World Heritage Site (WHS) is a meaningful place with outstanding universal values that all humans share (Jokilehto, 2008; Labadi, 2013). It is created by and contributes to individuals’ world views. Therefore, it should provide equal opportunity for everyone to learn from and contribute. However, there remains a gap in heritage education to cater for the need of multicultural individuals, especially since the nature of heritage education is to engage participants in the process of heritage-making (Harrison, 2012; Waterton and Watson, 2013; Smith, 2015).
On the one hand, influence from authorised heritage discourse makes the education content focus on materiality, static past, and an expert perspective but overlooks the intangible meanings, dynamic interaction, and personal feelings (Harrison, 2012; Labadi, 2013). Second, WHS reinforces nationalism in most counties under the political system (Winter, 2015; Ray, 2020). Lastly, the rise of tourism directs heritage education to please the mainstreaming market (Smith, 2015). To sum up, the influence of monumentalism, nationalism, and commercialism limit the development of multicultural education in WHS.
On the other hand, Even though the right to participate in cultural life is one of the fundamental human rights (UNESCO, 2019), and the engagement of the community has gradually gained notice in the last two decades (UNESCO, 2007), there remains to be a gap regarding refugee integration in heritage education. Refugees is one of the most vulnerable multicultural groups (UNHCR, 2007). Compared with others, including immigrants, sojourners, ethnic minorities, and indigenous people, their traumatic experiences, involuntary and unsettled conditions and cultural capital loss make them multiple challenges to participate in and enjoy the cultural events.
Therefore, to achieve the goal to engage refugees in heritage-making process, this research examines the underlying mechanism of heritage education while developing curriculums that cater to refugees’ needs through the lens of world view theory (Kearney, 1984), the dynamic World View Model demonstrates the process of shaping and shifting world view and the interrelationship between individuals and the environment, providing a holistic explanation of the interrelationship between visitors and the sites, which could be the backbone of developing the multicultural education model. Understanding and interpreting world heritage comes from individuals’ sensations and imaginative projection. World view plays a substantial role in engaging cultural events. Individual interpretations yield the meanings of heritages and meaning interpretation results from the dynamic shifting process of world views. Only by fulfilling the needs of meaning-making can heritage education integrate multicultural individuals.
The research employs action research as the approach. It recruits “New Scots (The Scottish Government, 2017)”, who are refugees and asylum seekers living in Scotland, as participants and initiates co- creation workshops as the intervention in The Hunterian, one of the preservation institutions. This study explores a world-view-oriented education model developed via action research at Antonine Wall. It identifies the challenges of WHS education from theoretical and practical perspectives; and designs an alternative education plan as an intervention. Then the workshop takes place in the Hunterian through the participation of New Scots (refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland). The action is evaluated by the degree that participants make meanings of the WHS. It expects to enhance the inclusion of WHS, ensuring the cultural rights of refugees, and pave the way for the future research on multicultural education.