Using Critical Multicultural Education for Teaching and Learning about Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Story of Britain’s Migrant Past

My research applied the concept of critical multiculturalism to examine the effects of power relations in society on which lives are written or unwritten through the contents of the Key Stage 2 (stage of learning for children aged between 7 and 11 years old) National Curriculum (NC) for history in England and Wales. It is a statutory programme of teaching and learning argued as being fundamental for upholding and maintaining the story of Britain‟s past for its recipients via formal education. However, there is an ongoing concern raised by commentators who argue that the NC aims and contents articulate directives for teaching and learning an exclusive and uncontested Anglo-centric master-narrative of the past. Absent from NC are explicit directives or opportunities for teaching and learning about human life experiences broader than the narrow Anglo- centric i.e. stories of mass-migration and settlement on the British Isles i.e Saxons, Vikings, Normans. For example, it is well evidenced that minority-ethnic groups such as Afro-Caribbean people through their mass-migration and settlement in British Isles and most frequently during and beyond the 20th century have significantly enriched and enhanced British life and culture, and by their very presence have shaped the past, present and future of multicultural Britain and British history. Yet, their stories of mass-migration and settlement in the British Isles including the legacies of human interaction learnt by their cross-cultural encounters with majority-ethnic group of people in Britain remain absent from the NC as episodes for teaching and learning about the story of Britain‟s past. This research took an duo-ethnographic approach as a method of life-history writing, to understand how an Afro-Caribbean parent and their British born child viewed their experiences and the experiences of their people through mass- migration and settlement in Britain. The research aimed to understand how those experiences from a minority-ethnic group and multicultural perspective could potentially be used for teaching and learning in schools via the NC about story of Britain‟s past.