Multicultural Dimension of Education MSU-IIT 19 September 2009

1. Alma E. Berowa, PhD College of Social Sciences and Humanities MSU-Marawi Multicultural Dimension of EducationMSU-IIT 19 September 2009

2. Diversity benefits individuals, society & the economy • Student differences • enhances student’s perspectives • increases their critical thinking • fosters higher intellectual engagement (Milem & Hakuta, 2000;Alger, et al, 2000)

3. Multicultural Education • (Banks & Banks, 1995) • a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social class and social groups. • Impt goal is to help students gain knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively in pluralistic democratic societies in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good • Field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic studies and women studies

4. Valuing Student Differences • Multicultural society student diversity • Socio-economic background/class • Race/ethnicity • Sex • Age • Religion • Sexual Orientation • Physical and Learning abilities

5. Why go multiculturalist? • Moral Grounds • focus on mutual respect between teachers and learners as people • Intellectual • importance of many perspectives • of seeing things from the fullness of human experience • of growth through challenge and contrast • Social • The call is for justice and equity among people while they are in formal learning environment & as they live their lives

6. Multicultural Education requires new teaching strategies and methodologies • some students are older than 17-22 age brackets • women are now the majority sex in schools • there are gays, lesbians, bisexuals • there are singles, married, live-in, separated • there are Catholics, Muslims, born-again Christians, Iglesiani Cristo, Seventh-Day Adventists , others • there are members of cultural communities – Manobo, Higaonon, Subaben, Tausug, Maranao, Maguindanao, Tagalog, Ilongo, Ilocano, others

7. Two Main Teaching Issues Connected with Social Diversity • (Nancy Van Note Chism of Purdue University, in McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, 2002, Houghton Mifflin) • Curriculum • The content of the curriculum narrowly focuses on “western” intellectual tradition, specifically the experience of the mainstream • Students from other cultural traditions feel marginal to the academic experience • They see no role models & feel that their experience is not valued • References should also include those written by representatives from other diverse groups. Transformation through “emancipatory view of authority. • (Darder, 1996 – Knowledge as a historical and cultural product is forever in a state of partiality)

8. Teaching Strategies • Classroom interactions, academic discourse, cognitive style, and other aspects of teaching and learning also exhibit a particular cultural style that constraints full participation by students from other backgrounds and includes insights from other cultures

9. Some Messages from the Literature on Inclusive Teaching • (Adams, 1992; Bowser, et al, 1995; Sanders & Kardia, 1997; Prenger, 1999, among others) • all students need to feel welcome • they need to feel they are being treated as individuals • they need to feel they can participate fully • they need to be treated fairly

10. sometimes, we need to go beyond neutrality • address the feeling of alienation, of being “invisible” – the “outsider syndrome” – or “OP” (out of place) • some are embarrassed to talk because they may be ridiculed by because of their pronunciation or intonation and other speech patterns • the use of technology may be a barrier for others, some students may not have access; use IT in ways that encourage active participation and interaction

11. Feeling welcome through the curriculum • key to student motivation, use community resources, discuss justice issues • students should not encounter overt hostility, ignorance & insensitivity (careful about our jokes, sometimes they are not funny, instead, they are subtle insults on women, on being gay, or on physical disabilities, etc.) • otherwise, the message received is that there is an underlying resentment about the presence of students who “don’t fit) • in order to become more sensitive to the feelings of others, let us look within ourselves for lingering biases • we need to unlearn some deep-seated prejudices • impt- helping al students to display welcoming behavior toward one another in the classroom . As teachers, we play a critical role in monitoring classroom behavior. • maximize “teachable moments” – not only to be welcoming to diverse groups but also to teach increasing sensitivity to students about cultural differences.

12. Being treated as an individual • avoid stereotyping and generalizations (do not refer to Muslim student as “terrorist” or female students to be aspiring `beauty queens) • continuous process of “unlearning” through careful reflection our wrong assumptions • allow students to volunteer opinion • individual nurturing through mentoring relationships

13. Diversities: • gender (women and men) • students with mobility impairments • problems with vision or hearing (permission to audiotape lecture) • differences because of attention issues • dyslexia • age differences/marital status (extended time for tests, childcare issues, workplace pressures)

14. Increase opportunities for full participation • be aware that different cultural and learning styles exist • use varied instructional approaches (lectures, discussion, small group work, experiential, learning, simulations • evaluate work from multiple perspectives: each is valuable in a different way

