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Despite an enormous growth of the literature and research on inclusive education during the last two and a half decades, theory and practice on inclusive education are still inconsistent across the education systems worldwide. It is defined, conceptualised and practised differently across diverse socioeconomic contexts and groups of scholars and practitioners. While some promote educating all students in a mainstream classroom setting irrespective of their abilities and physical, emotional and behavioural challenges, others emphasise improving the overall quality of education for all children from diverse backgrounds. Given that education is a multidimensional social enterprise, promoting a single perspective at the cost of others or merely emphasising the role of schools and teachers may hardly result in improved education outcomes and guarantee equal learning opportunities for all. This chapter will critically review the relevant theory and discuss the different approaches to inclusive education. Then it will discuss the potential challenges to inclusive education across the education systems. Finally, the chapter will offer an inclusive way forward for improving the quality of education for all children, irrespective of their backgrounds, in mainstream schools in multicultural contexts.

Given their history of preparing African Americans, ethnic minorities, and first-generation college students for careers in education, the culture and traditions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) can provide insight into the preparation of diverse physical educators for the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity in today’s American K-12 schools. As such, this chapter will present practical findings from an ethnographic study of a historically Black urban Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) program with a large native Spanish-speaking population. Specifically, we focus on the concepts of cultural sustainment and code-switching as strategies used by teacher educators to promote bilingualism and biculturalism. To achieve this, we highlight the relationship among institutional, programmatic, and classroom cultures for the cultural ­sustainment and development of preservice physical educators. According to Paris (2012), culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling. We conclude with strategies on how to successfully work with culturally diverse college students, promoting bilingual and biculturalism through cultural sustainment and code-switching.

Higher education plays a key role in training leaders who are responsible for enacting a vision of a multi-racial democracy that is equitable, inclusive, and thrives on a healthy exchange of perspectives. How are college students’ cognitive and social cognitive skills linked with their diversity experiences? While the college curriculum may provide the theory and concepts necessary for understanding a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society, students’ experience with others of diverse backgrounds (inside and outside the classroom) provides an opportunity to practice living in a pluralistic democracy among “equal status” peers. Building on previous social science research, evidence presented in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, this chapter empirically examines the link between interactions with diverse peers and students’ cognitive skills using standardized instruments as well as survey measures in a classroom-based study. Findings indicate that students’ cognitive skills are associated with particular types of interactions with diverse peers and the desire to influence society. Students who had negative interactions with diverse peers also tend to score lower on the disposition to think critically. The implications of these findings suggest that one's capacity for complex thinking skills is linked with the capacity to interact with diverse people and commitment to the public good – all of which are critical to a working, pluralistic democracy.

The students’ lived experiences of belongingness in higher education are analysed using an explanatory framework that has been developed from the findings of the Council of Europe’s report on ‘Facets of Interculturality’ (Leclercq, 2003). In this report, interculturality is defined as a process and an outcome of intercultural interactions, aimed at equity and mutual respect. Applied to the higher education context, the framework addresses four core questions that uncover the inclusivity of a curriculum, here understood as the formal, informal and hidden curriculum, and its effect on the students’ experience of belongingness. These questions relate to the acknowledgement of a student’s cultural identity in the curriculum, equity of opportunity to engage in a diverse classroom, while considering a student’s own agency and need for proximity and distance. The student narratives of their lived experiences highlight the opportunities for intercultural dialogue and learning within a diverse classroom, and for interculturality as a student outcome or graduate attribute. For this to happen, however, the ethos of the institution needs to support students and educators to embrace and act with equity and respect on the diversity that they together represent.

Racial and ethnic diversity and the attendant challenges and benefits of multiculturalism in society are a worldwide phenomenon. As higher education is often the training ground for future social and political leaders, as well as the primary institution charged with the study of social problems, the educational benefits, and challenges of diversity in society are particularly relevant to institutions of higher learning. This chapter synthesizes the ongoing empirical research on the educational impact of racially and ethnically diverse university environments in a U.S. context and offers a framework of institutional practices based on that work to help administrators both respond to challenges and better harness-related benefits for all students.

