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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the historical and theoretical foundation of multicultural education in the USA. The discussion begins with a review of how diverse populations (e.g. ethnic, race, language, religious, cultural, class, and other differences) immigrated to the USA resulting in the need for multicultural sensitivities and responsiveness in the educational system. The paper describes how multicultural education has unfolded and discusses a culturally relevant pedagogy framework. The historical and theoretical contexts of multicultural education provide the foundation for determining if educational approaches are used and decisions are made that meet the needs of the diverse student population in the US public schools.

Emerging from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the notion of multicultural education unfolded (Sleeter, 2000) leading to the present day where a plethora of literature exists, well informing teacher education and school districts all over the country (see the reference section for some of the represented literature). In response to a largely Eurocentric point of view and the notion of a “melting pot” mindset, multicultural education is one that unfolds out of a pluralistic perspective. While the intent of the “melting pot” concept was to recognize ethnic and cultural differences in a dynamic that would harmoniously “melt” into a unique blend of what America is, what happened was “[…] the brew turned out to be Anglo-Saxon again […] reinforce[ing] the ethnocentrism of the majority and convince ethnic minorities that their ethnicity and cultural heritage were illegitimate and hence needed to be abandoned” (Pai and Adler, 2001, p. 63).

In the final analysis, awareness of historical and theoretical contexts in light of curricular objectives, instructional approaches, and ways students are assessed is critical in order to better make educational decisions that are just and best serve a diverse student population (Duarte and Smith, 2000). Indeed, a principal goal of multicultural education is the fostering of educational equity (Banks, 2006).

The issue for the classroom teacher, therefore, is not whether there will be multiple complex challenges in encountering differences; rather, the question for the teacher is an understanding of one’s level of awareness of those differences and the contexts that frames those differences. Hence, in the end, the more aware a teacher is about concepts related to multicultural education, the more likely the movement toward educational equity will be cultivated, and the more likely the grandest social experiment in the world will fruitfully advance.

Because Pedagogy of the Oppressed has received worldwide acclaim, influenced many, and has uniquely defined Paulo Freire, it is noteworthy to highlight the book’s evolution from concept to publication. What were the contextual factors that prompted Freire to write the book? What was his approach for converting his thoughts to prose? How long did it take him to write the book? To that end, this article examines those and other questions that brought the world Paulo Freire’s seminal text.

The aim is to explore the impact of new menu labels on consumers' actual meal purchases with a field experiment undertaken in a local restaurant.

The author used a field experiment in a natural eating environment at a restaurant to investigate the effect of restaurant menu labelling on consumers' meal choices and opinions on the use of nutritional labels on menus. The experiment included control and treatment conditions in which we offered customers unlabelled and labelled menus, respectively. After individuals' dining experience, the data on meal choices and attitudes to menu labelling was collected via a brief questionnaire. The author then performed inferential statistical analysis to test differences between the control and treatment conditions and logistic regression analysis to explore further what predicts the probability of labels being influential on meal choice.

The study finds that the information provided to the consumers on restaurant menus matters. The more useful the information is perceived by consumers, the more likely the labels will influence their choices. Calorie content and the walking minutes to burn those calories on labels were considered the most useful aspect of the menu labels.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the impact of menu labelling on actual meal purchases, as well as the best way to communicate calorie and nutrient information to consumers. The author also shares her experience designing a field experiment with a restaurateur for future research.