0.4 Multicultural education  (Page 3/12)

Goals

• To have every student achieve to his or her potential.
• To learn how to learn and to think critically.
• To encourage students to take an active role in their own education by bringing their stories and experiences into the learning scope.
• To address diverse learning styles.
• To appreciate the contributions of different groups who have contributed to our knowledge base.
• To develop positive attitudes about groups of people who are different from ourselves.
• To become good citizens of the school, the community, the country, and the world community.
• To learn how to evaluate knowledge from different perspectives.
• To develop an ethnic, national, and global identity.
• To provide decision-making skills and critical-analysis skills so the students can make better choices in their everyday lives.

Principles

(Adpated from: Gordon and Roberts, Report of social studies syllabus review and development committee, 1991)

• The selection of subject matter content should be culturally inclusive, based on up-to-date scholarship. This inclusivity shouldincorporate opposing opinions and divergent interpretations.
• The subject matter content selected for inclusion should represent diversity and unity within and across groups.
• The subject matter selected for inclusion should be set within the context of its time and place.
• The subject matter selected for inclusion should give priority to depth over breadth.
• Multicultural perspectives should infuse the entire curriculum, pre K-12.
• The subject matter content should be treated as socially constructed and therefore tentative - as is all knowledge.
• The teaching of all subjects should draw and build on the experience and knowledge that the students bring to the classroom.
• Pedagogy should incorporate a range of interactive modes of teaching and learning in order to foster understanding (rather thanrote learning), examination of controversy, and mutual learning.

Required Reading PDF:

The IS and the ISN'T of Multicultural Education

Reflecting on personal multiculturalism

Things I Can Do - adapted from Edchange

• It is important to be aware of one's own identity and how one expresses it.
• It is important to ask questions of others to find out if I am being sensitive to their needs. It is important to invite feedback about how Iam being perceived.
• It is important that I see what the results may be of my actions in terms of who may be excluded or included. I must consider all my students asequals, so if my actions favor one kind of student over another, I am discriminating and must change my behavior.
• If I am not connecting with particular kinds of students, it is my responsibility to find out why and to accept feedback on how to be moreinclusive.
• I must extend myself to teachers who are different from me (in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, firstlanguage, disability, and other identities). These can be valuable relationships of trust and honest critique.
• I must listen actively to what students have to say about how they view me.
• I can always learn more as a student myself, especially of the culture and background of my students. In doing so, I can include my newlearnings into lessons so that students feel included and validated and see how their culture has values.
• It is easy to blame students for failure. A sensitive teacher must take responsibility for such failure and work extra hard to help thatstudent succeed. Many of the issues having to do with poor achievement may reflect inattention to a student's cultural needs.
• I can celebrate myself as an educator and total person. I can, and should, also celebrate every moment I spend in self-critique, howeverdifficult and painful, because it will make me a better educator. And that is something to celebrate!