Multiculturism
Multicultural education is an idea, an approach to school reform, and a movement for equity, social justice, and democracy. Specialists within multicultural education emphasize different components and cultural groups. However, a significant degree of consensus exists within the field regarding its major principles, concepts, and goals. A major goal of multicultural education is to restructure schools so that all students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function in an ethnically and racially diverse nation and world. Multicultural education seeks to ensure educational equity for members of diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic groups, and to facilitate their participation as critical and reflective citizens in an inclusive national civic culture.
Multicultural education tries to provide students with educational experiences that enable them to maintain commitments to their community cultures as well as acquire the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital needed to function in the national civic culture and community. Multicultural theorists view academic knowledge and skills as necessary but not sufficient for functioning in a diverse nation and world. They regard skills in democratic living and the ability to function effectively within and across diverse groups as essential goals of schooling.
Multicultural education is highly consistent with the ideals embodied in the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. It seeks to extend the rights and privileges granted to the nation's founding elites–the ideals of freedom, equality, justice, and democracy–to all social, cultural and language groups. Multicultural education addresses deep and persistent social divisions across various groups, and seeks to create an inclusive and transformed mainstream society. Multicultural educators view cultural difference as a national strength and resource rather than as a problem to be overcome through assimilation.
History
Multicultural education emerged during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It grew out of the demands of ethnic groups for inclusion in the curricula of schools, colleges, and universities. Although multicultural education is an outgrowth of the ethnic studies movement of the 1960s, it has deep historical roots in the African-American ethnic studies movement that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Initiated by scholars such as George Washington Williams, Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. DuBois, and Charles H. Wesley, the primary goal of the early ethnic studies movement was to challenge the negative images and stereotypes of African Americans prevalent in mainstream scholarship by creating accurate descriptions of the life, history, and contributions of African Americans. These scholars had a personal, professional, and enduring commitment to the uplift of African Americans. They believed that creating positive self-images of African Americans was essential to their collective identity and liberation. They also believed that stereotypes and negative beliefs about African Americans could be effectively challenged by objective historical research that was also capable of transforming mainstream academic knowledge.
Carter G. Woodson–one of the leading scholars of the early ethnic studies movement–helped found the Association for the Study of Negro (now Afro-American) Life and History in 1915. The association played a key role in the production and dissemination of African-American historical scholarship. In addition to writing numerous scholarly works and editing the association's publications, Woodson initiated Negro History Week (now Black History Month) to focus attention in the nation's schools on the life and history of African Americans.
In 1922 Woodson published a college textbook, The Negro in Our History, which was used in many African-American schools and colleges. In response to public demand for classroom materials, he wrote an elementary textbook, Negro Makers of History, followed by The Story of the Negro Retold for senior high schools. Woodson also wrote, edited, and published African-American children's literature. In 1937 he began publication of The Negro History Bulletin, a monthly magazine for teachers and students featuring stories about exemplary teachers and curriculum projects, historical narratives, and biographical sketches.
When the ethnic studies movement was revived in the 1960s, African Americans and other marginalized ethnic groups refused assimilationist demands to renounce their cultural identity and heritage. They insisted that their lives and histories be included in the curriculum of schools, colleges, and universities. In challenging the dominant paradigms and concepts taught in the schools and colleges, multicultural educators sought to transform the Eurocentric perspective and incorporate multiple perspectives into the curriculum.
By the late 1980s multicultural theorists recognized that ethnic studies was insufficient to bring about school reforms capable of responding to the academic needs of students of color. They consequently shifted their focus from the mere inclusion of ethnic content to deep structural changes in schools. During these years, multicultural educators also expanded from a primary focus on ethnic groups of color to other group categories, such as social class, language and gender. Although conceptually distinct, the key social categories of multicultural education–race, class, gender, and culture–are interrelated. Multicultural theorists are concerned with how these social variables interact in identity formation, and about the consequences of multiple and contextual identities for teaching and learning.
During the 1970s a number of professional organizations–such as the National Council for Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education–issued policy statements and publications that encouraged the integration of ethnic content into the school and teacher education curriculum. In 1973 the title of the forty-third yearbook of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) was Teaching Ethnic Studies: Concepts and Strategies. NCSS published Curriculum Guidelines for Multiethnic Education in 1976, which was revised and reissued in 1992 as Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education. A turning point in the development of multicultural education occurred in 1977 when the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) issued standards for the accreditation of teacher education. The standards required all NCATE member institutions (about 80% of the teacher education programs in the United States) to implement components, courses, and programs in multicultural education.
Over the past two decades more ethnic content has appeared in the textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools in the United States. An increasing number of teachers are using anthologies in literature programs that include selections written by women and authors of color. In addition, the market for books dealing with multicultural education has gown substantially, and some of the nation's leading colleges and universities, including the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, have either revised their core curriculum to include ethnic content or have established ethnic studies course requirements.
The Dimensions of Multicultural Education
James A. Banks's Dimensions of Multicultural Education is used widely by school districts to conceptualize and develop courses, programs, and projects in multicultural education. The five dimensions are:(1) content integration; (2) the knowledge construction process; (3) prejudice reduction; (4) an equity pedagogy; and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure. Although each dimension is conceptually distinct, in practice they overlap and are interrelated.
Content integration. Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area or discipline. The infusion of ethnic and cultural content into a subject area is logical and not contrived when this dimension is implemented properly.
More opportunities exist for the integration of ethnic and cultural content in some subject areas than in others. There are frequent and ample opportunities for teachers to use ethnic and cultural content to illustrate concepts, themes, and principles in the social studies, the language arts, and in music. Opportunities also exist to integrate multicultural content into math and science. However, they are less ample than they are in social studies and the language arts. Content integration is frequently mistaken by school practitioners as comprising the whole of multicultural education, and is thus viewed as irrelevant to instruction in disciplines such as math and science.
The knowledge construction process. The knowledge construction process describes teaching activities that help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of references, perspectives, and biases of researchers and textbook writers influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed.
Multicultural teaching involves not only infusing ethnic content into the school curriculum, but changing the structure and organization of school knowledge. It also includes changing the ways in which teachers and students view and interact with knowledge, helping them to become knowledge producers, not merely the consumers of knowledge produced by others.
The knowledge construction process helps teachers and students to understand why the cultural identities and social positions of researchers need to be taken into account when assessing the validity of knowledge claims. Multicultural theories assert that the values, personal histories, attitudes, and beliefs of researchers cannot be separated from the knowledge they create. They consequently reject positivist claims of disinterested and distancing knowledge production. They also reject the possibility of creating knowledge that is not influenced by the cultural assumptions and social position of the knowledge producer.
In multicultural teaching and learning, paradigms, themes, and concepts that exclude or distort the life experiences, histories, and contributions of marginalized groups are challenged. Multicultural pedagogy seeks to reconceptualize and expand the Western canon, to make it more representative and inclusive of the nation's diversity, and to reshape the frames of references, perspectives, and concepts that make up school knowledge.
Prejudice reduction. The prejudice reduction dimension of multicultural education seeks to help students develop positive and democratic racial attitudes. It also helps students to understand how ethnic identity is influenced by the context of schooling and the attitudes and beliefs of dominant social groups. The theory developed by Gordon Allport (1954) has significantly influenced research and theory in intergroup relations. He hypothesized that prejudice can be reduced by interracial contact if the contact situations have these characteristics: (1) they are cooperative rather than competitive; (2) the individuals experience equal status; and (3) the contact is sanctioned by authorities such as parents, principals and teachers.
