Introduction: The Global Quest for Educational Equity

The number of international migrants living in a country other than their country of birth reached approximately 272 million in 2019, an increase of 51 million since 2010.1 Children make up half of the more than 36.5 million people who are refugees.2 The growth in the number of migrants and refugees worldwide has made it especially challenging for nations to establish state elementary and secondary schools that provide educational equity for diverse groups of students.3 The quests by migrants and other marginalized groups for an education that will prepare them to participate in the nations in which they reside is up against pernicious nationalism that has emerged in many countries, including the United States, England, Hungary, and China. Nationalism has mobilized angry populist groups, stimulated the rise of authoritarianism, targeted migrants and ethnic groups of color, and was among the factors that led to the passage of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom that resulted in it leaving the European Union. 

This issue of Dædalus describes theory, research, policies, and practices that scholars in nations around the world are developing and using to increase educational equity for diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, gender, and religious groups of students in elementary and secondary schools. Equity exists when diverse and marginalized students can achieve equally to mainstream pupils in their societies and nation-states. This means that some groups, such as Caribbean-heritage students in the United Kingdom, Aboriginal students in Australia, Indigenous students in Mexico, and refugee students in Germany, will often need distinctive educational interventions to attain the same achievement levels as mainstream students. The essays in this volume describe how interventions such as providing culturally responsive teaching, infusing diverse cultural content into the curriculum, and providing instruction in students’ home languages can enable students from diverse groups to attain educational equity. 

Because there are few scholars who are experts on both education and diversity in two or more nations and who can therefore make cross-cultural comparisons, this issue of Dædalus uses a case-study approach, which allows for in-depth and multifaced analyses of the complex educational issues that the nations discussed in this volume are experiencing. The nations selected are facing significant challenges educating diverse groups and also have initiated noteworthy reforms. One noteworthy example is China, which Jason Cong Lin discusses in his essay “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in Mainland China & Hong Kong.”4 China has fifty-five official ethnic minority groups, and the term migrant group in mainland China primarily refers to Chinese people who migrate domestically. Migrants from rural regions are denied educational equity when they migrate to cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and cannot access the cities’ high-quality schools, unless they can change their agricultural house registration. Many of these groups are cultural, linguistic, and religious minorities. 

The contributors to this volume have diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including in sociology, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, history, legal studies, and education. They are from myriad nations, have diverse ideological perspectives, represent various ethnic, racial, and gender groups, and are at different stages of their academic careers. 

The massive waves of migrants and refugees arriving in nations around the world are influencing educational equity and making it difficult to actualize. Schools and teachers in most nations do not have the knowledge, resources, inclinations, and structures to meet the academic needs of migrant and refugee students. As Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco point out in their essay “Globalization, Immigrant-Origin Students & the Quest for Educational Equity,” globalization is a major cause of the vast migrations that are taking place within and across nations.5 Environmental disasters, war and terror, and the quest for economic opportunities are among the interrelated and complex factors driving internal and international migrations. 

Immigrant and refugee children are significantly diversifying the nations in which they live. Immigrant-origin children are the fastest-growing student population in the United States. Although immigrant youth are enriching their new nations with their languages and cultural traditions, most experience problems in school because of difficulties learning the language of their new nations, negative attitudes toward their home languages and cultures, and stereotypes and misconceptions that are often perpetuated by politicians, the media, and society writ large. In her essay, Angela M. Banks calls these negative attitudes and perceptions immigrant “threat narratives.”6 To foster the academic achievement of immigrant youth, Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco recommend an “equitable whole child approach” within a transformative setting, in which immigrant youth will have positive relationships with teachers, with each other, and with other students.7 Further, they will also feel valued, and their resiliency, languages, and cultures will be recognized and reinforced. 

In his essay “Migrants & Minorities into Citizens: Education & Membership Regimes Since the Early Modern Period,” Leo Lucassen provides a historical overview of how different nations have provided or denied access to education for immigrant and minority groups over five centuries.8 Lucassen’s historical analysis reveals that through the centuries, most nations have pursued a nationalist policy of assimilation that did not provide opportunities for students from immigrant and minority groups to learn both their home language and the national language, which Suzanne Romaine calls a “first language–based multilingual approach.”9 An extreme example is the experience of the Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group in China who are forced to assimilate linguistically as well as politically, culturally, and religiously. 

