Republic of the Philippines

TARLAC STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Education
Graduate Studies

TEACHING IN DIVERSITY

EDUC 507: Current Trends and Issues in Education

Bertrand Aldous L. Santillan

Reporter

Dr. Julieta M. Lagasca

Professor

January-February 2010

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INTRODUCTION

DIVERSITY can be in terms of:

Race
Culture
Ethnicity
Language
Social Class
Religion
Preferences
Attitudes
Physical Conditions
Cognition

Source: Multiple Group Memberships Derived from Banks, 1997.

As much as we, teachers in this class, have diversity on us, we must understand
that there is also diversity among the pupils that we teach in our respective classes or
schools. Every single class that we teach is comprised of students with diverse
backgrounds. It is in this aspect that teaching in diversity comes to place.

Basic Assumptions of Teaching in Diversity:

No two learners are exactly the same.
Children in all classrooms are heterogeneous.
Strategies that work with one learner may not work with the other.
Students background and experiences should be considered when
teaching.
Community members from various ethnic groups can assist teachers in
facing issues of ethnic differences and similarities.

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 Teaching in diversity is most emphasized when the class that you teach is made
up of culturally diverse students. For example, when there is an American, Chinese,
African, Korean, and a Filipino mixed up in a single class. This reality is commonly seen
in international schools. Teaching in diversity is also emphasized when we teach a
heterogeneous class students having different cognitive or learning abilities, even
coming from different socio-economic classes (rich, middle, and poor families), and
sometimes in different age groups (young and old mixed in one class).

What is Culture?
There are many ways that culture could be defined. However, most social
scientists view culture as consisting primarily of the symbolic and intangible aspects of
human societies. The essence of culture is in how the members of the group interpret, use
and perceive tangible cultural elements such as artifacts and tools. Values, symbols,
interpretations, and perspectives distinguish one people from another in modernized
societies (Banks, 1994). People within a culture usually interpret the meanings of
symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or similar ways. A comprehensive definition
is offered by Derman-Sparks, the values, traditions, social and political relationships,
and worldview shared by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors
that include one or more of the following: a common history, geographic location,
language, social class, and religion. A cultural program consists of knowledge, concepts,
and values shared by group members through systems of communication. Culture also
entails shared beliefs, symbols, and interpretations within a human group.

In the midst of the different cultures or existence of diversity, students are

supposed to receive equal opportunities to education. Thus, there is a need for curricular
and instructional modifications, teaching styles, re-examination of teachers attitudes,
beliefs, and perception.

On the global scale, teaching in diversity relates to a more prominently

recognized concept: Multicultural Education.

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose

major aim is to create equal educational opportunities from diverse racial, ethnic, social
class, and cultural groups. (Banks and Banks, 1995)

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 The primary goal of multicultural education is to transform the school so that
male and female students, exceptional students, and students from diverse cultural, social
class, racial, and ethnic groups experience an equal opportunity to learn.

Based on assumption that: Students are more likely to achieve when the total
classroom climate is more consistent with their diverse cultures and learning styles.

Teaching with a multicultural perspective encourages appreciation and

understanding of other cultures as well as one's own. Teaching with this perspective
promotes the child's sense of the uniqueness of his own culture as a positive characteristic
and enables the child to accept the uniqueness of the cultures of others.

GOALS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Help all students to:

Acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a

pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with
peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that
works for the common good;

Acquire the knowledge and commitments needed to make reflective decisions

and to take personal, social, and civic action to promote democracy and
democratic living;

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; and

Develop more positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, cultural, and
religious groups.

IDEALS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Every student must have an equal opportunity to achieve his or her full potential.

Every student must be prepared to competently participate in an increasingly

intercultural society.

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 Teachers must be prepared to effectively facilitate learning for every individual
student, no matter how culturally similar or different from themselves.

Schools must be active participants in ending oppression of all types, first by

ending oppression within their own walls, then by producing socially and
critically active and aware students.

Education must become more fully student-centered and inclusive of the voices
and experiences of the students.

Educators, activists, and others must take a more active role in re-examining all
educational practices and how they affect the learning of all students: testing
methods, teaching approaches, evaluation and assessment, school psychology
and counselling, educational materials and textbooks, etc.

TRENDS IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Curriculum Transformation
(Banks Approaches to Multicultural Education)

Level 1: Contributions
Ethnic heroes, holidays, and food become a special focus on a particular day, recognizing
the contributions of various groups.

