multicultural education

1. AMOR BEN ALI
Maroua,
ACHOUR
Maryem,
BDIOUI Siwar,
BEN FAKHET
Khawla,
HAMMEMMI
Wième,
JEDDI Jawaher

2. Outline
 What is Multicultural Education?
 Empowering Students
 Culturally RelevantTeaching
 Issues-Centered Education
 Improving Relationships among Children from Different Ethnic
Groups
1.The Jigsaw Classroom
2.Positive Personal Contact from Different Cultural backgrounds
3.PerspectiveTaking
4.Technology Connections with Students Around the World
5.Reducing Bias
6.IncreasingTolerance
7.The School and community as a team
8.Other Strategies

3. What is
Multicultural
Education ?
Multicultural Education is Education that values
diversity and includes the perspectives of a
variety of cultural groups on a regular basis.
Its proponents believe that children of color
should be empowered and that multicultural
Education benefits all students (Banks, 2010).
The goal of multicultural Education is equal
educational opportunity for all students.

4.  Multicultural Education includes issues related
to socioeconomic status , Ethnicity , gender
religion , disability , sexual orientation and
other forms of differences .
 Multicultural Education is not only reserved for
students of color but also for all students
including non-Latino White students .
 Multicultural Education expert James Banks
(2008) recently described what should
characterize a multicultural school :

5.  The school staff’s attitudes, beliefs and actions:The school’s staff have high
expectations for all students and is passionate about helping them learn.
 The curriculum: The course of study has been reformed so that students perceive
events, concepts and issues from the diverse views of different ethnic and
socioeconomic groups .
 Instructional Materials: Text books and learning materials represent the
backgrounds and experience of diverse ethnic and cultural views.
 The school culture and the hidden curriculum: The school culture reflects
positive aspects of diversity and is supported by the “hidden curriculum” – the
curriculum that is not explicitly taught but is nevertheless present and learned by
students.
 The counseling program : The school’s counselors challenge students from diverse
backgrounds to dream and provide them with the strategies to reach those dreams .

6. Early
childhood:
Valarie
Gorham
1. Using multicultural books, posters and other items in
several languages
2. Serving food for children from various cuisines and ethnic
groups
Elementary
School :
Elizabeth
Frascella
1. At the beginning of the school each child’s photo is taken and then
displayed with a string designating his or her country of origin.They
use this map to explore and learn about the world and each other’s
cultural backgrounds
Middle School :
Grade 6-8
Casey Maass
1. Educating students of the beliefs and customs of different
religions and cultural groups.
2. Establishing a school unity club which celebrates the diversity
within their school by showcasing different cultures
High School:
Grade 9-12
Dennis
Peterson
1. Regarding the fact that one third of the school’s population is
native American the teacher opt to present information on
native American art forms including poetry, beading… So that
all the students make a medicine wheel for themselves and
their own personal culture whether they are native American or
not.
 Teachers
were asked
about how
they
promoted
diversity
and
acceptance
of others in
the
classroom.
These are
their
responses:

7. Empowering
students :

8. General definition of empowerment: . Empowerment is a
psychological process in which individuals think positively
about their ability to make change and gain mastery over
issues at individual and social levels. (Zimmerman, 2000).
The term empowerment refers to providing people with the
intellectual and coping skills to succeed and make this a more
just world.
In the 1960s to 1980s, multicultural education was concerned
with empowering students and better representing minority
and cultural groups in curricula and textbooks.

9. According to( Hall,2010) empowerment continues to be
an important theme of multicultural education today.
In this view, schools should give students’ the opportunity
to learn about the experiences, struggles, and visions of
many different ethnic and cultural groups (Banks,2010).
The hope that this will:
Raise minority students’ self–esteem .
Reduce prejudice.
Provide more equity in educational opportunities .

10. White students become more knowledgeable about minority
groups.
Both white students and students of color will develop multiple
perspectives within their curricula.
Banks(2008,2010) suggests that future teachers can benefit
from writing a brief essay about a situation in which they felt
marginalized (being excluded) by another group.
Virtually everyone, whether from a minority or majority group,
has experienced this type of situation at some point in his or her
life. Banks suggests that you should be in a better position to
understand the issues of sociocultural diversity after writing such
an essay.

11. Culturally
Relevant
Teaching

12. Culturally relevant teaching is an important aspect of
multicultural education (Gollnick & chinn, 2009).
It seeks to make connections with the learner’s
cultural background (Pang, 2005).
Effective teachers are aware of and integrate
culturally relevant teaching into the curriculum
(Manning & Baruth, 2009).

13. Students from some ethnic groups behave in ways
that may make certain educational tasks more
difficult than others. For example:
The African American students are often expressive and
high in energy, so, giving them the opportunities to make
presentations rather than always being required to
perform on a written exam might be a good strategy.
Many Asian American students prefer visual learning
more than their European American peers. Thus, an
effective teacher might want to use more three-
dimensional models, graphic organizers, photographs,
charts…

14. The Funds of Knowledge Approach:
 Going into the community where the students live and their parents work can
improve the understanding of the students’ ethnic and cultural backgrounds
(Banks & others, 2005).
 Students bring with them funds of knowledge from their homes and
communities that can be used for concept and skill development.
 Teachers visit students’ households to develop social relationships with their
students’ family members to learn more about their cultural and ethnic
background so that they can incorporate this knowledge into their teaching
(Moll & Gonzáles, 2004).