An equity pedagogy. An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and language groups. This includes using a variety of teaching styles and approaches that are consistent with the range of learning styles within various cultural and ethnic groups, such as being demanding but highly personalized when working with American Indian and Native Alaskan students. It also includes using cooperative learning techniques in math and science instruction to enhance the academic achievement of students of color.
An equity pedagogy rejects the cultural deprivation paradigm that was developed in the early 1960s. This paradigm posited that the socialization experiences in the home and community of low-income students prevented them from attaining the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for academic success. Because the cultural practices of low-income students were viewed as inadequate and inferior, cultural deprivation theorists focused on changing student behavior so that it aligned more closely with mainstream school culture. An equity pedagogy assumes that students from diverse cultures and groups come to school with many strengths.
Multicultural theorists describe how cultural identity, communicative styles, and the social expectations of students from marginalized ethnic and racial groups often conflict with the values, beliefs, and cultural assumptions of teachers. The middle-class mainstream culture of the schools creates a cultural dissonance and disconnect that privileges students who have internalized the school's cultural codes and communication styles.
Teachers practice culturally responsive teaching when an equity pedagogy is implemented. They use instructional materials and practices that incorporate important aspects of the family and community culture of their students. Culturally responsive teachers also use the "cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them" (Gay, p. 29).
An empowering school culture. This dimension involves restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and language groups experience equality. Members of the school staff examine and change the culture and social structure of the school. Grouping and labeling practices, sports participation, gaps in achievement among groups, different rates of enrollment in gifted and special education programs among groups, and the interaction of the staff and students across ethnic and racial lines are important variables that are examined and reformed.
An empowering school structure requires the creation of qualitatively different relationships among various groups within schools. Relationships are based on mutual and reciprocal respect for cultural differences that are reflected in school-wide goals, norms, and cultural practices. An empowering school structure facilitates the practice of multicultural education by providing teachers with opportunities for collective planning and instruction, and by creating democratic structures that give teachers, parents, and school staff shared responsibility for school governance.
James A. Banks
Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process (Banks, 1997). As an idea, multicultural education seeks to create equal educational opportunities for all students, including those from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. Multicultural education tries to create equal educational opportunities for all students by changing the total school environment so that it will reflect the diverse cultures and groups within a society and within the nation's classrooms. Multicultural education is a process because its goals are ideals that teachers and administrators should constantly strive to achieve.
The Dimensions of Multicultural Education
I have identified five dimensions of multicultural education. They are: content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture and social structure (Banks, 1995a). Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, generalizations, and issues within their subject areas or disciplines. The knowledge construction process describes how teachers help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the biases, frames of reference, and perspectives within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed within it (Banks, 1996). Students also learn how to build knowledge themselves in this dimension.
Prejudice reduction describes lessons and activities used by teachers to help students to develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Research indicates that children come to school with many negative attitudes toward and misconceptions about different racial and ethnic groups (Phinney & Rotheram, 1987). Research also indicates that lessons, units, and teaching materials that include content about different racial and ethnic groups can help students to develop more positive intergroup attitudes if certain conditions exist in the teaching situation (Banks, 1995b). These conditions include positive images of the ethnic groups in the materials and the use of multiethnic materials in a consistent and sequential way.
An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social-class groups (Banks & Banks, 1995). Research indicates that the academic achievement of African American and Mexican American students is increased when cooperative teaching activities and strategies, rather than competitive ones, are used in instruction (Aronson & Gonzalez, 1988). Cooperative learning activities also help all students, including middle-class White students, to develop more positive racial attitudes. However, to attain these positive outcomes, cooperative learning activities must have several important characteristics (Allport, 1954). The students from different racial and ethnic groups must feel that they have equal status in intergroup interactions, teachers and administrators must value and support cross-racial interactions, and students from different racial groups must work together in teams to pursue common goals.
An empowering school culture and social structure is created when the culture and organization of the school are transformed in ways that enable students from diverse racial, ethnic, and gender groups to experience equality and equal status. The implementation of this dimension requires that the total environment of the school be reformed, including the attitudes, beliefs, and action of teachers and administrators, the curriculum and course of study, assessment and testing procedures, and the styles and strategies used by teachers.
To implement multicultural education effectively, teachers and administrators must attend to each of the five dimensions of multicultural education described above. They should use content from diverse groups when teaching concepts and skills, help students to understand how knowledge in the various disciplines is constructed, help students to develop positive intergroup attitudes and behaviors, and modify their teaching strategies so that students from different racial, cultural, and social-class groups will experience equal educational opportunities. The total environment and culture of the school must also be transformed so that students from diverse ethnic and cultural groups will experience equal status in the culture and life of the school.
Although the five dimensions of multicultural education are highly interrelated, each requires deliberate attention and focus. The reminder of this article focuses on two of the five dimensions described above: content integration and the knowledge construction process. Readers can see Banks (1995a) for more information about the other dimensions.
Content Integration
Teachers use several different approaches to integrate content about racial, ethnic, and cultural groups into the curriculum. One of the most popular is the Contributions Approach. When this approach is used, teachers insert isolated facts about ethnic and cultural group heroes and heroines into the curriculum without changing the structure of their lesson plans and units. Often when this approach is used, lessons about ethnic minorities are limited primarily to ethnic holidays and celebrations, such as Martin Luther King's Birthday and Cinco de Mayo. The major problem with this approach is that it reinforces the notion, already held by many students, that ethnic minorities are not integral parts of mainstream U.S. society and that African American history and Mexican American history are separate and apart from U.S. history.
The Additive Approach is also frequently used by teachers to integrate content about ethnic and cultural groups into the school curriculum. In this approach, the organization and structure of the curriculum remains unchanged. Special units on ethnic and cultural groups are added to the curriculum, such as units on African Americans in the West, Indian Removal, and the internment of the Japanese Americans. While an improvement over the Contributions Approach, the Additive Approach is problematic because ethnic and cultural groups remain on the margin of the mainstream curriculum.
Knowledge Construction and Transformation
The Transformation Approach brings content about ethnic and cultural groups from the margin to the center of the curriculum. It helps students to understand how knowledge is constructed and how it reflects the experiences, values, and perspectives of its creators. In this approach, the structure, assumptions, and perspectives of the curriculum are changed so that the concepts, events, and issues taught are viewed from the perspectives and experiences of a range of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. The center of the curriculum no longer focuses on mainstream and dominant groups, but on an event, issue, or concept that is viewed from many different perspectives and points of view. This is done while at the same time helping students to understand the nation's common heritage and traditions. Teachers should help students to understand that while they live in a diverse nation, all citizens of a nation-state share many cultural traditions, values, and political ideals that cement the nation. Multicultural education seeks to actualize the idea of e pluribus unum, i.e. to create a society that recognizes and respects the cultures of its diverse peoples united within a framework of democratic values that are shared by all.
Personal, Social, and Civic Action
An important goal of multicultural education is to help students acquire the knowledge and commitments needed to make reflective decisions and to take personal, social, and civic action to promote democracy and democratic living. Opportunities for action help students to develop a sense of personal and civic efficacy, faith in their ability to make changes in the institutions in which they live, and situations to apply the knowledge they have learned (Banks, with Clegg, 1990).
