The Importance of Multicultural Education Geneva Gay

1. The Importance of Multicultural EducationGeneva Gay An e-presentation by Brenda Dillon and Celia Kim

2. “Canada's experience with diversity distinguishes it from most other countries. Our 30 million inhabitants reflect a cultural, ethnic and linguistic makeup found nowhere else on earth. Approximately 200,000 immigrants a year from all parts of the globe continue to choose Canada, drawn by its quality of life and its reputation as an open, peaceful and caring society that welcomes newcomers and values diversity.” (Canadian Heritage, 2004, Jan. 20)

3. Two-thirds of Canada's population growth over the past five years was fuelled by immigrant newcomers, according to the 2006 census data released Tuesday. Canada saw its native-born populace climb by a modest 400,000 souls between 2001 and 2006. It was the addition of 1.2 million immigrants that helped push the country's enumerated population total to 31.6 million. Tuesday, March 13, 2007 | 09:28 AM ET CBC NEWS

4. Overview • What is Multicultural Education? • Why is Multicultural Education important? • Conceptions of Multicultural Education • Multiculturalism in the Curriculum • Connections to Classroom Teaching • Some Current Instructional Activities in Canada

5. What is Multicultural Education? "Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a 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." (Banks & Banks, 1995, p. xi)

6. What is Multicultural Education? • A progressive approach for transforming education that holistically critiques and addresses current shortcomings, failings, and discriminatory practices in education. • It is grounded in ideals of social justice, education equity, and a dedication to facilitating educational experiences in which all students reach their full potential • Multicultural education acknowledges that schools are essential to laying the foundation for the transformation of society and the elimination of oppression and injustice.

7. The Importance of Multicultural Education Geneva Gay believes that “as the challenge to better educate underachieving students intensifies and diversity among student population expands, the need for multicultural education grows exponentially.” (320)

8. The Importance of Multicultural Education Multicultural Education is essential in allowing all students to reach their full potential as learners and as socially aware and active beings, locally, nationally, and globally.

9. Gay believes that the demographics, social conditions and political circumstances in multicultural education have important implications for educators. But why the difficulty in implementing Multicultural Education?

10. Conceptions of Multicultural Education Obstacle 1: Multicultural education is not a central part of the regular curriculum. “Educators have relegated it primarily to social studies, language arts, and the fine arts and have generally targeted instruction for students of color” (Gay, 316)

11. Conceptions of Multicultural Education Consequence: Cultures are merely visited in a curriculum dictated by months or seasons of the year. e.g. Native Americans during Thanksgiving, Chinese during Chinese New Year “These attitudes distort multicultural education and make it susceptible to sporadic and superficial implementation” (Gay, 316)

12. Conceptions of Multicultural Education Obstacle 2: Teachers and educators do not see the value of multicultural education. “Another obstacle lies with teachers themselves. Many are unconvinced of its worth and its value in developing academic skills and building a unified community.” (Gay, 316)

13. Conceptions of Multicultural Education Consequence: Academic success denied to students of color. Lack of preparation for “democratic citizenship in a pluralistic society.” “As disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes among ethnic groups continue to grow, the resulting achievement gap has reached crisis proportions” (Gay, 316)

14. “A fallacy underlies these conceptions and the instructional behaviors that they generate…” (316)

15. Fallacy: Multicultural Education should be taught as a separate subject. “The perception of multicultural education as separate content that educators must append to existing curriculums as separate lessons, units, or courses.” (Gay, 316)

16. Truth: Multicultural Education is an approach that promotes education that is multicultural overall. “In its comprehensive form, it must be an integral part of everything that happens in the education enterprise.” (Gay, 316)

17. Truth: Multicultural education can assist society in being more tolerant, inclusive, and equitable, recognizing that the whole is rich with many contributing parts. “Teachers need to use multicultural education to promote such highly valued outcomes as human development, education equality, academic excellence, and democratic citizenship.” (Gay, 316)

18. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum Gay suggests that high quality educational experiences will not exist if some ethnic groups and their contributions to the development of history, life, and culture are ignored or demeaned.

19. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum “The curriculum virtually overlooks the contributions of the many ethnically diverse people. School curriculums need to reverse these trends by including equitable representations of diversity” (Gay, 318)

20. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum “A key factor in establishing educational relevance for these students is cultural similarity and responsiveness” (Gay, 319)

21. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum In order to establish “educational relevance” for students of color, instruction must include “content about the cultures and contribution of many ethnic groups.” (Gay, 320)

22. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum Through the teaching practice of “cultural similarity and responsiveness” (319), Gay believes that students will “perform more successfully on all levels” (320).

23. Multiculturalism in the Curriculum “Students perform more successfully on all levels where there is greater congruence between their cultural backgrounds and such school experiences as task interest, effort, academic achievement, and feelings of personal efficacy and accountability.” (320)

24. Connections to the Classroom • James A. Banks' Dimensions of Multicultural Education is used widely by school districts to conceptualize and develop courses, programs, and projects in multicultural education. • The five dimensions are: • content integration; • (2) the knowledge construction process; • (3) prejudice reduction; • (4) an equity pedagogy; and • (5) an empowering school culture and social structure.

25. Content Integration Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area or discipline. The infusion of ethnic and cultural content into a subject area is logical and not contrived when this dimension is implemented properly. Make the conscious effort to include various ethnic and cultural groups within the context of core curricula rather than as an addition throughout the year. For example, many primary classroom teachers use snow as a core integrated theme during the winter months.

26. Prejudice Reduction The prejudice reduction dimension of multicultural education 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. Ask yourself if there are children in your class who are marginalized by other children. If so, why? Ask yourself what you can do to eliminate the problem. Our students look to us for reinforcement. Your positive interaction matters.

27. Equity Pedagogy 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 variety of teaching styles and approaches that are consistent with the range of learning styles within various cultural and ethnic groups, such as being demanding but highly personalized when working with American Indian and Native Alaskan students. It also includes using cooperative learning techniques in math and science instruction to enhance the academic achievement of students of color.

28. Knowledge Construction The knowledge construction process describes teaching activities that help students to understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit 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.

29. Empowering School Culture and Social Structure This dimension involves restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and language groups experience equality. Members of the school staff examine and change the culture and social structure of the school. Grouping and labelling practices, sports participation, gaps in achievement among groups, different rates of enrolment 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.

30. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationCurrent Instructional Activities in Canada • Federal • PCH published a Resource List of educational materials in 1998. PCH has published two teacher's guides (1 & 2) as part of the March 21 campaign. • The Public Service Commission published a comprehensive listing on resources on diversity in 1998. • The Western Canadian provinces and territories have established a shared set of learning outcomes for aboriginal education and on heritage languages. The Western Canadian Protocol on shared learning outcomes in includes a section on aboriginal perspectives. • Citizenship and Immigration Canada has sponsored a web site with a collection of educational resources depicting the historical contribution of Canada’s many diverse cultures. • PCH has funded a research project into Canadian secondary school curricula and cultural differences (Blades, Johnson & Simmt, University of Alberta). • PCH has funded research into the effectiveness of human rights education on changing youth attitudes and beliefs (Covell & Howe, University College of Cape Breton). • PCH has funded research on how to integrate antiracist education into teacher education programs in universities (Solomon).

31. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationCurrent Instructional Activities in Canada • Provincial • An optional is offered in Quebec CEGEP’s for minority students and others to understand the diversity of Quebec. The Ontario education ministry has authorized additional qualification courses for teachers in multiculturalism and in teaching aboriginal students. The ministry has also published resource guides on religion and diversity, the use of the Mohawk language and other aboriginal languages. • The Manitoba education ministry has an Aboriginal Education Directorate that is infusing aboriginal perspectives into all Manitoba curricula, promotes the Native Studies program, offers summer professional development institutes, has published a bibliography of educational resources on aboriginal education, a bibliography of educational resources on anti-racist education and on Black History, Conflict Resolution, multicultural library services, the holocaust, human rights, multicultural perspectives in math, and collections of resources in multicultural education and native studies. The ministry has also established policy guidelines on ESL instruction at all grade levels and published resource guides for teaching German and Spanish. More recently, the Manitoba ministry has announced new distance education courses in international languages, and published online bibliographies on Spanish education. The ministry maintains several different sections of its website that are relevant to multicultural/antiracist education.

32. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationCurrent Instructional Activities in Canada • Provincial (Continued) • The Saskatchewan education ministry requires that multicultural aspects be integrated within its social studies curriculum. As well, respect for other cultures is part of the Common Essential Learnings that guide all curricula in the province., including Language Arts, Art Education, Communications Studies and others. Students receive a course credit for multicultural education. The ministry offers an infused Native Studies program at all grade levels with full courses at the senior high school level. Similarly, heritage language learning is infused at all grade levels and senior high school courses are offered. • The Alberta education ministry requires that its social studies curriculum, family studies curriculum address cultural diversity. Respect for others and diverse cultures is part of the provincial standards of teaching. Alberta offers optional senior high courses in Cree and Blackfoot and in German, Ukrainian, Japanese and Spanish. The ministry has published a discussion paper on heritage languages and a policy directive on aboriginal education. A guide to ESL programs has been published to accompany a ministry ESL policy directive. The ministry has a policy directive on how schools and teachers should deal with controversial issues.

33. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationCurrent Instructional Activities in Canada • Provincial (Continued) • The BC education ministry requires that multiculturalism be addressed across most curricula, including history, math, languages arts, physical education etc. Each course has an appendix that addresses diversity. Multiculturalism is required study for all BC students. There is a student evaluation component that assesses student progress in acquiring the knowledge and skills required. The ministry has a similar curriculum infusion goal for aboriginal education. The ministry authorizes courses in Punjabi, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German. All BC students are required to study a second language. The BC education ministry has published a policy framework on ESL that is supported by the development of ESL standards and guidebooks for regular teachers and ESL specialists. • The BC Safe School Centre maintains a list of educational resources on diversity. • The BC Community Learning Network, funded by the education ministry maintains a list of online educational resources. • The NWT education ministry is implementing two aboriginal language education programs (Inuit and Dene). • The Yukon education ministry follows the BC Native Studies curriculum.

34. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationDescription of Some Current Activities in Canada • NGP • The Canadian Council on Multicultural and Intercultural Education (CCMIE) has published a 1999 study on teacher education, is sponsoring a youth education report project designed to help students with high debt loads, has published a list of educational materials available on loan, as well as an annotated bibliography of educational resources and publishes a journal on Multiculturalism. The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation has published a listing of educational resources. • The Canadian Race Relations Foundation has funded the publication of annotated bibliography on educational resources. • The Bronfman Foundation sponsors heritage fairs with students that include multicultural aspects. • The Toronto Board of Education published a guide for adult educators on antiracist education in 1991.

35. Canadian Education Trend Report: Anti-racism and Multicultural EducationDescription of Some Current Activities in Canada • NGP (Continued) • The BC Teachers Federation has published a task force report on aboriginal education and sponsors a specialist teachers council. • A collection of educational resources in French can be found at an antiracism web site sponsored by the B’nai Brith. • The National Film Board has published a list of films and videos. • TV Ontario has published a list of resources and educational strategies. • A list of French language resources and Internet sites can be found at a web site hosted by the University of Laval. • The SchoolNet Grassroots program has funded over 60 class or school Internet projects that relate to multiculturalism. • The CSQ in Quebec has published a action guide on human rights and has supported antiracist education for several years. • The Canadian Education Association published a review of Heritage Languages in 1993.

36. References Banks, James A. 2001a. Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum and Teaching, 4th edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Banks, James A.; CORTÉS, Carlos E.; Gay, Geneva; Garcia, Ricardo L.; and Ochoa, Anna S.1991. Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Gay, Geneva. 2003/2004. “The Importance of Multicultural Education” Educational Leadership 61: 30-35 Canadian Heritage. (2004, Jan. 20). “Canadian diversity: Respecting our differences.” Multiculturalism. Retrieved April 6, 2007, from <http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/multi/respect_e.cfm> Communities and Schools Promoting Health. (n.d.). “Canadian education trend report: Anti-racism and multicultural education, description of some current activities in Canada.” Trend reports/News updates. Retrieved April 6, 2007, from <http://www.safehealthyschools.org/whatsnew/racism.htm>