Commitment to Multicultural Curriculum and Social Justice

1. Commitment to Multicultural Curriculum and Social Justice Susan Ewart

4. Racism, Bias, Stereotyping in Curriculum Transmitting Altering Best practices Commitment Social justice

5. Support Cultures Human connection

6. Goals Banks (2008) addresses the goals for transforming curriculum, he says, [multicultural curriculum] “increases educational equality for both genders groups, for students from diverse ethnic and cultural groups, and for exceptional students” (p. 42). With these goals in mind, we have to wonder why teachers are not more adept at bringing in differing perspectives from other cultures for social justice and awareness.

7. Why??? Establish Community Understanding the concept of crossing borders Student leadership Social Action projects

8. Banks (2008) offers us the answer, “[students then] understand concepts, events, and people from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives… [to] foster a democratic society” Banks (p.49). Many texts offer a multicultural view, but we really need to take it a step further and connect to the ‘other’ human; the human from a different culture has the same experiences as they do.

9. Social Justice Approach Takes commitment with professional practices When students feel acknowledged, failure is less likely to occur Students think critically about others from diverse cultures and make human connections Action takes place

10. Teacher’s Responsibility What can go wrong? Teachers implement cultural view that is bias

11. Structures/deficits Jupp& Slattery (2010) conducted research and they found contradictory patterns with male White teachers when dealing with students of diverse backgrounds Structures: Deficits:

12. Interviewee # 1 One interviewee said, “The truth is that probably more than 99% of children identified special education [in his school] are minority…Teachers are certainly biased against certain children…they are often surprised at the amount of intelligence and cultural awareness of minority children” (p.206).

13. Interviewee #2 “ Most of them don’t have a dad or some of them don’t even know their dad…Most of them don’t apply much, they don’t give education much weight in the worth-wildness of everything…they’ve already given up on themselves…” (pp.206-207) Jupp and Slatterly (2010) surmised that this teacher immediately looks to deficits in child, family, and community.

14. Example http://www.neabigread.org/books/lessonbeforedying/filmguide.php

15. Paulo Freire, quoted in Nieto and Bode (2008) has poignantly said of cultural importance, Educators need to know what happens in the world of children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of school, and how they know it (p.263).