Action activities and projects should be tuned to the cognitive and moral developmental levels of students. Practicality and feasibility should also be important considerations. Students in the primary grades can take action by making a commitment to stop laughing at ethnic jokes that sting; students in the early and middle grades can act by reading books about other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Upper-elementary grade students can make friends with students who are members of other racial and ethnic groups and participate in cross-racial activities and projects with students who attend a different school in the city. Upper-grade students can also participate in projects that provide help and comfort to people in the community with special needs. They can also participate in local political activities such as school bond elections and elections on local initiatives. Lewis (1991) has written a helpful guide about ways to plan and initiate social action activities and projects for students.
When students learn content about the nation and the world from the perspectives of the diverse groups that shaped historical and contemporary events, they will be better able to participate in personal, social, and civic actions that are essential for citizens in a democratic pluralistic society
What is Multicultural Education?
Multicultural education relates to education and instruction designed for the cultures of several different races in an educational system. This approach to teaching and learning is based upon consensus building, respect, and fostering cultural pluralism within racial societies. Multicultural education acknowledges and incorporates positive racial idiosyncrasies into classroom atmospheres.
Culturally Responsive Teaching Culture is central to learning. It plays a role not only in communicating and receiving information, but also in shaping the thinking process of groups and individuals. A pedagogy that acknowledges, responds to, and celebrates fundamental cultures offers full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures.
Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994).
Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are: 1. Positive perspectives on parents and families 2. Communication of high expectations 3. Learning within the context of culture 4. Student-centered instruction 5. Culturally mediated instruction 6. Reshaping the curriculum 7. Teacher as facilitator [TOP]
1. Positive Perspectives on Parents and Families
"Whether it’s an informal chat as the parent brings the child to school, or in phone conversation or home visits, or through newsletters sent home, teachers can begin a dialogue with family members that can result in learning about each of the families through genuine communication."
-- Sonia Nieto (*) WHAT | Parents are the child's first teacher and are critically important partners to students and teachers. To help parents become aware of how they can be effective partners in the education process, teachers should engage in dialogue with parents as early as possible about parents' hopes and aspirations for their child, their sense of what the child needs, and suggestions about ways teachers can help. Teachers explain their own limitations and invite parents to participate in their child's education in specific ways.Parent involvement need not be just how parents can participate in school functions. Oftentimes, religious and cultural differences preclude active participation in school activities. However, parental involvement also includes how parents communicate high expectations, pride, and interest in their child's academic life (Nieto, 1996). | WHY | Constant communication with parents is an important aspect of a child's educational progress. Involving parents and families in their child's educational process results in better scholastic achievement. When families share their "funds of knowledge" with the school community, teachers get a better idea of their students' background knowledge and abilities, and how they learn best (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). | HOW | 1. Seek to understand parents' hopes, concerns and suggestions * Conduct needs assessments and surveys (in the parents' first language) of what parents expect of the school community * Establish parent-teacher organizations or committees to work collaboratively for the benefit of the students * Conduct home visits in which parents are able to speak freely about their expectations and concerns for their children 2. Keep parents apprised of services offered by the school * Send weekly/monthly newsletters (in the home language) informing parents of school activities * Conduct monthly meeting at parents' homes or community centers to inform parents of school activities * Host family nights at school to introduce parents to concepts and ideas children are learning in their classes and to share interactive journals 3. Gain cross-cultural skills necessary for successful exchange and collaboration * Research the cultural background of students' families * Visit local community centers to find out about the cultural activities and beliefs of the students * Tour students' neighborhoods to identify local resources and "funds of knowledge" (Moll et al., 1992) |
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2. Communication of High Expectations
"When a teacher expresses sympathy over failure, lavishes praise for completing a simple task, or offers unsolicited help, the teacher may send unintended messages of low expectations."
-- Kathleen Serverian-Wilmeth (*) WHAT | All students should receive the consistent message that they are expected to attain high standards in their school work. This message must be delivered by all that are involved in students' academic lives, that is: teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and other school personnel. Teachers should understand students' behavior in light of the norms of the communities in which they have grown. They should respect all students as learners with valuable knowledge and experience. | WHY | Effective and consistent communication of high expectation helps students develop a healthy self-concept (Rist, 1970). It also provides the structure for intrinsic motivation and fosters an environment in which the student can be successful. | HOW | 1. Communicate clear expectations * Be specific in what you expect students to know and be able to do 2. Create an environment in which there is genuine respect for students and a belief in their capability * Encourage students to meet expectations for a particular task * Offer praise when standards are met |
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3. Learning Within the Context of Culture
"The increasing diversity in our schools, the ongoing demographic changes across the nation and the movement towards globalization dictate that we develop a more in-depth understanding of culture if we want to bring about true understanding among diverse populations."
-- Maria Wilson-Portuondo (*) WHAT | Children from homes in which the language and culture do not closely correspond to that of the school may be at a disadvantage in the learning process. These children often become alienated and feel disengaged from learning. People from different cultures learn in different ways. Their expectations for learning may be different. For example, students from some cultural groups prefer to learn in cooperation with others, while the learning style of others is to work independently. To maximize learning opportunities, teachers should gain knowledge of the cultures represented in their classrooms and adapt lessons so that they reflect ways of communicating and learning that are familiar to the students. | WHY | Children learn about themselves and the world around them within the context of culture (Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University, 2002). Students from minority cultures may feel pressured to disavow themselves of their cultural beliefs and norms in order to assimilate into the majority culture. This, however, can interfere with their emotional and cognitive development and result in school failure (Sheets, 1999). | HOW | 1. Vary teaching strategies * Use cooperative learning especially for material new to the students * Assign independent work after students are familiar with concept * Use role-playing strategies * Assign students research projects that focus on issues or concepts that apply to their own community or cultural group * Provide various options for completing an assignment 2. Bridge cultural differences through effective communication * Teach and talk to students about differences between individuals * Show how differences among the students make for better learning * Attend community events of the students and discuss the events with the students |
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4. Student-Centered Instruction
"In our multicultural society, culturally responsive teaching reflects democracy at its highest level. [It] means doing whatever it takes to ensure that every child is achieving and ever moving toward realizing her or his potential."
--Joyce Taylor-Gibson (*) WHAT | Student-centered instruction differs from the traditional teacher-centered instruction. Learning is cooperative, collaborative, and community-oriented. Students are encouraged to direct their own learning and to work with other students on research projects and assignments that are both culturally and socially relevant to them. Students become self-confident, self-directed, and proactive. | WHY | Learning is a socially mediated process (Goldstein, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978). Children develop cognitively by interacting with both adults and more knowledgeable peers. These interactions allow students to hypothesize, experiment with new ideas, and receive feedback (Darling-Hammond, 1997). | HOW | 1. Promote student engagement * Have students generate lists of topics they wish to study and/or research * Allow students to select their own reading material 2. Share responsibility of instruction * Initiate cooperative learning groups (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002) * Have students lead discussion groups or reteach concepts 3. Create inquiry based/discovery oriented curriculum * Create classroom projects that involve the community 4. Encourage a community of learners * Form book clubs or literature circles (Daniels, 2002) for reading discussions * Conduct Student-Directed Sharing Time (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) * Use cooperative learning strategies such as Jigsaw (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) |
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5. Culturally Mediated Instruction
"Ongoing multicultural activities within the classroom setting engender a natural awareness of cultural history, values and contributions."
