Multicultural Education PPT
- 1. Amity Institute of Education Multicultural Education • Multicultural Education describes a system of instruction that attempts to foster cultural pluralism and acknowledges the differences between races and cultures. It addresses the educational needs of a society that contains more than one set of traditions, that is a mixture of many cultures. • Multicultural education is an educational philosophy that focuses on celebrating cultural differences while also recognizing the importance of challenging all forms of discrimination based on race, gender, age, religion, ability or sexual orientation.
- 2. Amity Institute of Education Multicultural education advocates the belief that students and their life histories and experiences should be placed at the center of the teaching and learning process and that pedagogy should occur in a context that is familiar to students and that addresses multiple ways of thinking. In addition, teachers and students must critically analyze oppression and power relations in their communities, society and the world. To accomplish these goals, multicultural education demands a school staff that is culturally competent, and to the greatest extent possible racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse. Staff must be multiculturally literate and capable of including and embracing families and communities to create an environment that is supportive of multiple perspectives, experiences, and democracy. Multicultural education requires comprehensive school reform as multicultural education must pervade all aspects of the school community and organization.
- 3. Amity Institute of Education Characteristics of Multicultural Education • Multicultural education is antiracist education. • Multicultural education is basic education. • Multicultural education is important for all students. • Multicultural education is pervasive. • Multicultural education is education for social justice. • Multicultural education is critical pedagogy
- 4. Amity Institute of Education Principles of Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society • Principle 1: Professional development programs should help teachers understand the complex characteristics of different groups of children in the Indian society and the ways in which race, ethnicity, language and social class interact to influence students behavior. • Principle 2: Schools should ensure that all students have equitable opportunities to learn and to meet high standards. • Principle 3: The curriculum should help students understand that knowledge is socially constructed and reflects the social, political and economic contexts in which they live and work.
- 5. Amity Institute of Education • Principle 4: Schools should provide all students with opportunities to participate in extra- and co-curricular activities that develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes that increase academic achievement and foster positive interracial relationships • Principle 5: Schools should create or make salient superordinate crosscutting group memberships in order to improve intergroup relations. • Principle 6: Students should learn about stereotyping and other related biases that have negative effects on racial and ethnic relations.
- 6. Amity Institute of Education • Principle 7: Students should learn about the values shared by virtually all cultural groups (e.g., justice, equality, freedom, peace, compassion, and charity). • Principle 8: Teachers should help students acquire the social skills needed to interact effectively with students from other racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups. • Principle 9: Schools should provide opportunities for students from different racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups to interact socially under conditions designed to reduce fear and anxiety.
- 7. Amity Institute of Education Benefits of Multicultural Education 1. Helps to eradicate prejudice and racism. 2. Brings different races together in harmony. 3. Builds interaction between diverse cultures. 4. Creates tolerance between two groups. 5. It eradicates cultural barriers. 6. Helps students develop positive self-image. 7. Allows multiple perspectives and ways of thinking.
- 8. Amity Institute of Education 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. 8
- 9. Amity Institute of Education Content Integration •content integration focuses on what information should be included in the curriculum, how it should be integrated into the existing curriculum, and its location within the curriculum •Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups. •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. 9
- 10. Amity Institute of Education 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. 10
- 11. Amity Institute of Education Prejudice reduction •The prejudice reduction dimension of multicultural education seeks to help students develop positive and democratic racial attitudes. •Focus on building strategies that can be used to help students develop more positive racial and ethnic 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. 11
- 12. Amity Institute of Education 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. •An equity pedagogy assumes that students from diverse cultures and groups come to school with many strengths. 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 12
- 13. Amity Institute of Education 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. •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 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 13