15. Through this approach, teachers can learn more
about the occupations, interests, and community
characteristics of their students’ families.
The funds of knowledge approach acts as a bridge
between the student’s school and community.
For example, guiding students to understand how
their parents’ carpentry skills relate to geometry…

16. Teachers need to have high achievement
expectations for students from ethnic minority
and low-income backgrounds and engage them in
rigorous academic programs (Anderman &
Anderman, 2010).
When high achievement expectations and
rigorous academic programs are combined with
culturally relevant teaching and community
connections, students from ethnic minority and
low-income backgrounds benefit enormously.

17. Issues-Centred
Education:
 Issues-Centred Education is an important aspect of
multicultural education.
 In this approach, students are taught to systematically
examine issues that involve equity and social justice.They not
only clarify their values but also examine alternatives and
consequences if they take a particular stance on an issue.
 There are some students concerned with the lunch policy at a
high school.The students who where on federally subsidized
programs were forced to use a specific line in the cafeteria,
which labeled them poor. Many of these low-income students
felt humiliated and embarrassed to the point that they went
without lunch.The students alerted teachers to the situation,
and, together the students and teachers developed a plan of
action.They presented the plan to the school district, which
revised its lunch line policy at the ten high schools affected by
it.

18. Improving
Relationships
among
Children from
Different
EthnicGroups
 There are several strategies and programs to improve
relationships among children from different ethnic group.
 The Jigsaw Classroom: It is based on the concept of involving
students of different cultural background.These students have to
cooperate by doing different parts of a project to reach a
common goal.
 How might this work ?
 Consider a multicultural class and a lesson concerns Pulitzer’s life.
The class might be divided into groups of six children each and
these groups are as equally mixed as possible in term of ethnic
composition.The lesson is divided into 6 parts and one part is
given to each member of each six person group.
 All the students in each group are given an allotted time to study
their parts then the groups meet and each member has to teach
his or her part to the rest of the group.
 Learning depends on students’ interdependence and cooperation
in reaching the same goal
 In brief the jigsaw strategy consists on “creating subordinate
goal or common task”.

20. Positive personal contact with others from different
cultural backgrounds:
Students improve their relations when they talk to each
others about their personal worries, successes, failures,
coping strategies, interests and so on.
Revealing personal information help students to be
perceived as individuals than simply members of a group.
Sharing personal information will lead to the discovery that
people from different backgrounds share many of the same
hobbies, worries, and feelings. Sharing personal
information can help in breaking down barriers between
them.

21. Perspective
taking:
 PerspectiveTaking:
 This idea is based on making the learners « step into the shoes »
of each others.
 Students learn about two different cultrural groups, and then
they are asked to interact with the other respecting their
behaviour.
 Students in this case will understand the cultural shock in a
concrete way, because they experienced feelings of anxiety and
apprehension.
 As a result, they are triggered to find a way by themselves to
interact.
 Another way to do this is to envourage students to read about
prejudice and descrimination based on the cultural differences,
and discuss them.

22.  Technology connections with students around the world:
 The idea is based on breaking down the walls of the old classrooms, and
providing the learners with the opportunity to interact with other
learners and other teachers around the world.
 Actually, the development of the technolgy paved the way to reach this
goal.
 Eg: the videoconferencing over the Internet is used to learn other
foreign languages, prepare global projects and exchange ideas about
some world matters, such as, environmental issues, sciences, global
community,,,etc
 In the long run, these projects help to decrease the sense of
ethnocentricity, and accept the differences.

23. Reducing bias:
The process of reducing bias and tension between the
learners should start at the early childhood.
Both parents and teachers should stress the importance of
respecting others.
Teachers should establish clear and strict rules to avoid
any hint of racism or descrimination in childre’s
interaction.
Maintaining the Anti-Bias CurriculumTask Force (1989)
provides the teachers with many strategies to handle and
eliminate the biases.

24. Displaying images of children from a variety of
ethnic and cultural groups, and ask the students
to reflect on them.
Choose materials and activities that breaks the
stereotypic views about others from different
backgrounds; like plays, videos,… etc.
Involve students in maintaining firm rules that
deal with descrimination against each others.
Cooperate with parents and inform them about
your efforts.

25. Increasing
tolerance
IncreasingTolerance:
important aspects of multicultural education are tolerance
and respect for individuals from.
“The teaching tolerance project” provides schools with
resources and materials to enhance intercultural
understanding and relationships between white children and
children of color.

26. The biannual magazine teaching tolerance is distributed to
every public and private school in the united states
This magazine aims to share views on and provide resources
for teaching tolerance.
For elementary teachers for examples the “different and the
same” videos and materials can help children become more
tolerant.

27. The school and the community as a team
The School and the Community as aTeam:
Comer. J stresses that the community team
approach is the best way to educate
children.
Comer project have three important
aspects for change which are
1 governance and management team
That develops a comprehensive school plan,
assessment strategy, and staff
developmental program

28.  2 a mental health or school support team and 3 a parent’s
program.
 The Comer program emphasizes a no-fault approach ( the focus
should be on solving problems, not blaming
 Comes insists that the entire school community should have a
cooperative rather than an adversarial attitude .
 The program is currently operating in more than 600 schools in 82
school districts in 26 states.
 In his book leave no child behind, Comer(2004) says that children’s
socioemotional development and relationships with caregivers
also need to be improved if educational reform is to be successful.

29. Other
strategies for
multicultural
education
 Be sensitive to racist content in materials and
classroom interactions
 Learn more about different ethnic groups and
encourage students to think deeply and critically
about diversity
 Be aware of students ’ethnic attitudes and respond
to students ’cultural view in sensitive ways our
students’
 Use trade books, films, videotape, and recordings
to present ethnic
 Take into account your students’ developmental
status when selecting materials