, illuminated factors which narrow teachers’ decision-making regarding
what to present as CCIs, the discussion concentrates on contextual factors (e.g. high-stakes
exam preparation in many countries, Confucian hierarchy and gemeinschaft cultural
orientation in East Asian countries) rather than the dynamics of internal/individual and
external/contextual factors. In this research context, the study sought to unravel the
nature and process of teachers’ decision-making for the instruction of CCIs with focus
on internal and external factors influencing their identification of CCIs.
Theoretically, this study expands upon Hess and McAvoy (2015) framework for
professional judgement, which specifies three interrelated factors influencing teachers’
decision-making for controversial issue instruction: educational aims, evidence, and
contexts. In spite of its usefulness, however, their model is inattentive to the real
concerns that cultural oppression poses to deliberative democracy (Sibbett, 2016).
Consequently, the model is limited in providing a strong explanation of teachers’
decision-making for teaching CCIs. To compensate for this limitation, in this study I
combined the model with the process of self-reflection, which helps better determine
teachers’ cultural critical consciousness (Gay & Kirkland, 2003): (a) how far they can
engage in the critical analysis of cultural diversities and (b) how deeply they can
understand that the cultures of their own and different ethnic groups collectively
contribute to teaching and learning practices. Engaging participating teachers in the
process of self-reflection served as a tool for understanding their cultural critical con-
sciousness, which was linked to further exploration of how the teachers’ cultural critical
consciousness interacts with the three factors (aims, evidence, and contexts) of the
professional judgement framework in the instruction of CCIs.
With careful attention to the context of South Korea (henceforth, Korea), this study
provides practical implications for teacher education programs about what teachers
should learn to teach CCIs in more depth. The potential benefits of this study are not
limited to education practices in Korea: in a larger context, this study committedly
responds to a social accountability problem of mainstream democratic education by
proposing a revised model within which the professional judgement framework (Hess &
McAvoy, 2015) is combined with the idea of cultural critical consciousness and self-
reflection (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).

Controversial Cultural Issue Instruction: Rationales and Challenges

Controversy is a state of existing no right answer for a topic but reasonable disagree-
ment between individuals and groups (Hess, 2009; Misco, 2013). Controversial issues are
unsettled in that they are typically based on value judgement, and thus ‘a significant
number of people argue about those issues without reaching a conclusion’ (Misco, 2013,
p. 402). As Hess (2009) pointed out, issues also differ from events in that they are not
controversial by nature but socially constructed. In this study, I conceptualized CCIs as
controversial issues that are specific to aspects of cultural diversity such as race,
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 255

ethnicity, region, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, and given the
rapidly increasing demographic diversity in Korea the most pressing concern was of
ethnic diversity.
Teaching CCIs is a significant part of school curricula. Most fundamentally, CCIs are
integral to both multicultural education and democratic education: while engaging
these issues, students can understand and more knowledgably negotiate conflicting
perspectives from different groups of people, and their collective experiences contribute
to the vibrancy of democracy (Gay, 2010; Misco, 2012).
Despite its significance, however, dealing with CCIs in classroom instruction is far
more burdensome than teaching controversial public issues in that CCIs involve issues of
oppression and privilege stemming from asymmetrical power relations among the agent
groups and the target group. As Crenshaw (1989) highlighted in her conceptualization
of intersectionality, the multiple aspects of one’s identity – such as race, gender,
ethnicity, religion, region, socioeconomic status (SES), sexual orientation, and disability
– intersect with one another and compound to create her/his unique experiences, and
thus an individual student occupies multiple social groups simultaneously. In other
words, every student who is oppressed in some social group membership is at the
same time privileged in another (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012). In this regard, when
students engage in discussing a CCI in a culturally diverse classroom they face the
reality that one group of students is located in the position of target (oppressed) group,
while the other group of students is located in the position of agent (privileged) group.
Due to this reality, the CCI instruction requires not only teachers’ political and ethnic
sensitivity but also their cultural sensitivity.
Hess and McAvoy (2015) also raised a similar issue: whether or not teachers should
engage students in a discussion of CCIs when there are culturally marginalized students
in the classroom (e.g. discussing same-sex marriage in a classroom in which there are
students with LGBT parents). Having identified this significant problem, however, the
authors did not provide a sufficient alternative. Complementing this scholarship, the
present study therefore sought to understand how Korean elementary teachers deal
with the group dynamics in their instruction of CCIs.

Professional Judgement for Controversial Cultural Issue Instruction

Based on a social and ethical theory prompted by Dewey, 1966, Hess and McAvoy, 2015
suggested a framework for professional judgement which specifies individual and con-
textual factors that are relevant to teachers’ decision-making processes when they
engage students in teaching controversial issues. They considered the teacher’s judge-
ment as his/her response to three questions: (a) How should teachers decide what to
present as a controversial political issue? (b) How should teachers balance the tension
between engaging students in authentic political controversies and creating a classroom
climate that is fair and welcoming to all students? (c) Should teachers withhold or
disclose their own views about the issues they introduce as controversial?
Hess and McAvoy (2015) considered that individual teachers’ responses to these three
questions require professional and even ethical judgement guided by three factors:
aims, evidence, and context. Regarding aims, the authors assert that teachers’ instruc-
tional goals will be prioritized differently according to their conceptions of a good and
256 H. CHO

