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Multicultural Education
Multicultural Education is a set of strategies and materials in education that were
developed to assist teachers to promote democracy while responding to the many issues
created by rapidly changing demographics of their students. Multicultural education means
to ensure the highest levels of academic achievement for all students. It helps students
develop a positive self-concept by providing knowledge about the histories, cultures and
contributions of diverse groups.

Definitions of Multicultural Education
According to Banks and Banks (1995)
Multicultural education as a field of study designed to increase educational equity
for all students
"Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major
aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic,
social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire
the 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."
"Multicultural education not only draws content, concepts, paradigms, and theories
from specialized interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies and women studies (and from
history and the social and behavioral sciences), it also interrogates, challenges, and
reinterprets content, concepts, and paradigms from the established disciplines. Multicultural
education applies content from these fields and disciplines to pedagogy and curriculum
development in educational settings.

According to James A. Banks (1997)
Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process.
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.

According to Paul Gorski (2010)
Multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education that
holistically critiques and responds to discriminatory policies and practices in education.
It is grounded in ideals of social justice, education equity, critical pedagogy, and a
dedication to providing educational experiences in which all students reach their full
potentials as learners and as socially aware and active beings, locally, nationally, and
globally. Multicultural education acknowledges that schools are essential to laying the
foundation for the transformation of society and the elimination of injustice.
The underlying goal of multicultural education is to affect social change. The pathway
toward this goal incorporates three strands of transformation:
1. the transformation of self;
2. the transformation of schools and schooling; and
3. the transformation of society.

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Three Strands of Transformation

1. The Transformation of Self
To be an effective multicultural educator, a teacher must be in a constant process of
self-examination and transformation.
Characteristics of Culturally Responsive Teachers (Villegas and Lucas, 2002)
Socio-cultural Consciousness means understanding that ones way of thinking,
behaving, and being is influenced by race, ethnicity, social class, and language.
Therefore, prospective teachers must critically examine their own socio-cultural
identities and the inequalities between schools and society that support
institutionalized discrimination to maintain a privileged society based on social class
and skin color. Teacher candidates must inspect and confront any negative attitudes
they might have toward cultural groups.

An Affirming Attitude toward Students from Culturally Diverse Backgrounds
significantly impacts their learning, belief in self and overall academic performance.
By respecting cultural differences and adding education related to the culture of the
students, programs become inclusive.

Commitment and Skills to Act as Agents of Change enables the prospective
teacher to confront barriers/obstacles to change, and develop skills for collaboration
and dealing with chaos. As agents of change, teachers assist schools in becoming
more equitable over time.

Constructivist Views of Learning contend that all students are capable of learning,
and teachers must provide scaffolds between what students already know through
their experiences and what they need to learn. Constructivist teaching promotes
critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and the recognition of multiple
perspectives.

Learning about Students past experiences, home and community culture, and
world both in and outside of school helps build relationships and increase the
prospective teachers use of these experiences in the context of teaching and
learning.

Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies support the constructivist view of
knowledge, teaching, and learning. As teachers assist students to construct
knowledge, build on their personal and cultural strengths, and examine the
curriculum from multiple perspectives, an inclusive classroom environment is created.



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2. The Transformation of Schools and Schooling
Multicultural education calls for a critical examination of all aspects of schooling. Aspects
of multicultural school transformation include the following:
A. Student-Centered Pedagogy
o The experiences of students must be brought to the fore in the classroom,
making learning active, interactive, relevant, and engaging.
o Traditional teaching approaches and pedagogical models must be
deconstructed to examine how they contribute to and support institutional
systems of oppression.
o Known oppressive practices like tracking (even if informal) must be exposed
and critically examined.
o All aspects of teaching and learning in schools must be refocused on, and
rededicated to, the students themselves instead of standardized test scores
and school rankings.
o Emphasis should be placed on critical thinking, learning skills, and deep social
awareness as well as facts and figures.
o Pedagogy must provide all students with the opportunity to reach their
potential as learners.
B. Multicultural Curriculum
o All curricula must be analyzed for accuracy and completeness.
o All subjects must be presented from diverse perspectives -- this is related to
accuracy and completeness.
o "Inclusive curriculum" also means including the voices of the students in the
classroom.
o Concepts such as "the canon" and "classic literature" must be interrogated,
again with the idea of accuracy and completeness, to debunk perceptions
such as that the only "great literature" came from the U.S. and Great Britain.
C. Inclusive Educational Media and Materials
o Educational materials should be inclusive of diverse voices and perspectives.
o Students must be encouraged to think critically about materials and media:
D. Supportive School and Classroom Climate
o Teachers must be better prepared to foster a positive classroom climate
for all students.
o Overall school cultures must be examined closely to determine how they
might be cycling and supporting oppressive societal conditions.
o Administrative hierarchies in schools must be examined to assess whether
they produce positive teaching environments for all teachers.
E. Continual Evaluation and Assessment
o Educators and education researchers must continue to examine the emphasis
on standardized test scores and develop more just alternatives for measuring
student "achievement," "ability," or "potential."
o Continuing evaluation must be in place to measure the success of new and
existing programs meant to provide more opportunities to groups traditionally
and presently underrepresented in colleges and universities.
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Seven Key Characteristics of a Multicultural Education Curriculum
1. Delivery. Delivery must acknowledge and address a diversity of learning styles while
challenging dynamics of power and privilege in the classroom.
2. Content. Content must be complete and accurate, acknowledging the contributions
and perspectives of ALL groups.
3. Teaching and Learning Materials. Teaching and learning materials must be
diverse and critically examined for bias.
4. Perspective. Content must be presented from a variety of perspectives and angles
in order to be accurate and complete.
5. Critical Inclusivity. Students must be engaged in the teaching and learning
processtranscend the banking method and facilitate experiences in which students
learn from each other's experiences and perspectives.
6. Social and Civic Responsibility. If we hope to prepare students to be active
participants in an equitable democracy, we must educate them about social justice
issues and model a sense of civic responsibility within the curriculum.
7. Assessment. Curriculum must be constantly assessed for completeness, accuracy
and bias.
3. The Transformation of Society
Ultimately, the goal of multicultural education is to contribute to the transformation
of society and to the application and maintenance of social justice and equity. This stands to
reason, as the transformation of schools necessarily transforms a society that puts so much
stock in educational attainment, degrees, and test scores.
Multicultural education uses the transformation of self and school as a metaphor and
point of departure for the transformation of society. Ultimately, social justice and equity in
schools can, and should, mean social justice and equity in society. Only then will the
purpose of multicultural education be fully achieved.