-- Kathleen Serverian-Wilmeth (*) WHAT | Instruction is culturally mediated when it incorporates and integrates diverse ways of knowing, understanding, and representing information. Instruction and learning take place in an environment that encourages multicultural viewpoints and allows for inclusion of knowledge that is relevant to the students. Learning happens in culturally appropriate social situations; that is, relationships among students and those between teachers and students are congruent with students' cultures. | WHY | Students need to understand that there is more than one way to interpret a statement, event, or action. By being allowed to learn in different ways or to share viewpoints and perspectives in a given situation based on their own cultural and social experiences, students become active participants in their learning (Nieto, 1996).Hollins (1996) believes that culturally mediated instruction provides the best learning conditions for all students. It may help decrease the number of incidences of unacceptable behavior from students who are frustrated with instruction not meeting their needs. Also, students from cultural groups who are experiencing academic success will be less inclined to form stereotypes about students from other cultures. | HOW | 1. Research students' experiences with learning and teaching styles * Ask educators who come from the same cultural background as the students about effective ways to teach them * Visit the communities of the students to find out how they interact and learn in that environment * Ask students about their learning style preferences * Interview parents about how and what students learn from them 2. Devise and implement different ways for students to be successful in achieving developmental milestones * Ensure success by setting realistic, yet rigorous, goals for individual students * Allow students to set their own goals for a project * Allow the use of the student's first language to enhance learning 3. Create an environment that encourages and embraces culture * Employ patterns of management familiar to students * Allow students ample opportunities to share their cultural knowledge * Question and challenge students on their beliefs and actions * Teach students to question and challenge their own beliefs and actions |
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6. Reshaping the Curriculum
"[Schools must] take a serious look at their curriculum, pedagogy, retention and tracking policies, testing, hiring practices, and all the other policies and practices that create a school climate that is either empowering or disempowering for those who work and learn there."
-- Sonia Nieto (*) WHAT | The curriculum should be integrated, interdisciplinary, meaningful, and student-centered. It should include issues and topics related to the students' background and culture. It should challenge the students to develop higher-order knowledge and skills (Villegas, 1991). | WHY | Integrating the various disciplines of a curriculum facilitates the acquisition of new knowledge (Hollins, 1996). Students' strengths in one subject area will support new learning in another. Likewise, by using the students' personal experiences to develop new skills and knowledge, teachers make meaningful connections between school and real-life situations (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002). | HOW | 1. Use resources other than textbooks for study * Have students research aspects of a topic within their community * Encourage students to interview members of their community who have knowledge of the topic they are studying * Provide information to the students on alternative viewpoints or beliefs of a topic 2. Develop learning activities that are more reflective of students' backgrounds * Include cooperative learning strategies * Allow students the choice of working alone or in groups on certain projects 3. Develop integrated units around universal themes |
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7. Teacher as Facilitator
"A caring adult can make a big difference in the educational outcome of any child that is at risk of experiencing educational failure."
-- Maria Wilson-Portuondo (*) WHAT | Teachers should develop a learning environment that is relevant to and reflective of their students' social, cultural, and linguistic experiences. They act as guides, mediators, consultants, instructors, and advocates for the students, helping to effectively connect their culturally- and community-based knowledge to the classroom learning experiences. | WHY | Ladson-Billings (1995) notes that a key criterion for culturally relevant teaching is nurturing and supporting competence in both home and school cultures. Teachers should use the students' home cultural experiences as a foundation upon which to develop knowledge and skills. Content learned in this way is more significant to the students and facilitates the transfer of what is learned in school to real-life situations (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002). | HOW | 1. Learn about students' cultures * Have students share artifacts from home that reflect their culture * Have students write about traditions shared by their families * Have students research different aspects of their culture 2. Vary teaching approaches to accommodate diverse learning styles and language proficiency * Initiate cooperative learning groups (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002) * Have students participate in book clubs or literature circles (Daniels, 2002) * Use student-directed discussion groups (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) * Speak in ways that meet the comprehension and language development needs of ELLs (Yedlin, 2004) 3. Utilize various resources in the students' communities * Have members of the community speak to students on various subjects * Ask members of the community to teach a lesson or give a demonstration (in their field of expertise) to the students * Invite parents to the classroom to show students alternative ways of approaching a problem (e.g., in math: various ways of dividing numbers, naming decimals, etc.) |
Four Conditions Necessary for Culturally Responsive Teaching
1. Establish InclusionNorms: * Emphasize the human purpose of what is being learned and its relationship to the students' experience. * Share the ownership of knowing with all students. * Collaborate and cooperate. The class assumes a hopeful view of people and their capacity to change. * Treat all students equitably. Invite them to point out behaviors or practices that discriminate.Procedures: Collaborative learning approaches; cooperative learning; writing groups; peer teaching; multi-dimensional sharing; focus groups; and reframing.Structures: Ground rules, learning communities; and cooperative base groups. | 2. Develop Positive AttitudeNorms: * Relate teaching and learning activities to students' experience or previous knowledge. * Encourage students to make choices in content and assessment methods based on their experiences, values, needs, and strengths.Procedures: Clear learning goals; problem solving goals; fair and clear criteria of evaluation; relevant learning models; learning contracts; approaches based on multiple intelligences theory, pedagogical flexibility based on style, and experiential learning.Structure: Culturally responsive teacher/student/parent conferences. | 3. Enhance MeaningNorms: * Provide challenging learning experiences involving higher order thinking and critical inquiry. Address relevant, real-world issues in an action-oriented manner. * Encourage discussion of relevant experiences. Incorporate student dialect into classroom dialogue.Procedures: Critical questioning; guided reciprocal peer questioning; posing problems; decision making; investigation of definitions; historical investigations; experimental inquiry; invention; art; simulations; and case study methods.Structures: Projects and the problem-posing model. | 4. Engender CompetenceNorms: * Connect the assessment process to the students' world, frames of reference, and values. * Include multiple ways to represent knowledge and skills and allow for attainment of outcomes at different points in time. * Encourage self-assessment.Procedures: Feedback; contextualized assessment; authentic assessment tasks; portfolios and process-folios; tests and testing formats critiqued for bias; and self-assessment.Structures: Narrative evaluations; credit/no credit systems; and contracts for grades |
Multicultural education tries to provide students with educational experiences that enable them to maintain commitments to their community cultures as well as acquire the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital needed to function in the national civic culture and community. Multicultural theorists view academic knowledge and skills as necessary but not sufficient for functioning in a diverse nation and world. They regard skills in democratic living and the ability to function effectively within and across diverse groups as essential goals of schooling.
Multicultural education is highly consistent with the ideals embodied in the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. It seeks to extend the rights and privileges granted to the nation's founding elites–the ideals of freedom, equality, justice, and democracy–to all social, cultural and language groups. Multicultural education addresses deep and persistent social divisions across various groups, and seeks to create an inclusive and transformed mainstream society. Multicultural educators view cultural difference as a national strength and resource rather than as a problem to be overcome through assimilation.
History
Multicultural education emerged during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It grew out of the demands of ethnic groups for inclusion in the curricula of schools, colleges, and universities. Although multicultural education is an outgrowth of the ethnic studies movement of the 1960s, it has deep historical roots in the African-American ethnic studies movement that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Initiated by scholars such as George Washington Williams, Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. DuBois, and Charles H. Wesley, the primary goal of the early ethnic studies movement was to challenge the negative images and stereotypes of African Americans prevalent in mainstream scholarship by creating accurate descriptions of the life, history, and contributions of African Americans. These scholars had a personal, professional, and enduring commitment to the uplift of African Americans. They believed that creating positive self-images of African Americans was essential to their collective identity and liberation. They also believed that stereotypes and negative beliefs about African Americans could be effectively challenged by objective historical research that was also capable of transforming mainstream academic knowledge.