educated citizen. Context means the relevant features of the classroom, school, and
community, including the grade level of students, the size of the classroom, the culture
of the school and larger communities. Evidence means current research about teaching
and learning, teachers’ knowledge about their students, and their understanding of
academic standards of inquiry. Despite the conceptual distinctions, these three factors
are interrelated and collectively contribute to teachers’ decision-making processes in
controversial issue instruction.
The framework contributes to better understanding the complexity of teachers’
decision-making for instruction, including how and why they have included specific
controversial issues; how they invite students to reflect on controversial issues while
creating a fair and hospitable classroom climate; and how they deal with a tension
between socially constructed teacher identities and their identities outside of their
occupation. Nonetheless, as Sibbett (2016) pointed out, many critical pedagogues pre-
sent ongoing criticism that the liberalist faith embedded in the model renders the
authors inattentive to social accountability. In Burbules and Berk (1999), the model
primarily concerns critical thinking rather than critical pedagogy, overlooking how the
realities of CCI instruction are filtered through power dynamics between majority and
minority groups. Accordingly, the real concerns that cultural oppression poses to delib-
erative democracy is positioned as secondary in the model (Sibbett, 2016).
Paradoxically, although Hess and McAvoy (2015) acknowledge that teachers’ decision-
making about what counts as a legitimate controversial issue is influenced by their socio-
political position, the model rarely explains either how the teachers’ positionality (i.e. what
cultural group they are from) shapes their world view nor how their (un)awareness of
positionality impacts their decisions about whether they regard a particular cultural issue
as controversial (political choice) or normative (moral commitment). To compensate for this
limitation, I combined the model with the process of self-reflection (Gay & Kirkland, 2003),
which helped me examine teachers’ cultural critical consciousness.

Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection

Grounded in the Freirean notion of criticality, cultural critical consciousness has been
theorized mainly in the field of multicultural education as an awareness of larger
cultural, social, economic, and historical processes that are in play in every classroom
(Dantas-Whitney & Waldschmidt, 2009). In the context of teacher education, Gay and
Kirkland (2003) defined cultural critical consciousness as ‘thoroughly analysing and
carefully monitoring both personal beliefs and instructional behaviours about the
value of cultural diversity, and the best ways to teach ethnically different students for
maximum positive effects (p. 182).’
Various definitions of cultural critical consciousness have been discussed in the field.
Reyes and Bishop (2005) defined cultural critical consciousness as acknowledging one’s
own taken-for-granted assumptions and biases and examining his/her teaching practice
within broader sociopolitical and moral perspectives. With more careful attention to
asymmetrical power relations within US society, Villegas and Lucas (2002) elucidated the
idea of cultural critical consciousness as the ability to question one’s beliefs, understand
America’s socially stratified society, and critically examine the social inequalities perpe-
tuated by the myth of meritocracy. In the context of teaching and learning, Lastrapes
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 257

(2011–2012) highlighted that teachers with cultural critical consciousness would better
‘understand the implications of their own cultural identities and belief systems for their
expectations of students from cultural backgrounds different than their own (p. 38).’
Despite the subtle differences among these definitions, a core idea of cultural critical
consciousness is recognizing how forms of structural oppression, such as racism, ethno-
centrism, and androcentrism, interplay with the experiences of individuals (Sensoy &
DiAngelo, 2012). For example, those with cultural critical consciousness are more likely
to understand which cultural group of people is privileged at the expense of other
cultural groups and commit to challenging the given society as well, whereas those
without cultural critical consciousness might blame the victims (the target groups) by
denying the reality that disparities among different cultural groups in academic achieve-
ment are deeply rooted in systemic inequities (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).
Self-reflection is one of the most powerful practices for examining one’s cultural
critical consciousness (Stronge, 2002). In the context of teaching and learning, Gay
and Kirkland (2003) situated self-reflection as engaging teachers in an ongoing recon-
struction of their thoughts and beliefs to thoroughly understand their own cultures and
those of racially and ethnically different groups. In this study, by engaging participating
teachers in the process of self-reflection, I explored how the teachers’ cultural critical
consciousness interacts with the three aforementioned factors (aims, evidence, and
context), and how those interactions inform their professional judgement in the instruc-
tion of CCIs.

Research Method
Aiming for a shared and reflective understanding of the nature and process of CCI
instruction with participating teachers, this study uses narrative inquiry (Connelly &
Clandinin, 2000). I was interested to learn what stories participating teachers would
tell about their thoughts, emotions, and experiences related to the teaching of CCIs,
which I presumed are informed by their social, historical, and cultural context, and what
these stories might teach me about their professional judgement and its possibilities
and limitations.
A total of three participants were chosen using a purposeful sampling strategy
(Patton, 2002). More specifically, the study employed a criteria-based selection approach
(LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) to identify informants who would provide rich details about
teaching CCIs. The three criteria were (a) having knowledge of democratic education; (b)
having experience discussing culturally controversial issues in the classroom; and (c)
having experience teaching ethnically marginalized students.
The selected teachers were typical elementary school teachers in Korea: female,
middle SES, and of Korean ethnicity. Roh, one of the participants, was in her third year
of teaching. She was teaching sixth graders at a school in which about 10% of students
are ethnically marginalized. Shin, in her fifth year of teaching, was teaching fourth
graders at a school in which student demographics are predominantly Korean. Park, in
her 11th year of teaching, was teaching fifth graders at a school in which less than 5% of
students are from ethnically marginalized groups. In terms of SES, the students in all
three schools were typically lower-middle- or middle-class public school students,
residing in urban areas.
258 H. CHO

