University of Gothenburg Department of Education Åsa Möller, PhD Student Social Bias in the Classroom Multicultural education research looks into issues regarding social diversity such as gender, class and ethnicity. These aspects of social identity are connected to the study of social justice and relationships of power that exist in schools. Research in multicultural education is needed to minimize the gap between the dominant social order and the needs and interests of minority groups. The dominant social group takes certain modes of teaching for granted, as a normal and natural part of everyday life. These everyday series of social interactions and relationships can be viewed as instructional methods that benefit and promote interests of the dominant social order while impeding or obstructing the needs and interests of marginalized groups. The cultural reproduction of the hegemony and the conflict with needs and interests of minorities is the starting point for this study. This is an on-going study and ethnographic account of learning processes in a multicultural school in a low-income suburb. This paper will focus on the following question: how is teaching related to social and cultural bias in the content and instruction when teaching? The purpose of this study is to investigate how social bias and inequalities are conveyed and enacted through teachers’ talk in classroom discourse and praxis. I will attempt to show how teaching is primarily an act of telling and how this effects student’s learning. `Teaching by telling´, I will argue, is indicative of low student expectations and academic performance, high classification and framing of subjects and subject matter (Bernstein, 2000), and an emphasis on vocabulary and language acquisition. `Teaching by telling´ focuses on whole group learning, competitive and individual performance, and teacher-mandated participation. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC.

Critical ethnography

´Teaching by telling´ is the dominant mode of communication used by teachers in classroom discourse in a multicultural school. `Teaching by telling´ is indicative of low student expectations and academic performance and an assimilationist approach to culture and education.