Lucassen describes how assimilationist nationalism was manifested in various parts of the world after World War II, including in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. Most of the examples of bilingual education that Lucassen describes were developed by immigrant groups themselves, such as Germans in the United States, who created their own public schools in the 1800s, and Japanese immigrants during the 1920s through the 1930s, who established Japanese schools in Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. These Japanese schools were founded with the support of the national government of Japan. 

Nationalist-assimilationist policies in Japan prevented Koreans from being taught their home language in elementary and high schools. France, because of its French-only policy and centralized Republican ideal, prohibited the use of foreign languages in elementary schools. In the 1950s, nations such as England and the Netherlands initiated bilingual education programs for immigrants from their former colonies. Policymakers assumed that these immigrants would eventually return to their homelands. Some of these programs continued through the 1970s and early 1980s. 

Students acquiring competency in the national language of their new nations is a major challenge for immigrant and refugee groups, and for schools; it is an important reason these students do not experience educational equity. In her essay “Language Equality & Schooling: Global Challenges & Unmet Promises,” Suzanne Romaine maintains that language is a key factor in student academic success and that most languages are excluded from schools and society writ large. Schools will perpetuate inequalities, Romaine claims, if they continue to rely primarily on international languages for instruction rather than use local vernaculars. Romaine argues strongly that first language–based multilingual education is essential to attain educational equity for students who speak nondominant-community­ languages. 

Learning academic subjects in a language they do not understand, asserts Romaine, poses a double burden on students who are being taught in a language they do not know: they must learn a new language as well as unfamiliar content knowledge. She cites research indicating that the more competent they are in their native language, the easier it is for students to learn a second language.10 

In addition to making a compelling case for teaching students in their first language, Romaine details why there is a need to educate girls in nations around the world. Romaine, as well as Erin Murphy-Graham in her essay, argues that the education of girls is one of the best ways to break the poverty cycles that persist across generations.11

An important consequence of globalization and its effects, including climate change and environmental disasters, wars, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, is the growing numbers of refugees settling in nations around the world. In her essay “Refugee Education: Aligning Access, Learning & Opportunity,” Sarah Dryden-Peterson describes the education challenges experienced by refugee students.12 Perhaps contrary to popular beliefs, most refugees live in low- and middle-income nations near their home countries, not in high-income countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Germany. The residency of refugees in these nations tends to be long, from ten to twenty-five years. How­ever, most refugees do not become citizens of those nations, and refugee youths are less likely than other children to go to school or to finish their primary education. 

Dryden-Peterson argues that it is essential for educators to address the problems and needs of refugee youth and to provide them access to education to actualize educational equity in a global context. She details ways in which their access, learning, and opportunities can be aligned. Dryden-Peterson argues that because high-income nations like the United States and Canada are often the genesis of problems such as environmental destruction and economic exploitation that force refugees to flee their native lands, these nations should assume a greater responsibility for assisting refugees—both in their native countries and in the nations in which they settle. 

The United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa are European settler colonial nations.13 They consequently share significant characteristics, including enormous racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity, and the self-image of being an immigrant nation. South Africa is host to more immigrants than any other nation in Africa, most of whom come from neighboring countries. The assimilationist ideology that has dominated in these four and in other Western nations has allowed most white ethnic groups to achieve a substantial degree of cultural and structural assimilation into their societies. However, even when they are highly culturally assimilated, marginalized ethnic and racial groups may still experience significant levels of structural exclusion. The structural exclusion of African Americans led to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, which echoed throughout the world. It also gave rise to the multicultural education movement, which sought to reform schools, colleges, and universities so that students from diverse groups will experience educational equity.14 The pursuit of racial justice in U.S. education soon inspired the development of multicultural education movements in other nations.15 Canada developed a multicultural education policy in 1971; Australia in 1978.

An important tenet of multicultural education in the United States is that teachers should change their instruction to be responsive to the cultural characteristics of students from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and social-class groups. I refer to this cultural adaptation of instruction as equity pedagogy, Geneva Gay calls it culturally responsive pedagogy, and Gloria Ladson-Billings describes it as culturally relevant instruction. Django Paris has mediated this concept and terms it culturally sustaining pedagogy.16 In her essay “How Pedagogy Makes the Difference in U.S. Schools,” Ladson-Billings describes three components of culturally relevant pedagogy: 1) student learning, 2) cultural competency, and 3) sociopolitical consciousness.17 Student learning, she maintains, should be broadly conceptualized and not limited to performance on standardized assessment tests. Students demonstrate literacy and knowledge about diverse cultures when they exemplify cultural competency. Sociopolitical or critical consciousness assists students in finding answers to problems in their daily lives. 