In this study, data were collected from semi-structured individual interviews (two
times for each participant, 80–90 min for each interview), focus group interview (one
time, 2 h), and self-reflection notes (10–12 pages for each participant). Individual inter-
views focused on understanding the participants’ conceptions of good citizens, citizen-
ship, and democratic education (educational aims); knowledge about their students and
the given curriculum standards (evidence); and their classroom, school, and community
settings (context). The focus group interview was intended to determine the partici-
pants’ conceptions of CCIs and their decision-making for teaching the issues (profes-
sional judgement). The participants were also asked to write a self-reflection which
helped me observe their cultural critical (un)consciousness. The self-reflection process
was guided by several questions that I have enlisted with plain language to help them
think carefully about their socialization processes; basic assumptions, prejudices, and
biases; and day-to-day teaching and learning process (Gay & Kirkland, 2003). Engaging
the participants in self-reflection about the interplay between their socialization process
and day-to-day teaching served as a powerful tool for delving into how their knowledge
is constructed through their cultural values, experiences, and social positions (Lawrence-
Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). Table 1 details the questions provided in the individual inter-
views, focus group interview, and self-reflection.
The overall process of data analysis was guided by the narrative inquiry method
proposed by Connelly and Clandinin (2000). Throughout the research proceedings, I
made efforts to read, write, and rewrite stories within 3D spaces created by interactions
among the elements of continuity, situation, and personal and social interaction, such as
how the participants’ minds and experiences have changed through time, in what
circumstances, and in what interactions with others and themselves.
In the first phase of data analysis, I employed thematic analysis approaches outlined
by Braun and Clarke (2006). First, I transcribed, read, and re-read the collected data,
memoing initial ideas. Second, I coded interesting features of the data to capture
tentative ideas, issues, and themes, and related data to each code. Third, I searched
for themes by collating codes into potential themes. Fourth, the themes were reviewed
and refined to assure their authenticity and credibility. Fifth, in the ongoing process of
refining each of the themes, I generated names and clear definitions, revisiting the
research question that guides this study. Finally, I produced a scholarly report by relating
rich, vivid, and compelling text extracts to the research question and guiding theories
(Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Hess & McAvoy, 2015) of this study. In this scholarly report, the
professional judgement model and cultural critical consciousness were reframed in
response to the participants’ stories.
In the second phase, I collaborated with the participants to (re)construct the scholarly
report. I refined the reframed model by relating it to the participants’ additional and
more elaborated comments on the scholarly report. The ongoing process of data
collection and analysis lasted until both the participants and I agreed upon assertions
and premises embedded in the scholarly report. In a final review of the participants’
experiences, I provided a holistic description of teachers’ professional judgement and
cultural critical consciousness. The research process also involved an important strategy
for validating the overall quality of the findings: I collaborated closely with the partici-
pants by engaging them to check and examine the evolving story and to evaluate if the
story accurately reflects their experiences and intentions.
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 259

Table 1. Questions: individual interview, focus group interview, and self-reflection.

Data Questions
Individual Aims: teachers’ conceptions of a good citizen or an educated person (Hess & McAvoy, 2015)
interview ● How would you define a good citizen?
● What is the most important goal of (elementary) education?
● What is the most important goal of democratic education?
● What is the most important goal of multicultural education?
Evidence: teachers’ knowledge about their students and their understanding of academic stan-
dards of inquiry (Hess & McAvoy, 2015)
● Would you tell me your understanding of psychological (developmental stage: cognitive,
attitudinal, and behavioural) and sociological features of elementary students?
● Would you tell me about your students in terms of their cultural diversity?
● Would you tell me about ethnically marginalized students, if any, in your class?
● Would you tell me about your understanding of what counts as a well-reasoned claim?
Context: the relevant features of the classroom, school, and community, including the grade level
of the student, size of the classroom, and culture of the school and larger communities (Hess
& McAvoy, 2015)
● Would you please describe your. . .
- Classroom: grade level, size, family (ethnicity, SES, etc.)
- School: academic achievement status (average), public/private (religious or non-religious),
student demographics (homogeneous or heterogeneous)
- Community: ethnicity, SES, main industry, etc.
Focus group Professional Judgement (Hess & McAvoy, 2015)
interview ● How do you decide what to present as a controversial cultural issue?
● [prob] Which issues do you perceive as controversial cultural issues (race, ethnicity, region,
gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability)?
● How do you balance the tension between engaging students in authentic cultural contro-
versies and creating a classroom climate that is fair and welcoming to all students?
(authenticity vs. inclusivity)
● [prob] How do you equalize power dynamics among students from culturally different
groups?
● Do you withhold or disclose your view about controversial cultural issues?
Self-reflection Cultural critical consciousness (Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Cho, 2017; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012)
● A critical analysis of socialization process
- Please describe the family, schools (K-12), communities, and nation(s) you belonged to as a
kid and the groups you currently belong to.
- How did your experiences within these groups influence your assumptions, attitudes, and
behavioural styles related to cultural diversity (i.e. race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual
orientation, and disability)? More specifically, how did these experiences influence your
attitude toward ethnic minority groups in South Korea?
● A critical analysis of stereotype, bias, and discrimination
- Do you have any stereotypes and/or biases against particular cultural groups in terms of
race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, and disability? More specifically, do you
have any stereotypes and/or biases against ethnic minority groups in South Korea? (If yes)
Where did those stereotypes and/or biases come from?
- Have you ever discriminated against those from other cultural groups (i.e. on the basis of
race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, and disability)? More specifically, have
you ever discriminated against ethnic minority groups in South Korea? (If yes) Why do you
think you have discriminated against them?
● A critical analysis of oppression and privilege
- Were there (institutional, political, and/or cultural) forms of privilege that you have enjoyed
and/or are currently enjoying while living as a South Korean in South Korea? What do those
privileges look like?
- What kinds of institutional discrimination might ethnic minority groups experience while
living in South Korea?
● A critical analysis of teaching and learning
- How does students’ cultural diversity influence your decisions about what to teach and how
to teach? More specifically, how does the presence of ethnic minority student(s) in the
classroom influence your decisions about what to teach and how to teach?
- How do your assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs about cultural diversity influence your
daily practice of teaching and learning?
- How would your stereotypes and/or biases against particular cultural groups influence your
daily practice of teaching and learning?
- Are you aware of power dynamics between students and teacher in your classroom? Have
you ever made an effort to equalize any imbalanced power relations in the classroom?
- How do you utilize the national curriculum standards, textbooks, and teacher’s guide in the
practice of teaching and learning?
- Do you believe that there is institutional discrimination against ethnic minority students in
the current school system? (If yes) What does it look like?
260 H. CHO

Findings
Regarding the nation’s increasing demographic diversity, three issues emerged from the
participating teachers: (a) Is affirmative action1 for ethnically marginalized groups reversed
discrimination against Koreans? (b) Should education policies and programs for ethnically
marginalized students privilege unity over diversity? (c) Could racial profiling be rationa-
lized for national security? The remainder of this section discusses how the teachers’
cultural critical consciousness contributes to the dynamics of their decision-making for
the instruction of these issues in relation to context, evidence, and educational aims.

