ABSTRACT
Cultural pluralism has been viewed by the dominant culture for generations as an impediment, for which the solution was assimilation, exclusion, and annihilation. Studies of schooling in Northern Ireland have examined the benefits and challenges of school-based integration of students from backgrounds that are culturally diverse and woven together in a legacy of conflict. Meadow School administrators and staff reached out to the surrounding neighborhoods to engage various cultural communities. Meadow School and Mountain School offer a striking contrast with respect to school culture. While both were deliberate and consistent in the ways they managed student diversity, their approaches were very different. At Mountain School, students sometimes saw their school’s multiculturalism as a barrier to academics. In Meadow School, students overwhelmingly endorsed the multi-cultural nature of their school. At Meadow School, students tended to see multiculturalism enriching the academic experience, while at Mountain School, it was seen sometimes as an impediment.