Canadian postsecondary institutions are increasing their emphasis on internationalization, sending many students abroad and welcoming students from far and wide onto their campuses. Also, Canadian organizations and multinational corporations have an increasingly diverse workforce. These trends require postsecondary institutions to prepare students adequately for this global village of the 21st century. At the University of Victoria’s (UVic’s) Co-operative Education Program and Career Services, we have created a strategy to help develop global ready graduates using a framework derived from Earley and Ang’s work on cultural intelligence (Earley & Ang, 2003). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). A recently completed research project to measure the development of cultural intelligence of students participating in the UVic’s CANEU-COOP program formed the impetus for developing this CQ strategy (McRae, Ramji, Lu, & Lesperance, 2016). The strategy involves a framework that includes curriculum for inbound international students, outbound work-integrated learning (WIL) students, and all students preparing to work in diverse workplaces. In addition to developing specific curricula for these audiences, the strategy includes tools to assess the intercultural competencies that students gain during their WIL experiences, as well as helping students use these competencies to transition to the 21st century global village. This strategy and the Intercultural Competency Development Curriculum (ICDC) are discussed in this chapter.

This chapter presents the reflections of a principal in his experiences of supporting and transitioning the inclusion of learners with diverse needs into both primary and secondary schools. His extensive experience has led him to challenge established practice to find alternatives that support all learners. His journey has guided him on a path to broaden the definition of education from developing intellect and attaining knowledge to one that also includes emotion, connection, invention, and innovation. The purpose of education for all children is encouraging them to be thinkers, doers, and to embrace opportunities to develop their competence. This chapter includes his reflective approach to learning with a strong emphasis on the need for supporting students with diverse needs as they transition through the often-complex schooling arena.

Urban schools serve a diverse student population that includes African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and “poor” European Americans. The school size and location and the composition of student population play a major part in determining learning outcomes of a particular school (Mukuria, 2002). The Carnegie Report (1988) described many urban schools as having a large, diverse population and located in “poor” neighborhoods. The report indicated that many schools lack purpose, coherence, and unifying culture and that they have neglected buildings that give them a negative appearance. In addition, these schools lack meaningful instructional programs and regular routines as well as a strong sense of community. As a result, they demonstrate the instability to establish a consensus on a unifying culture, which to a large extent, leads to disciplinary problems.

This one-year qualitative study examined the role Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) had on secondary pre-service teachers in an urban school. This study examined the journey of six pre-service urban high-school teachers in Arizona as they enact Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) in a year-long student teaching residency. Pre-service teachers worked with and learned from English Language Learners in various contexts. Factors that influenced their CSP practices are discussed through themes that emerged from interviews and classroom observations.

The clarion calls that African-American students are voicing throughout the nation’s predominantly white institutions (PWIs) make it instructive for PWIs to become intentional and exigent about the recruitment, retention, and development of African-American faculty. Too often, PWIs continue the refrain that African-American faculty in their respective disciplines do not exist. This chapter addresses how this happens based on a five-point model that offers strategies for campus leaders to advance diversity and inclusion.

The 2014 Condition of Education Report (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014) revealed that black undergraduate students made up 29% of private for-profit institutions, 13% at private nonprofit institutions, and 12% at public institutions. Comparatively, the number of black full-time instructional faculty at postsecondary institutions was only 6%. As a matter of equity, representation, and the collegiate experience of black students, PWIs are compelled to recruit and yield more Blacks in the professoriate.

Therefore, the author put forth a five-point model that offers systematic strategies for campus leaders to operationalize critical multiculturalism. The five points of the model are perspective, presence, position, promotion, and prosper, as displayed in Table 1.

The first two features of this model pertain to micro individual attitudes, while the latter four apply to macro organizational procedures that support mission-focused values. This model also offers a multitude of counsel that equip campus leaders to listen to students and alleviate institutional practices that stagnate, stymie, stifle, and stop a harvest of African-American faculty.