Contexts and Cultural Critical Consciousness: The Nature of Three Issues

Transforming from Normative to Controversial
In the early 2000s, Korea began to experience an increasing influx of Southeast Asian
immigrants, foreign labourers, and North Korean defectors, but until 2005 they constituted
under 1.5% of Korean residents (Ministry of Interior and Safety, 2011). At that time, the
teachers were simply excited by the increasing cultural diversity, although they had never
witnessed it in and around their neighbourhoods. Roh recalled that she had enjoyed
watching foreigners and immigrants on TV, feeling that they benefit Korean society by
enriching cultural diversity. Shin also believed that a multicultural society is ‘the future
direction of Korean society,’ recalling, ‘if I could scale how much I like a multicultural society
from 1 to 100, I would have given it 100 back then.’ Similarly, Park expressed her previously
positive attitude towards ethnically marginalized students as follows:

Back in 2005, there was only one Damunwha student2 in my class. . . I had no reason but
hazily thought it is good to have him. I always kept in mind that ‘parents of Damunwha
students might feel difficulty educating their children in Korea, so as a homeroom teacher I
should give them special attention. . .’

With regard to the instruction of three issues, the teachers regarded the issues as
normative: they believed that affirmative action for ethnic minority groups is necessary
rather than exceptional; education policies and programs for ethnic minority students
should privilege diversity over unity while providing these students with opportunities
to learn about their language and culture in school; and racial profiling is not justifiable
in any circumstance.
With the rapidly growing demographic diversity from 2010 to 2015, however, the
number of foreign residents has reached over 2,000,000, consisting of nearly 4.3% of
Korean residents (Ministry of the Interior and Safety, 2017); and the teachers began to
see foreigners and immigrants in the neighbourhoods more frequently and work with
ethnically marginalized groups of people more closely in the schools as well. These
experiences often created an unexpected situation wherein the teachers were mystified
by the fact that culturally diverse groups of people were becoming a significant part of
Korean society. Park and Roh, for example, specified these emotional reactions in the
conversation:

Park: Last year, I began to feel that we were living with great number of Chinese, especially
in Yonhee-dong [where she lives] and Myong-dong. Looking at the increasing foreigners
and Chinese immigrants and tourists, I found myself in a fear of being encroached. I felt like
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 261

they were making inroad into us and I was becoming marginalized. This feeling has never
changed since then. . .

Roh: Yeah. . . I also have a sort of unaccountable fear because I feel we are not ready to have
them. . . It’s natural that they make their own cultural groups, but it feels like I become an
outsider. . . I can make peace between Korean students but I feel lost when some Russian
students bully other Russian students and they do the same thing in their church. I am often
concerned about Korean schools that are too much oriented toward them. I wish it wouldn’t
be my business.

Not only were the teachers’ derivative feelings of dread diachronically deepened, but
they were also presented synchronically. For example, Roh and Park, who taught and
lived in a more ethnically heterogeneous school and community, respectively, were
more strongly gripped by the fear of becoming marginalized than Shin was. These
findings were partly in accordance with those of existing empirical research (Park,
Park, & Kim, 2016): first, that Korean teachers who work with a significant number of
ethnic minority students (more than 30% of students in their classrooms) feel greater
difficulty in the overall practice of teaching, counselling, and building relationships with
ethnic minority students and their parents than those who teach in the classrooms
where students are predominantly Korean, and second, that in ethnically diverse
schools, financial and educational support for ethnic minority students by Korean
teachers and parents is often regarded as reverse discrimination against Korean stu-
dents, thereby leading many of these schools and communities to remain ghettos as an
increasing number of Koreans leave.
The noteworthy thing is that the teachers’ fear led them to perceive the nature of three
issues in a different way: they now consider the three issues controversial rather than
normative, concluding that there is no right answer to the three issues. Park, for example,
described how her perception of the affirmative action issue has changed in this way:

. . .I used to think that [affirmative action] wasn’t reversed discrimination at all. I believed it
was a tool for flattening a starting line. But. . . When I felt that the number of those minority
people are growing so much that they will have great impact on Korean society including
me and my life, I was intimidated by it, thinking [affirmative action] might be regarded as
reversed discrimination. . .

Park’s description reveals that the nature of affirmative action issue in her conception
has changed from normative (moral commitment) to controversial (a political choice),
mediated by the fear of becoming marginalized. The following conversation presents
that the second issue, integrating cultures of ethnic minority groups into the school
curricula, has become a controversial issue in the teachers’ conception.

Park: Looking at [ethnic minority groups’] growth, I thought if I rashly taught cultural
diversity, it would make immature students, who have not fully developed their ethnic
and cultural identity as Korean, confused about who they are. . . It was linked with my
personal concern that ‘we may disappear’ or ‘my identity may collapse’. . .

Shin: Honestly, I support for Benedict’s claim that nations are imagined communities.
However, it is also important for students, especially for elementary students, to build
their national identity as Korean. . .
262 H. CHO

Roh: That’s true. . . Actually, I am not sure if it is meaningful for Korean teachers to teach
Chinese students about Chinese culture. Their parents may be more qualified.

