This paper examines how multicultural education is presently dealt with, particularly in the faculties of education in universities in Victoria. The author regards multicultural education as an inevitable outcome of multiculturalism, which in turn should be regarded as an excellent response to so-called globalization. In this context, multicultural education in Australia has been considered a model or front runner in this field by those people who should be concerned with education in Japan, where practicing multicultural education has recently been found vital for Japanese society in the new century. First, this paper, investigates the important debates surrounding the concepts concerning multiculturalism and attempts to reveal some essential problems of conventional liberal multiculturalism, focusing on the Australian situation. The paper also examines the public discourses of multicultural education in Victoria, which gives a context to the research later conducted in Melbourne. The findings of this paper are divided into two sections. The first is curriculum analysis, which was collected from the faculties of education of three universities around Melbourne. Then, interviews were conducted between the author and leading academics of these three universities. The outcomes and the analysis of these interviews are detailed in the second part. The results indicate that each institution seems to be struggling in order to promote or maintain multicultural education in very different ways. Nevertheless, these cases can give us some very insightful guidelines, particularly when current social change is so rapid and diverse not only in Australia, but also in the whole world, including Japan.