In 1971, Canada became the first nation to adopt a multiculturalism education policy. Özlem Sensoy, in her essay “Overcoming Historical Factors that Block the Quest for Educational Equity in Canadian Schools,” maintains that Canada’s adoption of the policy reflects its aspiration to be an inclusive multicultural nation.18 She details historical and contemporary challenges that Canada faces in making this ideal a reality, including a legacy of colonialism, racialized migrant labor that has been and continues to be integral to the nation’s infrastructure, and a national identity comprising institutionalized notions of gentleness and peacefulness. Sensoy argues that the poignant legacy of the Indian boarding schools and the erasure of Indigenous cultures wrought by their harsh discrimination seriously challenge Canada’s self-conception and aspiration to epitomize multiculturalism. Another historical legacy inconsistent with Canada’s notion of multiculturalism, Sensoy maintains, is the eugenics movement, which continues to influence standardized testing and the ability tracking in schools that disproportionately negatively affects students of color. Sensoy ends her essay by describing progress Canada has made to increase educational equity in its schools and the tasks that remain. 

In their essay “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in Multicultural Australia,” Greg Noble and Megan Watkins provide a comprehensive overview of the historical development and status of multicultural education in Australia.19 They describe the White Australia Policy enacted in 1901 and ended in 1972, which was designed to limit the immigration of people from non-white nations. Migration to Australia has changed substantially within the last three decades. Most of the immigrants to Australia today come from India and China, with significant numbers of refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The implementation of multicultural education varies greatly in Australia because each state controls its own school system. Consequently, as in other nations, diversity and multicultural education are complex and nuanced in Australia. However, Noble and Watkins describe how its complexity is often masked by celebratory, superficial, and stereotypic teaching and programs about diversity in schools. 

Historically, South Africa has had one of the most racially stratified education systems in the world. Crain Soudien, in his essay “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in South Africa,” describes the substantial educational reforms that have taken place in South Africa since it became a democracy in 1994, and how race, class, and gender inequalities have significantly decreased.20 Many factors, however, have reduced the scale of reform in South Africa and have deepened its challenges. On many indices, Soudien points out, South Africa is still “the most unequal country in the world.”21 The rise of the Black South African middle class has increased social-class inequality within the Black population. Many school and educational opportunities now available to middle-class Blacks are not accessible to Blacks who are poor. Many upper-status schools that were formerly white have become Black because of white flight. Soudien concludes that racial stratification has been replaced by class stratification with racial, cultural, and linguistic markers. He states that a two-tiered system exists, “One for the rich and another for the poor. Schools during apartheid were structured fundamentally in racial and ethnic terms. They are now essentially racial and class projects.”22

Historically, most nations in Europe have been characterized by ethnic and religious diversity. However, since 1945, many of the Western and Northern nations in Europe, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands, have experienced immigration from their former colonies and from less wealthy nations in Southern and Eastern Europe. In her essay “The Long Struggle for Educational Equity in Britain: 1944–2023,” Audrey Osler describes how the highly class-stratified and unequal education system was revealed and challenged when migrants of color from Britain’s colonized nations in the Caribbean region arrived in the 1940s and 1950s.23 Migrants from Britain’s former colonies in South Asia also arrived during this period. Racist stereotypes, institutionalized racism, discredited theories of intelligence, and draconian policies often resulted in migrant children being placed into nonacademic tracks in school. In 1971, Bernard Coard, a Black author, published the widely read and influential How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System.24 Osler chronicles policies, legislation, and developments that increased educational equity in Britain since then, but also the challenges that remain, such as ethnic and racial disparities in educational achievement. 

The Turkish migrants who began arriving in Germany after 1961 came under a guest worker program designed to enable Germany to meet its labor needs after World War II. Both the migrants and the German government assumed that the Turkish migrants would return home after their work in Germany ended, but many did not. These early Turkish migrants to Germany were the first wave of what would become a large Turkish community in Germany. In her essay “Migration & the Quest for Educational Equity in Germany,” Viola B. Georgi uses “superdiversity” to describe the rich ethnic diversity in Germany today, a term she borrows from Steven Vertovec.25 Fifteen percent of Germany’s population had a foreign nationality in 2022. Germany is now the world’s number two destination for immigrants, after the United States. However, the diversity of the population of Germany is not reflected in the school curriculum because, as Georgi describes, most teachers and administrators do not incorporate diversity into their curricula or teaching strategies. Migrant groups are marginalized in schools and society writ large. Students from migrant families are disproportionately poor, which negatively affects their experience in German schools. Schools in Germany are highly stratified through a system that groups and segregates students based on their educational attainments at an early age. Students of color and students who are Muslim, Sinti, and Roma are especially victimized by the early and rigid academic tracking in German schools. Georgi describes initiatives to increase educational equity in German schools, as well as the structural discrimination and inequalities that continue. 