Carter G. Woodson–one of the leading scholars of the early ethnic studies movement–helped found the Association for the Study of Negro (now Afro-American) Life and History in 1915. The association played a key role in the production and dissemination of African-American historical scholarship. In addition to writing numerous scholarly works and editing the association's publications, Woodson initiated Negro History Week (now Black History Month) to focus attention in the nation's schools on the life and history of African Americans.
In 1922 Woodson published a college textbook, The Negro in Our History, which was used in many African-American schools and colleges. In response to public demand for classroom materials, he wrote an elementary textbook, Negro Makers of History, followed by The Story of the Negro Retold for senior high schools. Woodson also wrote, edited, and published African-American children's literature. In 1937 he began publication of The Negro History Bulletin, a monthly magazine for teachers and students featuring stories about exemplary teachers and curriculum projects, historical narratives, and biographical sketches.
When the ethnic studies movement was revived in the 1960s, African Americans and other marginalized ethnic groups refused assimilationist demands to renounce their cultural identity and heritage. They insisted that their lives and histories be included in the curriculum of schools, colleges, and universities. In challenging the dominant paradigms and concepts taught in the schools and colleges, multicultural educators sought to transform the Eurocentric perspective and incorporate multiple perspectives into the curriculum.
By the late 1980s multicultural theorists recognized that ethnic studies was insufficient to bring about school reforms capable of responding to the academic needs of students of color. They consequently shifted their focus from the mere inclusion of ethnic content to deep structural changes in schools. During these years, multicultural educators also expanded from a primary focus on ethnic groups of color to other group categories, such as social class, language and gender. Although conceptually distinct, the key social categories of multicultural education–race, class, gender, and culture–are interrelated. Multicultural theorists are concerned with how these social variables interact in identity formation, and about the consequences of multiple and contextual identities for teaching and learning.
During the 1970s a number of professional organizations–such as the National Council for Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education–issued policy statements and publications that encouraged the integration of ethnic content into the school and teacher education curriculum. In 1973 the title of the forty-third yearbook of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) was Teaching Ethnic Studies: Concepts and Strategies. NCSS published Curriculum Guidelines for Multiethnic Education in 1976, which was revised and reissued in 1992 as Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education. A turning point in the development of multicultural education occurred in 1977 when the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) issued standards for the accreditation of teacher education. The standards required all NCATE member institutions (about 80% of the teacher education programs in the United States) to implement components, courses, and programs in multicultural education.
Over the past two decades more ethnic content has appeared in the textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools in the United States. An increasing number of teachers are using anthologies in literature programs that include selections written by women and authors of color. In addition, the market for books dealing with multicultural education has gown substantially, and some of the nation's leading colleges and universities, including the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, have either revised their core curriculum to include ethnic content or have established ethnic studies course requirements.
The Dimensions of Multicultural Education
James A. Banks's Dimensions of Multicultural Education is used widely by school districts to conceptualize and develop courses, programs, and projects in multicultural education. The five dimensions are:(1) content integration; (2) the knowledge construction process; (3) prejudice reduction; (4) an equity pedagogy; and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure. Although each dimension is conceptually distinct, in practice they overlap and are interrelated.
Content integration. Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area or discipline. The infusion of ethnic and cultural content into a subject area is logical and not contrived when this dimension is implemented properly.
More opportunities exist for the integration of ethnic and cultural content in some subject areas than in others. There are frequent and ample opportunities for teachers to use ethnic and cultural content to illustrate concepts, themes, and principles in the social studies, the language arts, and in music. Opportunities also exist to integrate multicultural content into math and science. However, they are less ample than they are in social studies and the language arts. Content integration is frequently mistaken by school practitioners as comprising the whole of multicultural education, and is thus viewed as irrelevant to instruction in disciplines such as math and science.
The knowledge construction process. The knowledge construction process describes teaching activities that help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of references, perspectives, and biases of researchers and textbook writers influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed.
Multicultural teaching involves not only infusing ethnic content into the school curriculum, but changing the structure and organization of school knowledge. It also includes changing the ways in which teachers and students view and interact with knowledge, helping them to become knowledge producers, not merely the consumers of knowledge produced by others.
The knowledge construction process helps teachers and students to understand why the cultural identities and social positions of researchers need to be taken into account when assessing the validity of knowledge claims. Multicultural theories assert that the values, personal histories, attitudes, and beliefs of researchers cannot be separated from the knowledge they create. They consequently reject positivist claims of disinterested and distancing knowledge production. They also reject the possibility of creating knowledge that is not influenced by the cultural assumptions and social position of the knowledge producer.
In multicultural teaching and learning, paradigms, themes, and concepts that exclude or distort the life experiences, histories, and contributions of marginalized groups are challenged. Multicultural pedagogy seeks to reconceptualize and expand the Western canon, to make it more representative and inclusive of the nation's diversity, and to reshape the frames of references, perspectives, and concepts that make up school knowledge.
Prejudice reduction. The prejudice reduction dimension of multicultural education seeks to help students develop positive and democratic racial attitudes. It also helps students to understand how ethnic identity is influenced by the context of schooling and the attitudes and beliefs of dominant social groups. The theory developed by Gordon Allport (1954) has significantly influenced research and theory in intergroup relations. He hypothesized that prejudice can be reduced by interracial contact if the contact situations have these characteristics: (1) they are cooperative rather than competitive; (2) the individuals experience equal status; and (3) the contact is sanctioned by authorities such as parents, principals and teachers.
An equity pedagogy. An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and language groups. This includes using a variety of teaching styles and approaches that are consistent with the range of learning styles within various cultural and ethnic groups, such as being demanding but highly personalized when working with American Indian and Native Alaskan students. It also includes using cooperative learning techniques in math and science instruction to enhance the academic achievement of students of color.
An equity pedagogy rejects the cultural deprivation paradigm that was developed in the early 1960s. This paradigm posited that the socialization experiences in the home and community of low-income students prevented them from attaining the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for academic success. Because the cultural practices of low-income students were viewed as inadequate and inferior, cultural deprivation theorists focused on changing student behavior so that it aligned more closely with mainstream school culture. An equity pedagogy assumes that students from diverse cultures and groups come to school with many strengths.
Multicultural theorists describe how cultural identity, communicative styles, and the social expectations of students from marginalized ethnic and racial groups often conflict with the values, beliefs, and cultural assumptions of teachers. The middle-class mainstream culture of the schools creates a cultural dissonance and disconnect that privileges students who have internalized the school's cultural codes and communication styles.
Teachers practice culturally responsive teaching when an equity pedagogy is implemented. They use instructional materials and practices that incorporate important aspects of the family and community culture of their students. Culturally responsive teachers also use the "cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them" (Gay, p. 29).
An empowering school culture. This dimension involves restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and language groups experience equality. Members of the school staff examine and change the culture and social structure of the school. Grouping and labeling practices, sports participation, gaps in achievement among groups, different rates of enrollment in gifted and special education programs among groups, and the interaction of the staff and students across ethnic and racial lines are important variables that are examined and reformed.
An empowering school structure requires the creation of qualitatively different relationships among various groups within schools. Relationships are based on mutual and reciprocal respect for cultural differences that are reflected in school-wide goals, norms, and cultural practices. An empowering school structure facilitates the practice of multicultural education by providing teachers with opportunities for collective planning and instruction, and by creating democratic structures that give teachers, parents, and school staff shared responsibility for school governance.
