Critical Content for Teacher Education Implications from Cultural Interpretations in Clinical Diagnosis

Abstract

This autoethnographic study explores our experiences as postsecondary researcher-educators with a particular focus on our team teaching experience in a teacher education course at Western Vancouver University, located in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), Canada. We have introduced a case study of a Japanese temporary resident family with a toddler to our teacher candidates of BC. This case study was based on an interdisciplinary analytical lens: educational sociolinguistics and clinical psychology, which examined the case of the child having been diagnosed with mild autism in the BC’s medical system. The authors introduced this multicultural pedagogical content in higher education in order to cultivate critically internationalized analytical lenses of the teacher candidates. Our critical analysis of this clinical case suggested more than what the medical diagnosis had claimed. This contribution aims to 1) problematize the lack of societal awareness and the legitimacy of such scholarly inquiries, and 2) explore what impacts such critical multicultural contents may bring to teacher education in our multilingual and multicultural society.