15. Increasing Motivation (Wlodski & Ginsberg, 1995) • Establishing inclusion by conveying a sense of respect for students and communicating a sense of confidence in the student • Practices include peer and collaborative learning, peer teaching, writing groups, exercises that create opportunities for reframing knowledge from different perspectives • Enhancing meaning stresses the need for engagement and challenge through HOTS (higher order thinking skills) in real world applications • Critical questioning, decision-making exercises, creative activities • Engendering competence – the need for the learner to realize that success is possible • Multiple ways to represent knowledge • Frequent feedback • Self-assessment • Alternatives grounded on the context of the skills and knowledge being assessed

16. Being treated fairly • Egalitarian treatment is a valued norm in higher education • grading anonymously, giving all students same time to complete a test or assignment, requring same number and type of assignments are common practice – • assuming that students are homogenous but I reality contemporary classroom are by and large, heterogenous • therefore, I argue that students should not be treated uniformly but fairly

17. Students with disabilities should be given more time to answer for exams • Possibility of help from a reader or a special setting for the exam, for working students. • Normative speakers may be allowed the use of dictionaries and their work may be graded more for content than for expression of ideas • Some students may be excused from class for religious holidays. • Equal treatment does not necessarily mean same treatment, but treatment that respects the individual circumstance of particular learners.

18. Mutuality – need for order and routine must be balanced by appreciation for variation and richness in perspective • There is ongoing revitalization of colleges and universities as places of learning. • Do not be exclusivist, but rather, try to be inclusivist in your perspectives. Changing paradigms is necessary as we improve our craft as teachers.

19. Some Misconceptions about Multicultural Education 1. People from the same nation or geographic region or those who speak the same language, share a common culture. Tremendous historical, racial, and cultural differences must be acknowledged. To view regions or nations as if they were monocultural is erroneous, and it may inhibit students’ construction of the fact that many parts contribute to the whole. 2. Families from the same culture share the same values. There are mainstreamers, bicultural individuals, culturally different individuals, culturally marginal individuals. In reality, a continuum of cultural identity exists and the entire range often can be found in the same family.

20. 3. Multicultural education just include ethnic or racial issues. While ethnic and racial concerns are a large part of multicultural education, gender, and socioeconomic diversity also are important. Children come from many types of homes, including those headed by lesbians and gays parents. School goals for multicultural education includes promotion of equal opportunity in the school, cultural pluralism, alternative lifestyles, and respect for those who differ and support for power equity among groups.

21. 4. The tour and detour approaches are appropriate for teaching multicultural education. “Tourist multiculturalism” describe approaches that merely visit a culture, involving a curriculum dictated by seasons or months of the year. These methods trivialize, patronize, and steretype cultures by emphasizing traditional costumes, foods, and dances while avoiding the true picture of the everyday life of the people from that culture (Derman-Sparks,1993). Students come away from such teachings with even more biases.

22. 5. Just as touring and detouring are not recommended practices, neither is teaching multicultural education as a separate subject. In a subtle way, it will point out that many groups are still on the margin of society. In a transformation approach, the structure and basic assumptions of the curriculum are changed so that the students can view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspectives of diverse cultures and groups. Instead of adding to the teacher’s already full plate, multicultural overall is better. Integrating multicultural concepts throughout the curriculum is better.

23. Multicultural education is an accepted part of the curriculum. Far from true. This is a new concept. Being new, a lot of people will raise eyebrows and would say, what kind of animal is that? • Differrent cultures contribute to making up one particular country, Phils, US, Canada, others.

24. 8. Most people identify with only one culture. Increasingly children and families are multiethnic in nature. Many children now are not stereotypical. 9. There are not may resources about multicultural education. In the past 10 years, there have emerged a lot of materials and websites about this emerging field.

25. Despite all these myths and misconceptions, there are a growing number of modern educators who are interested, have a commitment to multicultural education and learning. • Join us and enjoy the full range to experience humanity.

26. Feminist= Gender-sensitive, Culture-sensitive • Respect for all persons regardless of age, religion, class, marital status, race/ethnic group • Realization that women and men are different but equal. • Some things can be changed towards equality at home, in school, in the community, and institutions.

27. Let us be proactive. Let the change begin with us, with ourselves. Let us take responsibility for change in our homes, in our classrooms, in our lives. • Out there it is a struggle… but think win-win. You change, they change. Let us all be multiculturalist in our perspective. All for the better. • Let us synergize … learn to work WITH others, not against them.

28. Thank you for your attention and wassalam!