MECP 610: Home, Community, Work Analysis

Home-Community-Work Analysis is the second course in the Multicultural Education Certificate program.  This course provides participants with an understanding of the principles and techniques of ethnography.  Participants will engage in an ethnographic analysis of a specific cultural community (or communities), organization, or social phenomenon within their respective education, health, counseling, mass communication, law enforcement, social service, faith, non-profit, arts, military, business and industry sectors.  Participants will develop and propose an ethnographic project that includes a specific community context, demographic population, equity issue, and list of “cultural brokers” who will help them both gain entry into the community of interest and identify the strengths as well as challenges faced by its residents.  Participants will complete the Winona State University Institutional Review Board proposal as a culminating requirement of this course. - MECP 610 Course Description, Professor Nicholas Wysocki, 2022. 

In this video, Dr. Gerben Moerman of the University of Amsterdam introduces the concept of ethnography. As you will see, as a qualitative research method ethnography is directly tied to participant observation, and it has been around for a very long time. 

Multicultural education is a philosophical concept built on the ideals of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity as acknowledged in various documents, such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, constitutions of South Africa and the United States, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. It affirms our need to prepare students for their responsibilities in an interdependent world. It recognizes the role schools can play in developing the attitudes and values necessary for a democratic society. It values cultural differences and affirms the pluralism that students, their communities, and teachers reflect. It challenges all forms of discrimination in schools and society through the promotion of democratic principles of social justice.

Multicultural education is a process that permeates all aspects of school practices, policies and organization as a means to ensure the highest levels of academic achievement for all students. It helps students develop a positive self-concept by providing knowledge about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diverse groups. It prepares all students to work actively toward structural equality in organizations and institutions by providing the knowledge, dispositions, and skills for the redistribution of power and income among diverse groups. Thus, school curriculum must directly address issues of racism, sexism, classism, linguicism, ablism, ageism, heterosexism, religious intolerance, and xenophobia.

Multicultural education advocates the belief that students and their life histories and experiences should be placed at the center of the teaching and learning process and that pedagogy should occur in a context that is familiar to students and that addresses multiple ways of thinking. In addition, teachers and students must critically analyze oppression and power relations in their communities, society and the world.

National Association for Multicultural Education (n.d.), Definitions of Multicultural Education. Retrieved on May 2, 2022, from https://www.nameorg.org/definitions_of_multicultural_e.php 

Nicholas Wysocki - MECP 600 Course Professor

Kayla Olson - Course Librarian, available for consultations through June 16, 2022

Librarians are available through online Chat or Zoom Monday-Thursday. Online access to librarians is found on the bottom right side of library home page. 

This library guide was created in collaboration with Nicholas Wysocki, Kayla Olson, and Kendall Larson for the Winona State University MECP 610 course. It is the second library guide for the MECP sequence.