International multicultural education will be the theme for a daylong conference at the UW Friday, Oct. 30, that will also be a book launching event for The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education, edited by the UW's James Banks.

The conference, titled "Education for Diversity in a Global Society," will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the HUB auditorium, and will feature authors whose work appears in the volume. The public is invited to attend the plenary sessions to be held from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The conference's keynote address will be given by Suzanne Romaine, an internationally known linguist and Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, who will discuss language loss and developments in nations around the world.

Other speakers are:

• James A. Banks, Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies in the College of Education and director of the UW Center for Multicultural Education;
• Geneva Gay, professor of curriculum and instruction, UW College of Education;
• Reva Joshee, associate professor and chair, Department of Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
• Kenneth Zeichner, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education, UW College of Education.

In the conference, authors of the Companion will give an overview of the volume, the historical development of multicultural education in their nations and the major debates in the field. They will also make scholarly observations and predictions about the future of international multicultural education.

A major objective of this conference is to facilitate a comparative study of multicultural education across nations and to discuss the implications of education and diversity in other nations for enriching theory, research, and practice in the United States.

The conference is being sponsored by the UW Center for Multicultural Education, the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, the Diversity Research Institute, the Canadian Studies Center and the Center for Curriculum Transformation at the UW.

The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education is the first reference work to provide a comprehensive international description and analysis of multicultural education from many nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Norway, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico. The volume consists of 40 newly commissioned chapters written by a prestigious group of internationally-known scholars.

For more information about the Center for Multicultural Education and its programs, visit online here.