James A. Banks
Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process (Banks, 1997). As an idea, multicultural education seeks to create equal educational opportunities for all students, including those from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. Multicultural education tries to create equal educational opportunities for all students by changing the total school environment so that it will reflect the diverse cultures and groups within a society and within the nation's classrooms. Multicultural education is a process because its goals are ideals that teachers and administrators should constantly strive to achieve.
The Dimensions of Multicultural Education
I have identified five dimensions of multicultural education. They are: content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture and social structure (Banks, 1995a). Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, generalizations, and issues within their subject areas or disciplines. The knowledge construction process describes how teachers help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the biases, frames of reference, and perspectives within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed within it (Banks, 1996). Students also learn how to build knowledge themselves in this dimension.
Prejudice reduction describes lessons and activities used by teachers to help students to develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Research indicates that children come to school with many negative attitudes toward and misconceptions about different racial and ethnic groups (Phinney & Rotheram, 1987). Research also indicates that lessons, units, and teaching materials that include content about different racial and ethnic groups can help students to develop more positive intergroup attitudes if certain conditions exist in the teaching situation (Banks, 1995b). These conditions include positive images of the ethnic groups in the materials and the use of multiethnic materials in a consistent and sequential way.
An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social-class groups (Banks & Banks, 1995). Research indicates that the academic achievement of African American and Mexican American students is increased when cooperative teaching activities and strategies, rather than competitive ones, are used in instruction (Aronson & Gonzalez, 1988). Cooperative learning activities also help all students, including middle-class White students, to develop more positive racial attitudes. However, to attain these positive outcomes, cooperative learning activities must have several important characteristics (Allport, 1954). The students from different racial and ethnic groups must feel that they have equal status in intergroup interactions, teachers and administrators must value and support cross-racial interactions, and students from different racial groups must work together in teams to pursue common goals.
An empowering school culture and social structure is created when the culture and organization of the school are transformed in ways that enable students from diverse racial, ethnic, and gender groups to experience equality and equal status. The implementation of this dimension requires that the total environment of the school be reformed, including the attitudes, beliefs, and action of teachers and administrators, the curriculum and course of study, assessment and testing procedures, and the styles and strategies used by teachers.
To implement multicultural education effectively, teachers and administrators must attend to each of the five dimensions of multicultural education described above. They should use content from diverse groups when teaching concepts and skills, help students to understand how knowledge in the various disciplines is constructed, help students to develop positive intergroup attitudes and behaviors, and modify their teaching strategies so that students from different racial, cultural, and social-class groups will experience equal educational opportunities. The total environment and culture of the school must also be transformed so that students from diverse ethnic and cultural groups will experience equal status in the culture and life of the school.
Although the five dimensions of multicultural education are highly interrelated, each requires deliberate attention and focus. The reminder of this article focuses on two of the five dimensions described above: content integration and the knowledge construction process. Readers can see Banks (1995a) for more information about the other dimensions.
Content Integration
Teachers use several different approaches to integrate content about racial, ethnic, and cultural groups into the curriculum. One of the most popular is the Contributions Approach. When this approach is used, teachers insert isolated facts about ethnic and cultural group heroes and heroines into the curriculum without changing the structure of their lesson plans and units. Often when this approach is used, lessons about ethnic minorities are limited primarily to ethnic holidays and celebrations, such as Martin Luther King's Birthday and Cinco de Mayo. The major problem with this approach is that it reinforces the notion, already held by many students, that ethnic minorities are not integral parts of mainstream U.S. society and that African American history and Mexican American history are separate and apart from U.S. history.
The Additive Approach is also frequently used by teachers to integrate content about ethnic and cultural groups into the school curriculum. In this approach, the organization and structure of the curriculum remains unchanged. Special units on ethnic and cultural groups are added to the curriculum, such as units on African Americans in the West, Indian Removal, and the internment of the Japanese Americans. While an improvement over the Contributions Approach, the Additive Approach is problematic because ethnic and cultural groups remain on the margin of the mainstream curriculum.
Knowledge Construction and Transformation
The Transformation Approach brings content about ethnic and cultural groups from the margin to the center of the curriculum. It helps students to understand how knowledge is constructed and how it reflects the experiences, values, and perspectives of its creators. In this approach, the structure, assumptions, and perspectives of the curriculum are changed so that the concepts, events, and issues taught are viewed from the perspectives and experiences of a range of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. The center of the curriculum no longer focuses on mainstream and dominant groups, but on an event, issue, or concept that is viewed from many different perspectives and points of view. This is done while at the same time helping students to understand the nation's common heritage and traditions. Teachers should help students to understand that while they live in a diverse nation, all citizens of a nation-state share many cultural traditions, values, and political ideals that cement the nation. Multicultural education seeks to actualize the idea of e pluribus unum, i.e. to create a society that recognizes and respects the cultures of its diverse peoples united within a framework of democratic values that are shared by all.
Personal, Social, and Civic Action
An important goal of multicultural education is to help students acquire the knowledge and commitments needed to make reflective decisions and to take personal, social, and civic action to promote democracy and democratic living. Opportunities for action help students to develop a sense of personal and civic efficacy, faith in their ability to make changes in the institutions in which they live, and situations to apply the knowledge they have learned (Banks, with Clegg, 1990).
Action activities and projects should be tuned to the cognitive and moral developmental levels of students. Practicality and feasibility should also be important considerations. Students in the primary grades can take action by making a commitment to stop laughing at ethnic jokes that sting; students in the early and middle grades can act by reading books about other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Upper-elementary grade students can make friends with students who are members of other racial and ethnic groups and participate in cross-racial activities and projects with students who attend a different school in the city. Upper-grade students can also participate in projects that provide help and comfort to people in the community with special needs. They can also participate in local political activities such as school bond elections and elections on local initiatives. Lewis (1991) has written a helpful guide about ways to plan and initiate social action activities and projects for students.
When students learn content about the nation and the world from the perspectives of the diverse groups that shaped historical and contemporary events, they will be better able to participate in personal, social, and civic actions that are essential for citizens in a democratic pluralistic society
What is Multicultural Education?
Multicultural education relates to education and instruction designed for the cultures of several different races in an educational system. This approach to teaching and learning is based upon consensus building, respect, and fostering cultural pluralism within racial societies. Multicultural education acknowledges and incorporates positive racial idiosyncrasies into classroom atmospheres.
Culturally Responsive Teaching Culture is central to learning. It plays a role not only in communicating and receiving information, but also in shaping the thinking process of groups and individuals. A pedagogy that acknowledges, responds to, and celebrates fundamental cultures offers full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures.
Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994).
Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are: 1. Positive perspectives on parents and families 2. Communication of high expectations 3. Learning within the context of culture 4. Student-centered instruction 5. Culturally mediated instruction 6. Reshaping the curriculum 7. Teacher as facilitator [TOP]
1. Positive Perspectives on Parents and Families
"Whether it’s an informal chat as the parent brings the child to school, or in phone conversation or home visits, or through newsletters sent home, teachers can begin a dialogue with family members that can result in learning about each of the families through genuine communication."