The teachers who used to support cultural identity development are now aware that it
might conflict with developing students’ unified identity as Korean. The transformed nature
of three issues in the teachers’ minds also revealed that an increasing demographic diversity
is not naturally followed by the development of cultural critical consciousness (Blalock,
1960; Craig & Richeson, 2014; Gay, 1994; Zeromskyte & Wagner, 2016).
As the teachers began to regard the nature of three issues as controversial rather
than normative, they believed that they should teach the issues in different ways. It is
noteworthy that what has been changed is not their personal views on the issues but
their sense of the issues’ nature. There has been no change in the teachers’ beliefs that
(a) affirmative action for ethnically marginalized groups is not reverse discrimination
against Koreans, (b) education policies and programs for ethnically marginalized stu-
dents should not privilege unity over diversity, and racial profiling cannot be rationalized
for national security. Although they used to believe that there were right answers to the
issues, however, they now believe that the same issues might be controversial and have
no right answer. The transition to CCIs made the teachers feel difficulty in teaching those
issues in the classroom. As Park pointed out, even though they feel that they ‘should
teach’ and ‘have actually taught’ the issues, they now perceive that it is risky to teach
controversial issues.
As a strategy for dealing with these risky issues, the teachers have decided to engage
the students in deliberating the issues, instead of teaching the issues directly. The
decision provided a safer place where they could tell the students that there is no
right answer to the issues, but they were still experiencing another type of dilemma in
the context of teaching and learning. Shin’s experience is a telling example:

When I discussed controversial cultural issues with which I felt uncomfortable, I used media
such as video-clips so that the students can compare diverse perspectives on the issues.
And I ended up telling them ‘this issue is too complicated to distinguish between right and
wrong, so the best thing we can do is trying to make a careful decision.’ Maybe I wasn’t
ready to engage the students in discussing the issues in depth. I felt I didn’t want to lead
them to my answer. Nor did I want them to remain opposed to my answer. This might be
the reason why I ended the discussion in a hurry.

The episode reveals that she was still in a quandary, struggling with ambivalence: she
felt that she should present the issues as controversial but at the same time she was
worried that the students might adopt the contrary view.
The teachers’ decision-making for the CCI instruction was also affected by student
demographics within the classrooms: their instructional judgement became far more
passive, especially when having ethnic minority students in the classrooms, because
they believed that ‘creating a safe environment for the students’ is more important than
teaching the CCIs. Since there were only one or two ethnic minority students in the
teachers’ classrooms, they worried that the CCI instruction might lead the ethnic
minority student(s) to feel excluded, isolated, or targeted.
The most frequently used strategy for dealing with the dilemma was sharing their
commitment to teaching the CCIs with students and/or the students’ future teachers. In
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 263

discussing the affirmative action issue, for example, Park reduced the emotional burden
by inviting the students to discover or broach the issues by themselves in this way:

I never ask the students like ‘do you guys think the issue is reversed discrimination?’ Instead,
I give them a question such as ‘what do you think might be the problem in this text?’ If the
students weren’t able to find the issue, I wouldn’t teach it.

The episode reveals Park’s judgement that she would not teach the issue as long as the
students cannot recognize it as an issue. She also questioned if only she is responsible
for teaching the issue, stating ‘the students will have further opportunities to learn
about it from their future teachers.’ Another strategy was generalizing the issues within
a broader context so that the ethnic minority students barely recognize that they are
represented in the issues. In discussing racial profiling, for example, the teachers came to
an agreement that they would discuss the US history of racial profiling or the watch list
of Muslims created to supervise potential members of Islamic State, thus presenting the
issue as if it were only a foreign concern.

Aims and Cultural Critical Consciousness: Creating Wiggle Room for Teachers to
Act within and around the Transformed Nature of Issues
Although the teachers’ instructional judgement for teaching the issues has changed in
response to the nation’s increasing demographic diversity, as they have come to
perceive the nature of issues as controversial rather than normative, this process was
also affected by another set of factors: cultural critical consciousness and educational
aims. Discontinuities among the three teachers’ cultural critical consciousness and
educational aims provide strong evidence for this claim.
Park differed from Roh and Shin in that she was able to critically analyse how
socialization works in her life, and to examine how her cultural identity and taken-for-
granted assumptions influence her expectations of ethnically marginalized students and
day-to-day teaching practices. For example, in the self-reflection, she recognized that her
biases against particular groups were closely linked to her social positionality and
cultural socialization process as well. She explained:

It’s almost impossible for me to judge my group’s cultures objectively because I am too engaged
with the group. I am also a teacher, which means I mirror the culture of teacher group. I believe
the teacher community is quite homogeneous and conservative in their thoughts because
teachers learn and are expected to socialize students with values which the nation defines as
desirable. My attitude to cultural diversity is also an outcome of being educated by institutions. I
have consciously or unconsciously learned it while engaging in the institutions.

Her way of examining bias and prejudice reveals that she understands herself in relation
to the groups (e.g. nation, region, and occupation) to which she belongs (Sensoy &
DiAngelo, 2012).
Park’s perception that individuals’ minds and experiences are filtered through the
society’s laws, institutions, and cultures was closely tied to her belief in social account-
ability for equity, whereby she has built a strong commitment to critical and transfor-
mative citizenship education. The following conversation presents how Park’s idea of
educated citizens differed from those of Roh and Shin.
264 H. CHO

Shin: I am kind of Calvinist who believes that good citizens work diligently in a given
situation while keeping their beliefs. Making a balance between what I should do now and
what I want to do is very important because one’s right and freedom shouldn’t invade those
of others. Good citizens never litter and run away.