Level 2: Additive
Special unit and topics about various groups are added to, but do not fundamentally alter,
the curriculum.

Level 3: Transformation
Curriculum is changed, so that students see the world from the different perspectives of
various groups.

Level 4: Social Action

Students make decisions about their world and become directly involved in social
actions.

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 Grounded in the ideals of social justice, educations equity, and a dedication to
facilitating educational experiences in which all students reach their potential as learners
and as socially aware and active beings, locally, nationally, and globally.
Schools are essential to laying the foundation for the transformation of society and
the elimination of oppression and injustice.

Approaches to Multicultural Education

Curriculum Incorporation
Incorporation of content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from
history, the social and behavioral sciences, ethnic studies, and women studies.

Instructional Design and Delivery

(Banks 5 Dimensions of Multicultural Education)

Content Integration
It 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 area or disciplines. Playing ethnic music during a program could be one way to
include contributions from different cultural groups.

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Knowledge Construction
It 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. Students also learn how to build
knowledge themselves in this dimension. For example, youth could examine the media to
determine its impact on gender stereotypes.

Prejudice Reduction
It describes the 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. 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. These conditions include positive images of the ethnic groups in the
materials and the use of multiethnic materials in a consistent and sequential way.

Equity Pedagogy
It exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the
academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social class groups.
Research indicates that the academic achievement of students is increased when
cooperative teaching activities and strategies, rather than competitive ones, are used in
instruction. Cooperative learning activities also help all students, including middle class
students, to develop more positive racial attitudes. For example, youth from families of a
lower socioeconomic class often do not have the same opportunities to develop
interviewing or resume writing skills as youth whose parents have white-collar jobs.
Therefore, to further the development of these youth, a program on resume writing and
interviewing may demonstrate an equity pedagogy.

Empowering School Culture and Social Structure

This dimension 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 attitudes, beliefs, action of
teachers and administrators, the curriculum and course study, assessment and testing
procedures, and styles and strategies of teachers).

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 Source: Dimensions of Multicultural Education. Derived from Banks, 1997.

Culturally Responsive Teaching

It acknowledges cultural diversity in classrooms and accommodates this diversity in

instruction. It does this in three important ways:

(1) By recognizing and accepting student diversity, it communicates that all students
are welcome and valued as human beings.
(2) By building on students cultural backgrounds, it communicates positive images
about the students home cultures.
(3) By being responsive to different student learning styles, it builds on students
strengths and uses these to help students learn.

Effective teachers accept and value their students as human beings, especially those
who belong to cultural and ethnic minorities who may feel some form of alienation from
school. If the teacher understands about the students cultures she may use them to
develop students personal pride of their own cultures and create a learning environment
that meets the emotional needs of cultural groups.

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 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES

In 2002, the Department of Education (DepEd) in cooperation with the College of

Education of the University of the Philippines created the Culture-Responsive
Curriculum for Indigenous Peoples (CCIP) to show its commitment in providing a
curriculum that is relevant and suitable to the way of life and needs of indigenous
peoples.

It is the plan of DepEd, with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and
other concerned institutions, the IPs right to cultural integrity, social justice and human
rights, and right to self-governance and management that will be met through the
following undertakings:
Development and promotion of a curriculum that will preserve the cultural heritage of
the indigenous cultural communities/peoples;
Production of instructional materials and training of teachers in IP schools on the use
and requirements of the indigenous curriculum;
Inclusion of IP materials/documents in public school libraries to permit information
sharing/exchange between cultures; and
Accommodation of IP students in all programs for children/students e.g., GASTPE,
health and nutrition, arts and school sports and their teachers in in-service training
programs.

DepEd formulated and implemented a standard curriculum for Madaris that is

culturally-sensitive, gender responsive and rights-based and appropriate for the Muslim
population based not only in Mindanao, but also in other areas in the country where there
are significant Muslim population.

In order to improve the quality of basic education in madaris and provide a

framework of collaboration among key stakeholders in the education of the Muslim
youth, the DepEd, in collaboration with concerned institutions, plans to undertake the
following:
Formulation and implementation of a standard curriculum for madaris that is
culturally-sensitive, gender responsive and rights-based and appropriate for
the Muslim population based not only in Mindanao, but also in other areas in
the country where there are significant Muslim population;
Development and production of instructional materials to support the
implementation of the standard curriculum;

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 Training of madaris teachers and supervisors on the delivery and assessment
of the standard curriculum, especially with regard to improving their English
language skills;
In collaboration with all key stakeholders, preparation and implementation of
a catch up plan for madaris students that will enable them to actively
participate in societal development.

