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SOCIO-CULTURAL PHENOMENON INFLUENCING EDUCATION

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is the phenomenon of multiple groups of cultures existing within one society
largely due to the arrival of immigrants. The term is often used to describe societies, especially
nations, which have many distinct cultural groups resulting from immigration. The presence of
many cultural groups in a society can lead to anxiety about the stability of national identity, but it
can also lead to cultural exchanges that can bring benefits to the cultural groups. When different
cultural groups collaborate with each other, they can accomplish many great works in literature,
arts, philosophy, technology, fashion and all other human endeavors that celebrate the richness of
the talents and intelligence of humanity.

Multiculturalism is also defined as a policy that emphasizes the unique characteristics of different
cultures, especially as they relate to one another in receiving nations. Multiculturalism is a
systematic and comprehensive response to cultural and ethnic diversity, with educational,
linguistic, economic and social components, and specific institutional mechanisms.
Multiculturalism is viewed as a model of democratic-policy response to culture and ethnic diversity
because it corresponds to the ideal of culture of peace based on respect of diversity, as well as
universally shared values and norms.

3 Interrelated Referents of Multiculturalism

1. Demographic-Descriptive when the word multicultural refers to the existence of linguistically,

culturally, and ethnically diverse segments in the population of a society or state.

2. Ideological-Normative when the word refers to the management and organization of

governmental responses to ethnic diversity (assimilationism, differentialism and its extreme forms
of exclusion, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide).

3. Programmatic-Political when the word refers to the specific policies developed to respond to
and manage ethnic diversity.

Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education

Multiculturalism refers to the evolution of cultural diversity within a jurisdiction introduced by its
selection policies and institutionalized by its settlement policies. With the evolving and growing
presence of diverse cultural groups in a society, there arise the need for Multicultural Education
which is an emerging discipline whose aim is to create equal educational opportunities from diverse
racial, ethnic, social class and cultural groups. It supports the idea that students and their cultural
backgrounds and experiences should be the center of their education and that learning should
occur in a familiar contact that attends to multiple ways of thinking.

Multicultural education is a tool for establishing pride and confidence among students in their
unique and special backgrounds. This theory concentrates on the need of including notions of race,
class and diversity while teaching. According to James Banks (in Vega, et al. 2015), the 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. A key assumption of multicultural education is that students are more
likely to achieve when the total classroom climate is more consistent with their diverse cultures
and learning styles.
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Other goals of Multicultural Education:

● To help all students acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively
in 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.

● To help students acquire the knowledge and commitments needed to make reflective
decisions and to take personal, social, civic action to promote democracy and democratic
living.

● Related goal, is to help all students develop more positive attitudes towards different racial,
ethnic, cultural, and religious groups.

4 Approaches to accomplish the goals of Multicultural Education

1. Contributions Approach. Ethnic heroes and holidays are included in the curriculum. Heroes,
holidays, and food become a special focus on a particular day; recognizing the contributions of
various groups.

2. Additive Approach. A unit or course in incorporated (a unit on women in history), but no

substantial change is made to the curriculum as a whole. Special units and topics about various
groups are added to, but do not fundamentally alter the curriculum.

3. Transformation Approach. Students are taught to view events and issues from diverse ethnic and
cultural perspectives. Curriculum is changed, so that students see the world from the different
perspective of various groups.

4. Social Action Approach. Going beyond transformation approach, students not only learn to view
issues from multiple perspectives but also become directly involved in solving related problems;
promotes decision-making and social action in order to achieve multicultural goals and a more
vibrant democracy, (Sadker & Sadker in Vega, et al. 2015).

● Multicultural education is grounded on the ideals of social justice, education equity, and a
dedication to facilitating educational experiences in which all students reach their full
potential 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 oppression and injustice.

● Multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education that holistically

critiques and addresses current shortcomings, failings and discriminatory practices in
education.  Interdisciplinary approach

Ideals Underpinning Multicultural Education

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

● Every student must be prepared to competently participate in an increasingly intercultural

society.

● Teachers must be prepared to effectively facilitate learning for every individual student, no
matter how culturally similar or different form themselves.
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● 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 fully student-centered and inclusive of the voices and experiences
of the students.

● Educators, activists and others must take a more active role in reexamining all educational
practices and how they affect the learning of all students; testing methods, teaching
approaches, evaluation and assessment, school psychology, and counseling.

Dimensions of Multicultural Education, (Banks, 1997 in Vega, et al. 2015)

1. Content Integration – deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a
variety of culture and groups to illustrate key concepts, generalizations, and issues within their
subject area or disciplines.

2. Knowledge Construction Process – describes how teachers help students 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.

3. Prejudice Reduction. It describes lessons and activities used by teachers to help students
develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Lessons, units and
teaching materials that include content about different racial and ethnic groups can help students
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 the
multiethnic materials in a consistent and sequential way.

4. Equity Pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the
academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social class groups.

5. Empowering School Culture and Social Structure. This 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.

Culturally-Responsive Teaching acknowledges cultural diversity in classrooms and accommodates

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

Culturally-responsive instruction covers areas related to:

1. Inclusive content in the curriculum that reflects the diversity of society. Students from diverse
backgrounds see themselves and their experiences in the curriculum.

2. Students’ prior knowledge, including their culture and language.

3. The idea that culture is central to student learning because there is no strong evidence that
culture practices affect the thinking process.

Culturally-responsive teaching encompasses the following elements:

1. Communication of high expectations

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2. Active teaching methods that promote student engagement

3. Teacher as facilitator

4. Positive perspectives on parents and families of culturally and linguistically diverse students

5. Cultural sensitivity

6. Reshaping the curriculum so that it is culturally responsive to the background of students

7. Culturally mediated instruction that is characterized by the use of culturally mediated cognition,
culturally appropriate social situations for learning, and culturally valued knowledge in curriculum
content

8. Small group instruction and academically-related discourse