Imagination and Formation: Discourse Analysis of Multicultural Education Developments in Taiwan

Abstract

「多元文化」在臺灣的推展與政治、經濟、社會變遷息息相關。當「去威權」成為現代化進步民主的主要概念之一，「多元」很快地變成一種常民語彙。雖然「多元化」與「多元文化」概念不全然相同，言必稱「多元」的結果，兩者間的模糊性似乎搭起「多元文化」論述發展的脈絡鷹架。臺灣多元文化教育論述的複雜性根源於多元文化論述發展的脈絡性、政治性、社會性、經濟性與歷史性等共構因素。本研究從文本論述分析，嘗試理解臺灣教育場域的多元文化論述形構與發展。研究結果發現，隨著本土政經社會脈絡的變遷，因現代化想像開始由臺灣自己的土地上長出「多元」論述，同時再從美國相關理論與經驗取經。臺灣「多元文化教育」始於教育機會均等的現代化想像，最初以族群為主，接著從「族群」中心到以「弱勢」學生為核心概念，以及兩性（性別）教育的置入。在經過二十世紀末二十一世紀初的全球化浪潮，臺灣「多元文化教育」內涵也開始擴充延展，由原住民、兩性、鄉土或母語等面向擴充至新住民、多元性別及東南亞語文。現代化、國際化、民主化與全球化的想像成為臺灣多元文化教育發展過程中一股很重要的推進力量；在社會變遷下，在地人口面貌的改變與性別教育的進展，則為臺灣多元文化教育本土脈絡下擴充與發展的基礎。

The developments of multiculturalism in Taiwan have been highly related to the transitions of politics, economy and society. When the idea of ‘de-authority’ develops into a representative of modernized progressive democracy, ‘plural’ or ‘multicultural’ becomes a kind of popular vocabulary very quickly. Despite the difference, the vague or association between ‘plural’ and ‘multicultural’ in Chinese seems to build up the bridge of discursive formulations of ‘multiculturalism’ in Taiwan. The complexities of discursive formulation in Taiwan originate from the interplay of politics, as well as the social and the economic contexts. This research thus attempts to investigate the developments of multicultural education, the working and formation of competing discourses through discourse analysis. The research finds that influenced by American academia as well as the local imagination of modernization and democratization in correspondence with equal opportunity in education, the terminology of ‘multicultural education’ appeared in the 1990s. However, ‘multicultural education’ in Taiwan develops from the framework of race/ethnicity, and then centres on the ‘disadvantaged students,’ with its implications ranging from the issues of aborigines, ethnicity, and gender to the people with disabilities. For the past decade with the local contextualizations of multicultural education,’ the implication seems to extend from the aborigines to the new immigrants, from sex/gender to LGBTQ education, from local languages to Southeast Asian languages of the new immigrants. The imagination of modernization, internalization, democratization, and globalization play a significant part in moving multicultural education in Taiwan. In a society in transition, the changing demographics well as the developments of gender education offer the basis of extension of multicultural education in Taiwan locally.