Grytsenko T. Multiculturalism in the Context of the American Education System: Philosophical Aspect

The dissertation conceptualizes theoretical and practical experience of multicultural education in the USA through an integrated analysis of the characteristics of educational strategies and practices. It proves that humanistic potential of multicultural education is manifested in its focus on the understanding of the Other based on the idea of unity in diversity and diversity in unity. The author analyzes a socio-cultural context of incipience of multiculturalism in education, which includes challenges of globalization, informatization and migration. She substantiates the fundamental importance of such conceptual guidelines as interdisciplinarity, transversality and transculturalism for multicultural education that allow understanding of the socio-educational interaction in a multicultural space. The author determines and analyzes the main stages in the history of the U.S. education policy, reflecting the important social, political and cultural change in the history of American society that led to the formation of multicultural education. The research highlights the changes in American academic discourse that influenced the understanding of multicultural education, which since its conceptualization defined differently throughout the history of its development. The author detects and subjects to critical analysis the major myths about multicultural education. She analyzes practices of multicultural education in the U.S. and reveals their potential for Ukraine. Depth understanding of the philosophical and theoretical sources of multiculturalism is presented in the work.