The Dimension of Multicultural Education
Content Integration
Content integration is a key feature in multicultural education and refers to
the ways in which a teacher will use ideas from a range of cultures or ethnicities to
describe a concept. An example of this may be when the teacher brings an ethnic
minority hero or heroine into the discussion as an example of whatever is being
taught.
Knowledge Construction Process
The knowledge construction process teaches students to understand how
knowledge is understood and interpreted within different cultural groups. This
characteristic of multicultural learning helps students identify how knowledge is a
reflection of a certain culture's experience and value system. It helps students to
deconstruct this knowledge system and build knowledge themselves.


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Prejudice Reductions
Prejudice reductions are lessons specifically aimed at teaching students to
develop a positive view of different ethnic and cultural groups. These type of lessons
will often include positive imagery of ethnic minorities. Research has shown that
classes such as these can help students to develop a positive image of other cultural
groups.
Equity Pedagogy
This part of multicultural education is deals with how lessons are taught
when facing a class of mixed race. Equity pedagogy aims to deal with this difference
in learning style and employ styles of learning that will best achieve the academic
ability of the students.
Empowering School Culture and Social Structure
This is a term that describes how a schools culture must change in order to
accommodate students from different cultures and make them all feel a sense of
equality. This is done by employing learning methods as described above and making
a concerted effort to change the attitudes and beliefs in a school to suit a multi-
ethnic group of students.

Goals of Multicultural Education

The goals of multicultural education include:
Creating a safe, accepting and successful learning environment for all
Increasing awareness of global issues
Strengthening cultural consciousness
Strengthening intercultural awareness
Teaching students that there are multiple historical perspectives
Encouraging critical thinking
Preventing prejudice and discrimination

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Benefits of Multicultural Education
The American Council on Education (Green, 1989), National Association for the
Advancement of Sciences (AAAS, 1989), and educators who have been personally involved
in promoting multicultural education in schools and at institutions of higher education have
identified several long-term benefits of the global perspective of multicultural education.
Some of these long-term benefits are as follows:
1. Multicultural education increases productivity because a variety of mental resources are
available for completing the same tasks and it promotes cognitive and moral growth among
all people.
2. Multicultural education increases creative problem solving skills through the different
perspectives applied to same problems to reach solutions.
3. Multicultural education increases positive relationships through achievement of common
goals, respect, appreciation, and commitment to equality among the intellectuals at
institutions of higher education.
4. Multicultural education decreases stereotyping and prejudice through direct contact and
interactions among diverse individuals.
5. Multicultural education renews vitality of society through the richness of the different
cultures of its members and fosters development of a broader and more sophisticated view
of the world.













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References

Allyn & Bacon, (1995). The Dimension of Multicultural Education. Retrieved from
http://www.abacon.com/slavin/t38.html
Ameny-Dixon, G.M. Why Multicultural Education is more important in higher education now
than ever: a global perspective. Retrieved from
http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Ameny-
Dixon,%20Gloria%20M.%20Why%20Multicultural%20Education%20is%20More%20Important%20in
%20Higher%20Education%20Now%20than%20Ever.pdf
Banks, J.A. (2011) Multicultural Education: Goals and Dimensions. Retrieved from
http://education.washington.edu/cme/view.htm
Garcia , E.K. (2013) Multicultural Education in your Classroom. Retrieved from
http://www.teachhub.com/multicultural-education-your-classroom
Gorski, P.C. (2010) 7 Key Characteristics of a Multicultural Education Curriculum. Retrieved
from http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/resources/ct_characteristics.html
Gorski, P.C. (2010) Critical Multicultural Pavilion: Working Definition. Retrieved from
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/initial.html
Kea,C., Campbell-Whatley, G.D. and Richards, H.V. (2006) Becoming Culturally Responsive
Educators: Rethinking Teacher Education Pedagogy. Retrieved from
http://www.nccrest.org/Briefs/Teacher_Ed_Brief.pdf
Quiley, M. (2013). Multicultural Education Characteristics and Goals. Retrieved from
http://www.ehow.com/info_8154346_multicultural-education-characteristics-goals.html