Carola Conle

The authors of this book – teachers of foundation courses to pre-service and in-service teachers in Canada, Israel, and the United States – use culturally heterogeneous settings as points of departure for inquiry and cross-cultural encounters of difference, and illuminate how, among people of differing ethnic, religious, socio-economic, political, ideological, and gendered backgrounds, the telling of experiential stories can shift personally and culturally polarized positions. Key in the work documented here is the encouragement of narrative rather than argumentative modes of expression: the instructors found inquiry more likely to stay alive when they were able to access and incorporate both the mutual interest of and the personal tensions between their students. The book illustrates how personal dynamics can subtly move individual inquiry forward, and help alleviate animosity and polarization.

Times of transition can be viewed as times of crisis -- epistemologically, morally and socially. They also can come to be seen as fortuitous junctures where the impossibility of preserving old patterns gives rise to a leap into new, productive configurations. In the teaching and learning situations presented here, it is assumed that such a leap is possible among members of a pluralist society. Diversity must work as an asset rather than a liability for minority as well as mainstream candidates. The curriculum needs to be inquiry-based and should be engaging emotionally and imaginatively, as well as intellectually.