The European colonization of Mexico and Nigeria still casts a long shadow on these nations. Class stratification and income inequality are powerful factors that contribute to persistent educational inequality in both Mexico and Nigeria. In his essay “The Quest for Educational Equity in Mexico,” Fernando M. Reimers describes how the Mexican public education system has taken steps to decrease the high levels of poverty and educational inequality in Mexico.26 Mexico’s constitution provides for a compulsory and free basic and secondary education for all youth. However, there is a wide gap between the provision stated in the constitution and education in practice. Upper-class students are three times more likely to finish upper-secondary school than low-income students. Indigenous students finish upper-secondary school at about half the rate of non-Indigenous students. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies indicate that students in Mexico score lower than students in the other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations. However, the PISA scores of Mexican students are comparable to those of students in other Latin American nations such as Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. The ministry of education created “Indigenous schools” to help ameliorate the serious language and other educational problems experienced by Indigenous students who live in rural areas. Reimers contends that a mix of system-wide and targeted efforts implemented at scale for a sufficient period are needed to institutionalize educational equity in Mexico. 

In his essay “Multicultural Education in Nigeria,” Festus E. Obiakor notes that most of the problems in Nigeria originated in British colonial rule and domination, whose goal was to “divide and conquer Nigerians.”27 Although he provides a searing critique of British colonialism in Nigeria, Obiakor maintains that after almost sixty-five years of independence, Nigerians must self-reflect and identify domestic issues that cause its persistent poverty, tension among tribal, class, and religious groups, and severe educational inequality. Obiakor details serious problems in Nigeria that require decisive and immediate action by its political and educational leaders: Nigeria has the largest population of youth in the world who are out of school; it is experiencing a serious brain drain because many talented young people migrate to Western and neighboring African nations; and Nigeria is wrestling with pervasive and intractable regional, tribal, and religious conflicts. The educational and structural exclusion of people with disabilities is also a serious problem in Nigeria. Obiakor argues that because Nigeria is the most populous Black nation in the world, it has the potential to serve as a beacon of hope and possibility, attracting Black people from across the African diaspora to migrate there. Obiakor envisions and describes educational reform that can increase educational equity in Nigeria, which includes transforming education by implementing the major components and dimensions of multicultural education.

Cross-cutting themes in the essays about China and Hong Kong and India include deep educational inequality that is rooted in social-class inequality and the denial of full citizenship rights to migrant, marginalized, and refugee groups. In his essay, Jason Cong Lin describes how mainland China and Hong Kong are similar and different in how they try to actualize educational equality. Although both China and Hong Kong have a public commitment to diversity and multiculturism, each prioritizes Chinese culture, languages, and values. Schools in China are guided by a strong nationalist ideology that promotes its political interests. The push for chauvinistic nationalism has increased since Xi Jinping, who emphasizes unity over diversity, became president in 2012. Because of the elite education system in Hong Kong, private schooling is extensive. Students are sorted into ability groups at an early age, which increases educational inequality, especially for minority students. In both China and Hong Kong, ethnic minorities are frequently stereotyped, and the languages spoken by minorities are often associated with poverty and backwardness in educational materials. In China, when ethnic groups who live in rural areas migrate to cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, they are often denied citizenship status and consequently access to state schools. Cong Lin describes ways in which China and Hong Kong could continue to reform their schools to increase educational equity for marginalized students. 