Park: Umm. . . but it’s a citizen, not an individual. I think a good citizen differs from a good
individual because the concept of citizen is based upon the concept of group. I believe
educated citizens are interested in their groups and organizations, so they keep watching
what they are doing. Also, they should have a critical mind to be aware of social problems
and raise the awareness of others. . . As a public school teacher. . . I’m expected to teach
students about the legitimacy of current law and society. But it’s just starting point. They
also should learn why and how they challenge some legislations which violate justice and
equity.

Roh: I also believe educated citizens should actively participate in social issues, but I am
skeptical of your idea that good citizens critically analyse social injustices. Those critical
analyses may satisfy the research-minded like scholars though.

According to Westheimer and Kahne (2004) typology, Park’s conception of a good

citizen involves justice-oriented citizens, while Shin’s and Roh’s conceptions remained
at personally responsible citizens and participatory citizens, respectively. In Banks (2009)
terms, Park’s perception of citizenship is not limited to minimal or active citizenship but
involves transformative citizenship, which expresses concerns for reconstructing society
with the knowledge and skills needed to be critically aware of and actively engage with
institutions.
Park’s cultural critical consciousness and the beliefs in critical citizenship education
(educational aims) motivated her decision to committedly teach the students that good
citizens should consider affirmative action not as reversed discrimination or a matter of
political choice, but, rather, as the least they can do to support a social security system.
Accordingly, she decided to committedly teach the students that ‘affirmative action is
not reversed discrimination,’ even though she acknowledged that the issue may be
controversial than normative. By prompting the students to consider affirmative action a
moral commitment, Park rejected the idea that students should deliberate about
whether it is reversed discrimination, and commented:

We [teachers] do worry that we might possibly teach the opposite view. At least, I do. . . I
don’t want them to learn that there are people who see affirmative action for ethnic
minorities as reversed discrimination against Korean. Instead, I would lead the students to
see it as a universal welfare policy.

Regardless of whether the issue is controversial or normative, Park was perceiving that
engaging the students to deliberate the affirmative action issue may result in a poten-
tially unwanted situation whereby they learn to regard the policy as reversed
discrimination.
In contrast to Park, however, Shin and Roh presented little cultural critical conscious-
ness: these two teachers believed that their stereotypes and biases have been and will
be constructed solely by their lived experiences. Roh, for example, assured that she
came to have stereotypes about Chinese and US people after her direct experience with
them: as she explained,
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 265

I came to think that Chinese people are very noisy and rude after I met lots of noisy and rude
Chinese tourists in the campus. . . I came to believe that U.S. people are kind and open-minded
from my experience with one U.S. roommate with whom I lived in the dormitory.

Roh made an additional comment that she could be free from any biases against
children from a particular cultural group if she has had no personal relationship with the
group. Shin also denied a social construction of biases and specified:

I believe all the biases are based on my personal experience with them. I try to get out of
these biases but I do have a lot of cases that are big enough, actually already overfull, to
support these biases. I believe I can be free from any bias against students from ethnically
marginalized groups in Korea before I have a close relationship with them.

The conviction presented here indicates that Roh and Shin attribute their stereotypes
about and biases against ethnic Others to their personal interactions and experiences
with particular individuals from the ethnic groups, rather than reflecting on how those
biases are socially and historically constructed by majority-centred institutions, conven-
tions, and media and/or how the social construction of biases plays with individuals’
assumptions and experiences (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012).
In the context of teaching and learning, both Shin and Roh assumed that their
cultural identities and biases have little to no impact on their professional judgement
on what and how they teach. Roh argued, ‘I don’t see my students’ race, ethnicity, or
nationality. I just see them as human. . . so there is no way that my biases influence my
teaching.’ Shin also explained that she ‘treats Damunwha students as if they were not
Damunwha students’ and concluded, ‘although I may have biases against Damunwha
students, they don’t influence my decision on what to teach and how to teach.’ In the
instruction of CCIs, these two teachers decided to introduce the affirmative action issue
as controversial; engage the students in deliberating the issue; and avoid disclosing their
positive view on affirmative actions.
It is noteworthy that Park was still worried that her decision to teach affirmative action
as a normative issue might be regarded as political indoctrination. Nor did Park’s cultural
critical consciousness lead her to consider the nature of the three issues as normative.
Nevertheless, the cultural critical consciousness provided her with a strong rationale for
her commitment to teaching affirmative action in such a way. The cultural critical
consciousness thus created what Erickson (2004) called ‘wiggle room (p. 196)’ for the
teacher to act within and around the transformed nature of three issues, helping her more
actively translate the moral commitment into a teaching practice.

Evidence and Cultural Critical (Un)consciousness: The Mainstream-Centred

Understanding of Students and Curriculum Standards
Despite discontinuities observed in the teachers’ views on their assumptions and biases,
they all denied asymmetrical power relations between Korean mainstream students and
ethnic minority students: they concluded that ethnic minority students’ inability to
actively participate in CCI deliberation is just a matter of ‘language.’ The following
conversation is worth quoting on this point:
266 H. CHO

Park: The only problem is that Damunwha students speak in Korea not as well as Korean
students. They usually get left behind in deliberation not because they are Damunwha
students but because they are not fluent in Korean. If their linguistic ability is equivalent
with those of Korean students, there wouldn’t be unequal power distribution between
them.

Roh: That’s true. . . In many cases, Damunwha students don’t speak, no, can’t speak of their
ideas about the issue because they haven’t understood the issue at all. . . But, those who
speak in Korean as fluently as Korean students usually spend lots of time with Korean
students, which means that they succeed to assimilate themselves to Korean. These stu-
dents don’t even make a big conflict with Korean students, and sometimes their voice is
more powerful than Korean students’ voice because they are hugely popular with Korean
students.

Shin: . . .I guess there is an information gap between Korean students and Damunwha
students, caused by linguistic differences. . . As far as I know, there is no discrimination
against Damunwha students in the current school system. All students, regardless of
nationality and family background, can run for the president of student council, participate
in classroom conversation, and. . .

