2. Multicultural
educationBy:
Muhmmad Shahid Zulfiqar Ali
(MPhil Scholor)
()

3. Content
1. Culture & Multicultural
2. Multicultural Education
3. History of Multicultural Education
4. Functions of Multicultural Education
5. Dimensions of Multicultural education
6. Benefits
7. Implications for the schools

4. Culture & Multicultural
Culture:
•It is concerned with the attitudes, beliefs,
values and practices shared by a community
of people. It also includes language, religion,
traditions, social habits, music and arts etc.
Multicultural:
•It is relating to or containing several cultural
or racial groups within a society.

5. Multicultural education
• Multicultural Education describes a system of instruction that
attempts to foster cultural pluralism (diversity) and
acknowledges the differences between races and cultures. It
addresses the educational needs of a society that contains
more than one set of traditions and cultures.
• Multicultural education is an approach to teaching and learning
that is based upon democratic values and beliefs, and seeks to
foster cultural pluralism within culturally diverse societies. It
addresses discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ability
or sexual orientation.

6. History of Multicultural Education
• Multicultural education emerged out of the civil rights
movement of the 1960’s. It grew out of demands of racial
groups for inclusion in curriculum in the schools.
• Multicultural education also has its roots in the ethnic studies
movement of the late 1800s and early 1900’s and is linked to
such scholars as W.E.B. Dubois, George Washington Williams,
and Carter G. Wilson.
• A major turning point occurred in 1977 when the National
Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)
issued new standards for all member institutions (about 80% of
teacher ed programs in the US) to implement components,
courses, and programs in multicultural education.

7. Functions of Multicultural Education
• It acknowledges the cultural diversity and eliminates the injustice
regarding cultures, races, ethnicity and gender etc.
• It addresses the histories and experiences of people who have been
left out of the curriculum.
• Its purpose is to help us deal equitably with all the cultural and racial
differences that you find in the human family.
• It recognizes the role schools can play in developing the attitudes and
values necessary for a democratic society.
• It challenges all forms of discrimination in schools and society
through the promotion of democratic principles of justice.
• It promotes critical thinking in students.
• It reduces the biasness regarding culture, ethnicity, race and gender
etc.

8. Dimensions of Multicultural Education
• There are 5 distinct dimensions as:
• Content Integration
• The Knowledge Construction Process
• Prejudice Reduction
• An Equity Pedagogy
• An Empowering School Culture and Social
Structure

9. Dimensions of Multicultural 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.
• It deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety
of cultures, and groups (ethnic, racial, religious) to illustrate key concepts,
principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area.
• This can be easier or more difficult depending on which subject area is being
discussed.
• Social Studies, Language Arts, and Music are all areas in which content
integration can be easily implemented.
• Mathematics and the Sciences are not as easy to implement, though not
impossible

10. Contd…
The Knowledge Construction Process
• The knowledge construction process describes teaching activities
that help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the
implicit (understood) 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

11. Contd…
• Prejudice Reduction
• The educators use lessons and activities to help students
to develop positive attitudes towards differences and
reduce prejudice.
• It 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.

12. Contd…
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 wide variety of teaching styles and approaches that
are consistent with the range of learning styles within various cultures and
ethnic groups.
• 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

13. Contd…
An Empowering School Culture and Social Structure
• This involves restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that
students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and language groups
experience equality.
• This requires the creation of qualitatively different relationships among
various groups within schools. Relationships that are based on mutual and
reciprocal respect for cultural differences that are reflected in school-wide
goals, norms, and cultural practices.
• 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.

14. 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.

15. Implications for Schools
• Develop understanding about the multicultural education and its
importance in teachers
• Be responsible for Multicultural Education
• Develop a School-wide Plan of Multicultural
Education (Curriculum Team)
• Articulate the Plan
• Develop Resources
• Evaluate the process
• Feed back & remedial steps

16. Any
Question?

18. References
• Banks, J. A. (1993). Multicultural Education: Development,
Dimensions, and Challenges (Vol. 75). Phi Delta Kappa International.
• Starnes, B. (2006). What we don’t know can hurt them: White
teachers, Indian children. Phi Delta Kappan, 87, 384-392.
• Education, A. I. (n.d.). Multicultural Education.