Reva Joshee, in her essay “Educational Equity in Schools in India: Perils & ­Possibilities,” describes how educational policy in India is defined by the ruling party’s agenda of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.28 This policy has led to a rewriting of history that draws upon Hindu knowledge systems and traditions and glorifies a mythological version of the Hindu past. This focus on Hindu nationalism alienates other major groups in India, such as Muslims, Christians, and Dalits, formerly referred to as untouchables or outcastes. Hindu nationalism is especially inconsistent with the linguistic, religious, and social-class characteristics of India, which is the most diverse nation in the world. Hindu nationalism was fundamental to the government’s National Curriculum Framework of 2000. The next framework, issued in 2023, is rooted in Hindu ideals as well as equity, diversity, and pluralism. It continues the Indianization of the curriculum found in the 2000 framework but affirms the importance of diversity. Joshee regrets that secularism, egalitarianism, and social justice are not envisioned in the 2023 framework, and hopes there is a way to return to a “secular and pluralist India.”29

The final essays in this issue of Dædalus focus in turn on gender equity, the education of students in conflict-affected nations, and constructing effective civic education for all students. The themes across these essays include structural exclusion, disparities in educational attainment, and the resilience and diligence these students possess, which is frequently neither recognized nor encouraged. 

In her essay “From Girls’ Education to Gender-Transformative Education: Lessons from Different Nations,” Erin Murphy-Graham argues compellingly that providing girls access to education is a first step but is not sufficient to actualize gender equity, because gender inequality is deeply embedded in the economic, political, social, and cultural structures of societies and nations.30 Solving the gender gap in education requires deep structural reforms in societies and nations. Significant progress has been made in the last three decades in reducing gender gaps in schooling in nations around the world. More girls are enrolling in secondary schools than ever before. However, major gaps still remain in both primary and secondary schools. While many nations have gender parity in primary schools, sizeable gender gaps exist in primary schools in many low- and middle-income nations located in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Gender gaps affect boys as well as girls, and many boys in nations around the world experience gender inequality. In 130 countries, boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades; they are more likely than girls to lack a secondary education in 73 nations. Girls outnumber and outperform boys in nations in Latin America, North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Consequently, it is essential, Murphy-­Graham argues, to conceptualize gender equity in ways that consider educational equality for both boys and girls. 

Bassel Aker, in his essay “Disrupted Institutional Pathways for Educational Equity in Conflict-Affected Nations,” affirms the promise of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that every child has a right to a free primary education and opportunities for a secondary or vocational education.31 He describes the barriers, crises, and political nuances and complexities that often prevent children who live in conflict-affected nations and regions such as Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Morocco from attaining access to schools and an equitable education. Students in areas embedded in conflicts and crises often experience physical, emotional, and structural violence in schools. Factors that prevent students from attaining an equitable education include early marriage and pregnancy, paid labor, recruitment into armed groups, or lack of access to schools. Strikes by teachers that resulted in long school closures have also negatively affected the education of youths in conflict-affected nations. These strikes have persisted because authoritarian governing agencies have refused to deal effectively with the grievances of teachers and to provide them with adequate and timely salary payments. The settlement of refugees in conflict-affected nations has reduced their ability to provide an equitable education for all students. The arrival of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has resulted in it having the highest numbers of refugees per capita in the world. 

In the essay that closes this volume, “Constructing Effective Civic Education for Noncitizen Students,” Angela M. Banks, using the United States and Malaysia as case studies, explains why it is essential for nations to provide access to schools and a robust and effective civic education for all youth, including unauthorized migrant students.32 Banks compares civic education for unauthorized migrant youth in the United States and Malaysia because they have parallel problems but different policies regarding school access. Banks maintains that unauthorized migrant children need access to schools and citizenship education because many of them are (or will become) long-term residents of the nations in which they live and because they view themselves as integral members of their resident nations. Schooling and civic education will enable them to become more effective and productive members of these nations. Malaysia and the United States, Banks argues, both have “an immigrant labor paradox” because they rely on immigrant labor for economic growth yet view foreign laborers as a political threat to their societies’ immigrant threat narratives, which have contributed to limited access to school for immigrant children.33 Banks describes why schools in Malaysia and the United States should implement a transformative and social action approach to civic education for all students, including unauthorized immigrant youth. 

The essays in this volume explore several themes and concepts related to the quest for educational equity across nations. I will highlight six. Social class and income inequality is one of the most cogent explanations for why many students from marginalized racial, ethnic, and cultural groups do not attain a high-quality education or experience educational equity. Students with low socioeconomic status, such as African Americans in the United States, Indigenous groups in Mexico, Turkish students in Germany, and children of Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom, are often placed in nonacademic tracks at an early age. This practice reinforces and perpetuates stereotypes and negative attitudes that teachers may hold about these students. The immigrant threat narratives that exist in immigrant-receiving nations contribute to the negative experience immigrant students have in school, as Banks as well as Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco describe in their essays. 