The quoted conversation presents reductionism whereby the power dynamics

between Korean students and ethnically marginalized students situated in the CCI
deliberation is simplified by the teachers as a matter of linguistic ability. Simply put,
the teachers believed that ethnically marginalized students do not experience inequi-
table situations (e.g. powerlessness, marginalization, and academic failure), as long as
they can speak Korean effectively. As Shin’s statement demonstrates, this reduction-
ism penetrates the teacher’s view on schooling throughout. This belief also led to the
presumption that helping these students develops fluency in Korean is the only
strategy for equalizing the power dynamics among students when engaging them
in CCI deliberations.
The teachers also experienced difficulty critically analysing current curriculum stan-
dards. They acknowledged that the national curriculum and textbooks are not multi-
cultural enough, but they did not regard this as a form of institutional discrimination.
Rather, they took it for granted that the national curriculum and textbooks, especially
those for elementary education, are aimed to develop students’ ethnic and national
identity as Korean.
In a larger context, the reductionism and nationalism embedded in the teachers’
understanding of their students and the current curriculum standards were closely tied
to the fact that they were seldom aware of institutional benefits that are nationally given
to Korean citizen whose ethnicity is Korean. Park was not an exception: although she
was aware of institutional advantages given to Korean citizens, she assumed that these
advantages are given to every Korean citizen regardless of their identification with
particular ethnic and cultural groups. Roh had difficulty seeing herself as privileged,
stating that ‘my colleagues are envious of me because I am good at speaking English. I
guess my English skill is a sort of privilege. . .’ Shin was relatively more conscious of
privilege, as specified in the self-reflection note:

A feeling of relief that I belong to ‘majority’ and my experiences that I had no difficulty
reading and writing a number of document written in Korean indicate that I was privileged.
I understand these with my head but I can’t fully empathize with it, however.
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 267

Despite her awareness of Korean privilege, however, as revealed in the self-reflection

note, her understanding of privilege focused on psychological and linguistic advantages
and did not extend to a holistic awareness of cultural, institutional, and political powers
which have propelled her throughout her life (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012)

Discussion and Implication

With careful attention to the experiences of three teachers, this study illuminates how
teachers’ cultural critical consciousness contributes to the dynamics of their decision-
making for CCI instruction, such as (a) what to present as CCIs; (b) how to engage
students in authentic cultural controversies while creating a welcoming classroom
climate to all students; and (c) whether to withhold or disclose their views about the
issues. Figure 1 presents how these four elements interact.
In regard to the contexts and professional judgement, this study affirms previous
scholarship (e.g. Hess, 2009; Hess & McAvoy, 2015; Misco, 2013) that controversial issues
change over time; and extends further by providing a more elaborate explanation that
the nature of cultural issues may transform from normative to controversial with
increasing demographic diversity, which affects teachers’ decision-making about what
to present as a CCI (see arrow [A]s in Figure 1). By the time Korea entered the line of
newly growing multicultural nations, the participating teachers were merely excited by
the growing diversity. At that point, they considered the three issues as normative
issues: they believed that affirmative action for ethnically marginalized groups should
not be regarded as reversed discrimination against native Koreans; that education
policies and programs should not privilege unity over diversity; and that racial profiling
cannot be rationalized for national security in any circumstances. However, with Korea’s
rapidly increasing demographic diversity, the teachers had more frequent experience
being surrounded by non-Koreans, which led them to fear becoming marginalized.
Along with this fear, the teachers also witnessed conservative parents and colleagues
with an opposing view on these issues, which motivated them to redefine the nature of
the three issues as controversial rather than moral commitment.
Korea is now on track to become an ethnically diverse country due to an increasing
influx of immigrants, foreign labourers, and North Korean defectors, which implies that
more teachers will experience similar fear. In the United States, Canada, and many
European countries, it has been seen that when the majority group is on the verge of

Eviden ce
[C]
Cultural Critical Consciousness
[B]

Educational Aims [C] [B] Contexts

[B]
[A]

Professional Judgment

Figure 1. The dynamics of teachers’ professional judgement for CCI instruction.

268 H. CHO

becoming outnumbered by growing ethnic populations, those traditionally defined as

the majority become far more averse to cultural diversity, even those who once
espoused the concept (Drew, Sleek, & Mikulak, 2016). According to power threat theory,
the majority responds to the fear by tightening state control (i.e. intensifying immigra-
tion laws and regulations) and creating essentialist stereotypes of other ethnic groups
(Blalock, 1960; Craig & Richeson, 2014; Zeromskyte & Wagner, 2016).
By synthesizing knowledge from the power threat theory, the professional judgement
framework, and this study’s findings, it is predicted that more teachers in Korea will
subsequently see the issues not as normative but as controversial, and hence feel more
uncomfortable discussing them in the classroom. Accordingly, fewer teachers will
include the issues in their instruction, and even when they do discuss the issues, they
will likely drive students to a conclusion that there is no one answer and avoid the
disclosure of their personal views on the issues. The findings also reveal that the
teachers were likely to avoid the issues or discuss them at a superficial level, and/or
delegate the responsibility for teaching the issues to the students’ future teachers,
especially when they had students from culturally under-represented groups.
This study also provides a new insight that teachers’ cultural critical consciousness
informs their conceptions of good and educated citizens (aim) and has a significant
impact on their professional judgement with respect to what they present as CCIs in the
classroom (see arrow [B]s in Figure 1). As Park’s case reveals, the teacher’s cultural critical
consciousness, particularly the ability to critically analyse the socialization process,
prompted her to believe that teachers should help students to become critical
(Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) and transformative (Banks, 2009) citizens with moral
commitment for promoting social justice; she has thereby decided to present the
affirmative action issue as a normative issue in the classroom.
Finally, this study elucidates the relationship of evidence and cultural critical (un)con-
sciousness, and its impact on teachers’ professional judgement for CCI instruction. In other
words, it indicates that a high level of cultural critical consciousness would help teachers
think more critically and inquisitively about the current mainstream school curricula, and
make more careful decisions about what to present as CCIs and how to equalize asymme-
trical power relations between mainstream students and culturally marginalized students
during CCI instruction (see arrow [C]s in Figure 1). In spite of the subtle differences, all three
teachers were unaware of Koreaness embedded in the current school system, and it misled
them to (a) reduce the power dynamics among ethnically different groups of students to a
matter of linguistic ability and (b) take the mainstream-oriented curriculum standards for
granted. The teachers who were unaware of Korean privilege have come to a simple
conclusion in the instruction of CCI, the power dynamics would be non-existent if they
helped ethnic minority students become fluent in speaking in Korean, and that it is
unnecessary to reform the current curriculum standards (Cho & Choi, 2016; Nam, 2008;
Um & Jung, 2010). These findings extend the guiding theories (Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Hess &
McAvoy, 2015), indicating that teachers’ unawareness of power dynamics may result in a
limited understanding of their students and curriculum standards, and may prevent them
from making a better decision for CCI instruction.
Based on the findings, this study suggests that Hess and McAvoy (2015) professional
judgement framework would possibly overcome its neglect of the social accountability
problem by integrating the concept of cultural critical consciousness into the framework.
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 269