Researches have been conducted by Filipino educators in the field of multicultural

education:

S.C. Reyes-Matipo, a graduate student in UP-Diliman, conducted a study on

ethnic diversity and physics education. The study revealed that there were significant
differences in the attitude and achievement in physics among four different ethnic groups.
Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that physics instruction should
be infused with customs and traditions of the groups to attain optimal science learning.

S.L. M. Carreon, a teacher in UP Integrated School, presented a method on the

effects of a multicultural physics teaching approach on student concept, understanding,
and attitude towards physics.

J.A. Khensay, a faculty at Saint Louis University, investigated the extent of

multicultural education in Baguio Secondary Schools along the educational
approaches and strategies. The study revealed that there were no significant differences in
the extent of multicultural education in the six secondary schools of Baguio along teacher
variables of type of school, gender, ethnic affiliation and years of teaching.

ISSUES IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

SUBCULTURES

People do not just form cultures. They also form much smaller groups within society
which we term subcultures.

Sociologists define subculture as cultural patterns that set apart some segment of
societys population. Subcultures can be based on age, ethnicity, residence, sexual
preference, occupation, and many factors.

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 Subculture also refers to a group of people whose behavior has features that set it
apart from the wider (or dominant) culture of the society in which it develops.

Tensions sometimes develop between members of the dominant culture and one or
more subcultures. Members of the dominant group usually call these subcultures deviant.
Examples: vice subculture, homosexual subculture

Functions of Subcultures:

1. Permitting specialized activity because subcultures carry the knowledge

necessary to perform specialized tasks, they are essential to the division of labor
which is essential in any society which is becoming larger and more complex

2. Identity in mass society subcultures also provides a source of identity in mass

society, thus preventing feelings of isolation and anomie. People want to
distinguish themselves from the crowd in order to feel that I am somebody.
Subcultures permit this by enabling people with a common interest, situation, or
set of experiences to stand out from the crowd.

3. Cultural adaptation and change serves as a source of adaptation to society. A

subculture is often the mechanism through which cultural diffusion occurs. In
some cases, some groups of people in society, often the young, well-educated, or
those at the forefront of developing technologies, adopt a new set of values and
beliefs that are better adjusted to new realities. For example, the idea of equal role
of men and women was not at once accepted by everybody. However, gradually,
women became accepted in the workplace which before belonged to men only.

DEVELOPMENT OF STEREOTYPES

Children's attitudes toward their race and ethnic group and other cultural groups begin
to form early in the preschool years. Infants can recognize differences in those around
them, and young children can easily absorb negative stereotypes. Children are easily
influenced by the culture, opinions, and attitudes of their caregivers. Caregivers'
perceptions of ethnic and racial groups can affect the child's attitudes toward those
minority groups. Early childhood educators can influence the development of positive
attitudes in young children by learning about and promoting the various cultures
represented among the children they teach.

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 Young children can develop stereotypic viewpoints of cultures different from their
own when similarities among all individuals are not emphasized. Teachers can help
eliminate stereotypes by presenting material and activities that enable children to learn
the similarities of all individuals.

Multicultural education embodies a perspective rather than a curriculum. Teachers

must consider children's cultural identities and be aware of their own biases. It is
tempting to deny our prejudices and claim that we find all children equally appealing.
Teachers and parents need to acknowledge the fact that we, like our children, are
inevitably influenced by the stereotypes and one-sided view of society that exists in our
schools and the media. Not only must we recognize those biases, but we must change the
attitude they represent by accepting all children as we receive them.

REFERENCES:

Meier, Amy L., Defining Multicultural Education, Multicultural Education Series

No. 1
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe3lk1.htm

http://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/files/cy/2007/fs0753.pdf

http://www.nameorg.org/resolutions/definition.html

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/define_old.html

http://www.uww.edu/learn/diversity/dozensuggestions.php

http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-5/perspective.htm

http://www.eera-ecer.eu/ecer-programmes-and-presentations/conference/ecer
2009/contribution/1329/?no_cache=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_education

http://www.west.asu.edu/mavalos/HOCH3.htm

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