Culturally responsive pedagogy has been implemented in schools in some nations, and especially in the United States. This pedagogical approach enables teachers to develop the knowledge and skills to create and implement teaching strategies consistent with the home and community cultures of students from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups. The developing research on culturally responsive pedagogy indicates that it can increase the academic achievement and social development of students who are marginalized in school.34

When culturally responsive teaching is paired with second-language teaching, which uses children’s first language in initial instruction, children who come to school not speaking the national language achieve more. In her essay, Romaine cites research indicating that children can master a second language much more effectively when they first become adept in their home language.35 They can also better master content knowledge if they are not required simultaneously to learn a second language. 

The essays also describe how the strong push for assimilationism and chauvinist nationalism is influencing the education of diverse racial, ethnic, migrant, and refugee groups across nations. In Canada and the United Kingdom, this push for nationalism is called “social cohesion.”36 In the United States, it has resulted in conservative groups inaccurately labeling teaching about race and diversity as the teaching of “critical race theory.”37 In China, schools are required to promote strong nationalist ideology and policies. In Lebanon, which has eighteen official religious groups and numerous political parties, the government requires schools to become a vehicle for social cohesion.38 The rise of nationalism, assimilation, and authoritarianism is threatening democracy in many nations, including in the United States, as indicated by the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that sought to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election. Democracies are fragile and require continual renewal to survive.39

Another theme across this issue of Dædalus is gender inequality and its complicated and nuanced characteristics. Girls in low-income developing nations in Africa and Latin America continue to experience significant inequality. However, the academic achievement of girls often exceeds those of boys in high-income nations such as the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. 

Finally, most of the essays in this issue of Dædalus describe the detrimental and enduring effects of COVID-19 on the academic achievement of students. The pandemic has negatively influenced the education of low-income students more than middle- and upper-class students for many different reasons, including insufficient internet access for low-income students, as well as family obligations and responsibilities that many of them had to take on because their parents were absent during the day. In her essay, Ladson-Billings argues that the effects of COVID-19 provide educators an opportunity to reenvision education and to construct transformative approaches to teaching. What we have learned from COVID-19, she argues, can provide educators with new ways to envision and construct reforms that make schools more democratic and just, especially for marginalized ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups. 

I hope this issue of Dædalus will be used by academics, researchers, administrators, and curriculum leaders to foster discussions about policies and practices used around the world to provide educational equity at the elementary and secondary school levels for students from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, gender, and religious groups. Migrants, refugees, and other marginalized groups of students are voicing and demonstrating the need for an education that enables them to maintain aspects of their cultures and languages while acquiring the knowledge, skills, and values needed to fully participate in the mainstream culture of their nation-state. Educators around the world are searching for policies, practices, and guidance that will enable them to respond effectively and equitably to the educational needs of an increasingly diverse student population. My hope is that this collection offers a place to start.

author’s note 

I am deeply grateful to the scholars who contributed to this issue of Dædalus and to Dr. Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, for providing a grant that supported this project in part, including a meeting of the authors held at the House of the Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from October 29 to November 1, 2023. I thank the authors for presenting drafts of their essays at the meeting and for revising them based on feedback they received from each other, from me, and from the forty-nine scholars who served as external reviewers. I also extend warm thanks to the external reviewers for taking time from their busy schedules to prepare incisive and helpful reviews of the first drafts of the essays. 

I would like to thank Phyllis S. Bendell, editor in chief of Dædalus, for giving this issue strong, indispensable, and visionary support from its conceptualization to its publication. I am also grateful to her colleagues, especially Peter Walton and Alan Johnson, for their support during our authors’ meeting at the Academy, and to Mark Murphy, who assisted with managing the Spencer Foundation grant. I am grateful to Phyllis S. Bendell, Key Bird, and Peter Walton for their incisive and perceptive copyediting of the essays in this special issue of Dædalus. I extend special thanks to Robert Keener, my former doctoral student who is now a public school teacher, for checking the citations and references in the essays. Finally, I am indebted to these colleagues who gave me insightful comments on an early draft of this introduction: Cherry A. McGee Banks, Carlos E. Cortés, Carole L. Hahn, Walter C. Parker, and Christine E. Sleeter.

