The paradoxes of teaching a multicultural education course online

forming it for asynchronous learning and teaching it over the World Wide Web. Some paradoxes re-sulted as the course changed from face-to-face to online interaction. First, the teachers were more open, frank, expansive, curious, even confessional in their willingness to share and discuss prickly issues such as White privilege, racism, educational inequities, injustice, and xenophobia than teachers have been in the campus version of the course. Second, the interaction patterns online were more equitable and cross-cultural than those in the campus version. However, many teachers ques-tioned whether the course’s reliance on electronic technologies prevented them from “knowing the other. ” Some perceived that they had to physically interact with people face to face to develop rela-tionships across cultures—relationships that some teachers said were prerequisite to their rethink-ing how their own teaching could better support diversity and social justice. In moments of frustration with parochialism and a relatively homogeneous student popula-tion, I have envisioned teaching a class as cul-turally diverse as the world’s teachers. The course is a place where teachers from Africa