-- Sonia Nieto (*) WHAT | Parents are the child's first teacher and are critically important partners to students and teachers. To help parents become aware of how they can be effective partners in the education process, teachers should engage in dialogue with parents as early as possible about parents' hopes and aspirations for their child, their sense of what the child needs, and suggestions about ways teachers can help. Teachers explain their own limitations and invite parents to participate in their child's education in specific ways.Parent involvement need not be just how parents can participate in school functions. Oftentimes, religious and cultural differences preclude active participation in school activities. However, parental involvement also includes how parents communicate high expectations, pride, and interest in their child's academic life (Nieto, 1996). | WHY | Constant communication with parents is an important aspect of a child's educational progress. Involving parents and families in their child's educational process results in better scholastic achievement. When families share their "funds of knowledge" with the school community, teachers get a better idea of their students' background knowledge and abilities, and how they learn best (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). | HOW | 1. Seek to understand parents' hopes, concerns and suggestions * Conduct needs assessments and surveys (in the parents' first language) of what parents expect of the school community * Establish parent-teacher organizations or committees to work collaboratively for the benefit of the students * Conduct home visits in which parents are able to speak freely about their expectations and concerns for their children 2. Keep parents apprised of services offered by the school * Send weekly/monthly newsletters (in the home language) informing parents of school activities * Conduct monthly meeting at parents' homes or community centers to inform parents of school activities * Host family nights at school to introduce parents to concepts and ideas children are learning in their classes and to share interactive journals 3. Gain cross-cultural skills necessary for successful exchange and collaboration * Research the cultural background of students' families * Visit local community centers to find out about the cultural activities and beliefs of the students * Tour students' neighborhoods to identify local resources and "funds of knowledge" (Moll et al., 1992) |
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2. Communication of High Expectations
"When a teacher expresses sympathy over failure, lavishes praise for completing a simple task, or offers unsolicited help, the teacher may send unintended messages of low expectations."
-- Kathleen Serverian-Wilmeth (*) WHAT | All students should receive the consistent message that they are expected to attain high standards in their school work. This message must be delivered by all that are involved in students' academic lives, that is: teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and other school personnel. Teachers should understand students' behavior in light of the norms of the communities in which they have grown. They should respect all students as learners with valuable knowledge and experience. | WHY | Effective and consistent communication of high expectation helps students develop a healthy self-concept (Rist, 1970). It also provides the structure for intrinsic motivation and fosters an environment in which the student can be successful. | HOW | 1. Communicate clear expectations * Be specific in what you expect students to know and be able to do 2. Create an environment in which there is genuine respect for students and a belief in their capability * Encourage students to meet expectations for a particular task * Offer praise when standards are met |
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3. Learning Within the Context of Culture
"The increasing diversity in our schools, the ongoing demographic changes across the nation and the movement towards globalization dictate that we develop a more in-depth understanding of culture if we want to bring about true understanding among diverse populations."
-- Maria Wilson-Portuondo (*) WHAT | Children from homes in which the language and culture do not closely correspond to that of the school may be at a disadvantage in the learning process. These children often become alienated and feel disengaged from learning. People from different cultures learn in different ways. Their expectations for learning may be different. For example, students from some cultural groups prefer to learn in cooperation with others, while the learning style of others is to work independently. To maximize learning opportunities, teachers should gain knowledge of the cultures represented in their classrooms and adapt lessons so that they reflect ways of communicating and learning that are familiar to the students. | WHY | Children learn about themselves and the world around them within the context of culture (Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University, 2002). Students from minority cultures may feel pressured to disavow themselves of their cultural beliefs and norms in order to assimilate into the majority culture. This, however, can interfere with their emotional and cognitive development and result in school failure (Sheets, 1999). | HOW | 1. Vary teaching strategies * Use cooperative learning especially for material new to the students * Assign independent work after students are familiar with concept * Use role-playing strategies * Assign students research projects that focus on issues or concepts that apply to their own community or cultural group * Provide various options for completing an assignment 2. Bridge cultural differences through effective communication * Teach and talk to students about differences between individuals * Show how differences among the students make for better learning * Attend community events of the students and discuss the events with the students |
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4. Student-Centered Instruction
"In our multicultural society, culturally responsive teaching reflects democracy at its highest level. [It] means doing whatever it takes to ensure that every child is achieving and ever moving toward realizing her or his potential."
--Joyce Taylor-Gibson (*) WHAT | Student-centered instruction differs from the traditional teacher-centered instruction. Learning is cooperative, collaborative, and community-oriented. Students are encouraged to direct their own learning and to work with other students on research projects and assignments that are both culturally and socially relevant to them. Students become self-confident, self-directed, and proactive. | WHY | Learning is a socially mediated process (Goldstein, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978). Children develop cognitively by interacting with both adults and more knowledgeable peers. These interactions allow students to hypothesize, experiment with new ideas, and receive feedback (Darling-Hammond, 1997). | HOW | 1. Promote student engagement * Have students generate lists of topics they wish to study and/or research * Allow students to select their own reading material 2. Share responsibility of instruction * Initiate cooperative learning groups (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002) * Have students lead discussion groups or reteach concepts 3. Create inquiry based/discovery oriented curriculum * Create classroom projects that involve the community 4. Encourage a community of learners * Form book clubs or literature circles (Daniels, 2002) for reading discussions * Conduct Student-Directed Sharing Time (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) * Use cooperative learning strategies such as Jigsaw (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) |
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5. Culturally Mediated Instruction
"Ongoing multicultural activities within the classroom setting engender a natural awareness of cultural history, values and contributions."
-- Kathleen Serverian-Wilmeth (*) WHAT | Instruction is culturally mediated when it incorporates and integrates diverse ways of knowing, understanding, and representing information. Instruction and learning take place in an environment that encourages multicultural viewpoints and allows for inclusion of knowledge that is relevant to the students. Learning happens in culturally appropriate social situations; that is, relationships among students and those between teachers and students are congruent with students' cultures. | WHY | Students need to understand that there is more than one way to interpret a statement, event, or action. By being allowed to learn in different ways or to share viewpoints and perspectives in a given situation based on their own cultural and social experiences, students become active participants in their learning (Nieto, 1996).Hollins (1996) believes that culturally mediated instruction provides the best learning conditions for all students. It may help decrease the number of incidences of unacceptable behavior from students who are frustrated with instruction not meeting their needs. Also, students from cultural groups who are experiencing academic success will be less inclined to form stereotypes about students from other cultures. | HOW | 1. Research students' experiences with learning and teaching styles * Ask educators who come from the same cultural background as the students about effective ways to teach them * Visit the communities of the students to find out how they interact and learn in that environment * Ask students about their learning style preferences * Interview parents about how and what students learn from them 2. Devise and implement different ways for students to be successful in achieving developmental milestones * Ensure success by setting realistic, yet rigorous, goals for individual students * Allow students to set their own goals for a project * Allow the use of the student's first language to enhance learning 3. Create an environment that encourages and embraces culture * Employ patterns of management familiar to students * Allow students ample opportunities to share their cultural knowledge * Question and challenge students on their beliefs and actions * Teach students to question and challenge their own beliefs and actions |
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6. Reshaping the Curriculum
"[Schools must] take a serious look at their curriculum, pedagogy, retention and tracking policies, testing, hiring practices, and all the other policies and practices that create a school climate that is either empowering or disempowering for those who work and learn there."
-- Sonia Nieto (*) WHAT | The curriculum should be integrated, interdisciplinary, meaningful, and student-centered. It should include issues and topics related to the students' background and culture. It should challenge the students to develop higher-order knowledge and skills (Villegas, 1991). | WHY | Integrating the various disciplines of a curriculum facilitates the acquisition of new knowledge (Hollins, 1996). Students' strengths in one subject area will support new learning in another. Likewise, by using the students' personal experiences to develop new skills and knowledge, teachers make meaningful connections between school and real-life situations (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002). | HOW | 1. Use resources other than textbooks for study * Have students research aspects of a topic within their community * Encourage students to interview members of their community who have knowledge of the topic they are studying * Provide information to the students on alternative viewpoints or beliefs of a topic 2. Develop learning activities that are more reflective of students' backgrounds * Include cooperative learning strategies * Allow students the choice of working alone or in groups on certain projects 3. Develop integrated units around universal themes |
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7. Teacher as Facilitator
"A caring adult can make a big difference in the educational outcome of any child that is at risk of experiencing educational failure."
