National Association for Multicultural Education Logo

Advancing and Advocating for Social Justice & Equity

Thanks to EVERYONE who contributed to the Success of

NAME'S 21st Annual International Conference
November 2-5, 2011 in
Chicago, Illinois.

HERE are the details from the 2011 NAME Chicago Conference:

Theme:
Reworking Intersections

                         Reframing Debates
Restoring Hope

Across the United States and around the world, we can hear public debates that narrowly frame the problems and possibilities of education. We are asking only certain questions about the goals of schooling, or debating only certain answers about what and how to teach, or how and why to improve the learning and the healthy development of our next generation. The recent U.S. media blitz about public schooling is but one indication that we need to broaden our perspectives... and that multicultural education can help. But even those of us who are working to improve education can find ourselves stuck in narrow frames. In other words, even for practitioners, researchers, and advocates of multicultural education, a central challenge is to see more complexity and contradiction, to see the bigger picture.

Advancing equity and social justice requires that we address multiple dimensions of diversity that correspond with varying forms of bias and injustice, and none of these exist in isolation. Our identities and oppressions overlap and intersect in such a way that challenging one form of injustice often results in indirectly contributing to other forms of injustice. This happens not only at the micro-level of teaching and counseling, but also at the macro-level of leadership and policy. Education reform will continue to be contradictory and impoverished if it does not connect with the bigger picture historically, globally, and politically, which cannot be done without reworking intersections and reframing debates.

The 21st Annual International NAME Conference will enrich multicultural education research and practice by grounding our work in new perspectives of this bigger picture. Together, teachers from preschool through university, education leaders and counselors, and community activists will examine constructive ways of grappling with intersecting identities and oppressions. We will explore the paradoxes and promises of examining the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, language, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, immigration status, and other dimensions of diversity. Our work will contextualize the current attack on multicultural education within broader movements, institutions, and discourses, and that help us develop concrete strategies and resources for improving our practices, programs, and policies. Expanding on over four decades of research, P-12 educators, as well as higher educators and other activists, will highlight successes with multicultural teaching and learning, and will share cutting-edge theory and research on how to prepare teachers for multicultural education.

As we imagine viable alternatives with creativity and courage, we will continue to remake education into the site and the source of hope for our next generation.
NAME 2011 Conference KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The 2011 International NAME Conference-November 2-6, 2011 - featured several plenary sessions that challenged and inspired multicultural educators to address the conference themes. The following speakers presented at NAME's 2011 Conference in Chicago:

-Plenary Session Frame :
Questioning Common Sense about Multiculturalism & Reframing the Debate:

Bill Ayers

Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar (retired), University of Illinois-Chicago
Editor of Handbook of Social Justice in Education
http://billayers.org

-

Plenary Session Frame:
Intersectionality and Multicultural Education
Patricia J. Williams

James L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia University
Author of Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race
http://madlawprofessor.wordpress.com/

-Plenary Session Frame: Seeing the Bigger Picture of Multicultural and Global Contexts

Vijay Prashad
George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and
Professor of International Studies, Trinity College
Author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
http://internet2.trincoll.edu/facProfiles/Default.aspx?fid=1000767

-Plenary Session Frame: Intersections of Disability, Race, Gender,
Language, and Discipline

Speaker Alfredo Artiles

Professor of Social Transformation, Arizona State University
Editor of English Language Learners with Special Needs:
Identification, Placement, and Instruction
https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/741711
and
Erica Meiners


Professor of Education and Women's Studies, Northeastern Illinois University
Author of Right to be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies
http://www.neiu.edu/~edfn/faculty_meiners.htm

-Plenary Session Frame: Educators Organizing for Social Justice
Speaker:
Karen Lewis, President, Chicago Teachers Union

and
Edwin Mayorga


NYCoRE, New York Collective of Radical Educators