Endnotes

• 1SOS Children’s Villages, “Refugee & Migrant Crisis” (accessed September 9, 2024).
• 2Sarah Dryden-Peterson, “Refugee Education: Aligning Access, Learning & Opportunity,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 79–95.
• 3I am using the terms “migrant” and “immigrant” interchangeably because of how these terms are used in different nations. European and Australian scholars typically use “migrants” to describe what U.S. scholars call “immigrants.”
• 4Jason Cong Lin, “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in Mainland China & Hong Kong,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 234–251.
• 5Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, “Globalization, Immigrant-Origin Students & the Quest for Educational Equity,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 21–42.
• 6Angela M. Banks, “Constructing Effective Civic Education for Noncitizen Students,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 302–319.
• 7Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, “Globalization, Immigrant-Origin Students & the Quest for Educational Equity,” 31.
• 8Leo Lucassen, “Migrants & Minorities into Citizens: Education & Membership Regimes Since the Early Modern Period,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 43–60.
• 9Suzanne Romaine, “Language Equality & Schooling: Global Challenges & Unmet Prom­ises,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 63.
• 10Ibid.
• 11Erin Murphy-Graham, “From Girls’ Education to Gender-Transformative Education: Lessons from Different Nations,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 267–285.
• 12Dryden-Peterson, “Refugee Education,” 79–95.
• 13Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale University Press, 2023).
• 14James A. Banks, ed., The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (Routledge, 2009).
• 15James A. Banks, “African American Scholarship and the Evolution of Multicultural Education,” Journal of Negro Education 61 (3) (1992): 272–296.
• 16James A. Banks, Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum and Teaching, 6th ed. (Pearson, 2015); Geneva Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3rd ed. (Teachers College Press, 2018); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal 32 (3) (1995): 465–491; and Django Paris, “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Need for Change in Stance, Terminology, and Practice,” Educational Researcher 41 (3) (2012): 93–97.
• 17Gloria Ladson-Billings, “How Pedagogy Makes the Difference in U.S. Schools,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 96–110.
• 18Özlem Sensoy, “Overcoming Historical Factors that Block the Quest for Educational ­Equity in Canadian Schools,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 111–126.
• 19Greg Noble and Megan Watkins, “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in Multi­cultural Australia,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 127–145.
• 20Crain Soudien, “The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in South Africa,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 146–164.
• 21Ibid., 147.
• 22Ibid., 157.
• 23Audrey Osler, “The Long Struggle for Educational Equity in Britain: 1944–2023,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 165–183.
• 24Bernard Coad, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System (New Beacon Books, 1971).
• 25Viola B. Georgi, “Migration & the Quest for Educational Equity in Germany,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 184–205. See also Steven Vertovec, “Super-Diversity and Its Implications,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6) (2007): 1024–1054.
• 26Fernando M. Reimers, “The Quest for Educational Equity in Mexico,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 206–220.
• 27Festus E. Obiakor, “Multicultural Education in Nigeria,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 223.
• 28Reva Joshee, “Educational Equity in Schools in India: Perils & Possibilities,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 252–266.
• 29Ibid., 262.
• 30Murphy-Graham, “From Girls’ Education to Gender-Transformative Education.”
• 31Bassel Akar, “Disrupted Institutional Pathways for Educational Equity in Conflict-­Affected Nations,” Dædalus 153 (4) (Fall 2024): 286–301.
• 32Banks, “Constructing Effective Civic Education for Noncitizen Students.”
• 33Ibid., 306.
• 34Conra D. Gist and Travis J. Bristol, eds., Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (American Educational Research Association, 2022).
• 35Romaine, “Language Equality & Schooling.”
• 36Reva Joshee and Monica Thomas, “Multicultural and Citizenship Education in Canada: Slow Peace as an Alternative to Social Cohesion,” in Citizenship Education and Global Migration: Implications for Theory, Research, and Teaching,” ed. James A. Banks (American Educational Research Association, 2017), 91–106.
• 37Jacey Fortin, “Critical Race Theory: A Brief History,” The New York Times, November 8, 2021; and Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper, eds., The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2024).
• 38Bassel Akar, “Transforming the Civic Curriculum in Lebanon for Learning Active Citizenship,” in Citizenship Education and Global Migration: Implications for Theory, Research, and Teaching,” ed. James A. Banks (American Educational Research Association, 2017), 301–325.
• 39Walter C. Parker, Education for Liberal Democracy: Using Classroom Discussion to Build Knowledge and Voice (Teachers College Press, 2023).