-- Maria Wilson-Portuondo (*) WHAT | Teachers should develop a learning environment that is relevant to and reflective of their students' social, cultural, and linguistic experiences. They act as guides, mediators, consultants, instructors, and advocates for the students, helping to effectively connect their culturally- and community-based knowledge to the classroom learning experiences. | WHY | Ladson-Billings (1995) notes that a key criterion for culturally relevant teaching is nurturing and supporting competence in both home and school cultures. Teachers should use the students' home cultural experiences as a foundation upon which to develop knowledge and skills. Content learned in this way is more significant to the students and facilitates the transfer of what is learned in school to real-life situations (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002). | HOW | 1. Learn about students' cultures * Have students share artifacts from home that reflect their culture * Have students write about traditions shared by their families * Have students research different aspects of their culture 2. Vary teaching approaches to accommodate diverse learning styles and language proficiency * Initiate cooperative learning groups (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002) * Have students participate in book clubs or literature circles (Daniels, 2002) * Use student-directed discussion groups (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) * Speak in ways that meet the comprehension and language development needs of ELLs (Yedlin, 2004) 3. Utilize various resources in the students' communities * Have members of the community speak to students on various subjects * Ask members of the community to teach a lesson or give a demonstration (in their field of expertise) to the students * Invite parents to the classroom to show students alternative ways of approaching a problem (e.g., in math: various ways of dividing numbers, naming decimals, etc.) |
Four Conditions Necessary for Culturally Responsive Teaching
1. Establish InclusionNorms: * Emphasize the human purpose of what is being learned and its relationship to the students' experience. * Share the ownership of knowing with all students. * Collaborate and cooperate. The class assumes a hopeful view of people and their capacity to change. * Treat all students equitably. Invite them to point out behaviors or practices that discriminate.Procedures: Collaborative learning approaches; cooperative learning; writing groups; peer teaching; multi-dimensional sharing; focus groups; and reframing.Structures: Ground rules, learning communities; and cooperative base groups. | 2. Develop Positive AttitudeNorms: * Relate teaching and learning activities to students' experience or previous knowledge. * Encourage students to make choices in content and assessment methods based on their experiences, values, needs, and strengths.Procedures: Clear learning goals; problem solving goals; fair and clear criteria of evaluation; relevant learning models; learning contracts; approaches based on multiple intelligences theory, pedagogical flexibility based on style, and experiential learning.Structure: Culturally responsive teacher/student/parent conferences. | 3. Enhance MeaningNorms: * Provide challenging learning experiences involving higher order thinking and critical inquiry. Address relevant, real-world issues in an action-oriented manner. * Encourage discussion of relevant experiences. Incorporate student dialect into classroom dialogue.Procedures: Critical questioning; guided reciprocal peer questioning; posing problems; decision making; investigation of definitions; historical investigations; experimental inquiry; invention; art; simulations; and case study methods.Structures: Projects and the problem-posing model. | 4. Engender CompetenceNorms: * Connect the assessment process to the students' world, frames of reference, and values. * Include multiple ways to represent knowledge and skills and allow for attainment of outcomes at different points in time. * Encourage self-assessment.Procedures: Feedback; contextualized assessment; authentic assessment tasks; portfolios and process-folios; tests and testing formats critiqued for bias; and self-assessment.Structures: Narrative evaluations; credit/no credit systems; and contracts for grades |
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References: Nieto, Sonia and Patty Bode. Affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education. 5th Ed. Pearson Education. 2008.…
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Being a military brat I was raised around all different kinds of race, religion, cultures, and so on. I know what it is like to be that one with different views and values. Relating to students is really important to me because I want them to always feel safe and comfortable in my classroom. Multicultural education is education that teaches the value of cultural diversity (Slavin, 2012). There are five dimensions that fall under multicultural education, which are content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, empowering school culture. These five dimensions are different strategies to implement diversity in the classroom, and using culture examples in our content area. I have learned many things through the five dimensions of multicultural education and will implement it in my classroom. In one of my journal entries I stated “I am really glad that I read up on this and now I can bring this to the table at our first meeting on Thursday “(entry 3). Reading all of this information I was able to bring information to our group meeting, and everyone was very grateful for the information. We have been working on a plan to implement throughout all of the classes, in our “6th Grade…
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There are five types of Educational Approaches/ Theories. As an educator you will not use them all but the ones that is geared towards the way you teach and interact with your students. These five approaches/theories will be implemented into this course will be the Human Relations Approach, Multicultural Education Approach, Teaching of the Exceptional and Culturally Different, Single-Group Studies Approach, and Multicultural Social Justice Approach. Each theory plays a major part in educating students about culture and diversity. The Human Relation Approach basically consists of developing positive relationships among diverse groups and individuals to fight stereotyping and promote unity (Bank & McGee, 2013). It is teaching students to value one another for who they are and where they come from role playing, group activities, and day to day experiences. Multicultural Education Approach promotes the value of cultural diversity, human rights, respect for differences, alternative life choices, social justice, equal opportunity, and equitable distribution of power (Garcia, E.K. no date). The goals of this theory is creating a safe, accepting and successful learning environment for all, increasing awareness of global issues, strengthening cultural consciousness,…
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Multicultural education has become a very important issue in this day and age. Diversity in the United States will become increasingly reflected in our country’s schools (Banks & Banks, 2003). According to the US Department of Education (The Condition…
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Baker, F. J. (1999, August). Multicultural Verses Global Education: Why not two sides of the same coin? Retrieved November 2, 2012, from Teacher Education: http://www.csupomona.edu/~jis/1999/baker.pdf…
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There is an atmosphere of diversification and multiculturalism. The trend is to satisfy the diversity thirsts of the system. The thrust is not to satisfy the crowds, but noted as a mandate that became a “must” to satisfy the standards-core curriculum. Diversity not only encompassed gender, and sexual orientation, but psychological natures that were ingrained in individuals, Therefore, the direction of a multicultural classroom had a need to diversify the standard curriculum which in itself was meant to provide an equal access to the…
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“Multicultural education incorporates the idea that all students-regardless of their gender, social class, and ethnic, or racial, or cultural characteristics-should have an equal opportuni“Multicultural education incorporates the idea that all students-regardless of their gender, social class, and ethnic, or racial, or cultural characteristics-should have an equal opportunity to learn in school” (Banks & Gee, 2009, p. 4). Multicultural education dismiss the idea of rejecting a human being in any way in school or within society and recognizes the differences it has.…
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References: Nieto, Sonia and Bode, Patty (2008). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. Boston. Pearson Education Inc.…
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Promoting equality and diversity within learning environment must not be challenge and that all students must be familiar with early age. Teacher must explain students to set clear rules with respect to aspect that how people must be treated. Moreover, they also teach students to treat all staff and students equally and fairly. Make them use resources with multicultural themes; make sure all students have equal access to resources and opportunity and participation. It also ensures that learning materials do not discriminate against an individual and adapted when it is required. Planning of lessons must reflect the diversity of classroom that actively promotes multiculturalism in…
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