Many liberalists may be pleased with the transition of the issues’ nature from normative
to controversial as they suggest that a primary goal of education be developing the
rational agency of individual students, whereas ending political, economic, and cultural
disparities be regarded as a subsidiary goal (Johnson, 2016). In contrast, critical peda-
gogues may express their concerns about a situation that equity-oriented issues are
treated as controversial issues rather than moral commitments. Although it is important
to delve into an ongoing criticism from each of the rivals – the liberalist approach is
inattentive to social accountability, whereas the emancipatory approach may result in
political indoctrination – this study walked on the cross-platforms by taking an integra-
tive approach to the professional judgement model (Hess & McAvoy, 2015) and the
concept of cultural critical consciousness (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).
Accordingly, this study provides an implication for teacher education programs,
particularly those aiming to make social justice issues more central, that teachers
would need to be more actively engaged in a guided self-reflection so that they could
develop cultural critical consciousness which helps them have an extended view on their
judgement and make an enhanced judgement for the instruction of CCI. A promising
strategy for engaging teachers in a deeper level of self-reflection would be providing
them with rich and frequent opportunities to critically analyse how they have been
socialized by the mainstream school system; how that socialization has influenced their
assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs associated with cultural diversity; and how their daily
teaching practices are filtered through those assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs (Gay &
Kirkland, 2003; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012). For those who have difficulty analysing how
stereotypes, biases, and/or prejudices are socially and historically constructed, teacher
educators would need to provide stepping-stone questions which lead the teachers to
look back on what they have unconsciously learned from their families, schools, com-
munities, and media about cultural Others, and to consider whose voices were heard
and whose voices were silenced (Cho, 2017). This study also suggested a revised
professional judgement framework which illuminates the dynamics of teachers’ deci-
sion-making for their instruction of CCIs. By engaging teachers in reflecting on their
experiences of teaching CCIs in relation to this framework, teacher educators would help
them become more conscious about their decision-making for the CCI instruction.
Teachers with a high degree of cultural critical consciousness will be more likely to
design the CCI instruction in a way that equalizes an asymmetrical power relation
among culturally marginalized students. These teachers would also more committedly
lead the students to a justice-oriented decision on the issues.

Concluding Remarks
This study sought to provide an enhanced explanation of teachers’ professional judge-
ment for the instruction of CCIs. Throughout our process of reconstructing stories, the
three teachers were courageous enough to share their thoughts, emotions, and experi-
ences even when they were unsure of where the uncomfortable feelings were coming
from. Grounded in these teachers’ genuine voices, this study provides useful knowledge
for constructing a synthesis of international perspectives on the promise and challenges
of teaching CCIs, and will contribute to ongoing conversations and scholarship regard-
ing the practice of multicultural democratic education.
270 H. CHO

Notes
1. The term affirmative action, first employed in the United States in Executive Order No.
10925 in 1961, refers to policy aiming to elevate the social status of those who have
historically suffered from discrimination and oppression by extending their access to
education and their rights in employment and pay (Oxford Dictionary, Retrieved 13
February 2014). In Korea, this policy is known as the Anti-Discrimination Act [Cha-byul-
guem-ji-beop], which was first enacted by the 17th National Assembly. In this study,
‘affirmative action for ethnic minority groups’ refers to policies for providing ethnically
marginalized groups with additional resources in education and employment, such as
special college admission openings for students from ethnic minority groups.
2. Although the term Damunwha, ‘a compound of a prefix Da- (multi-) and munwha
(culture),’ literally translates into multiculturalism (Kim & Kim, 2015), the working defini-
tion of Damunwha in South Korea is equivalent with those ethically and culturally
different from South Koreans (Ministry of Education and Human Resources
Development, 2006, p. 1). The term ‘Damunwha students’ employed by the participating
teachers refers to students from international families (mostly born to Korean men and
Southeast Asian women) and foreign worker families, as these students consist an over-
whelming majority of students from ethnically and culturally under-represented groups
of people in South Korea.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I would
like to give special thanks to Dr. Geneva Gay and Dr. Walter Parker for their thoughtful comments
on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial,
or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributor
Hyunhee Cho is research professor of Education at Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. She
specialized in multicultural education in the doctoral program of curriculum and instruction at the
University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests lie in the intersection of curriculum
studies, social studies, and multicultural education woven into a framework of social justice.

ORCID
Hyunhee Cho http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4517-3111
 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION REVIEW 271

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