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The rising number of marriages between a Korean husband and a foreign wife, the growing influx of foreign migrant workers, and the ongoing entrance of North Korean defectors have diversified the racial and ethnic composition of student populations in South Korea. The increased diversity in student populations presents serious challenges to Korean schools that have long been accustomed to homogeneous population and culture. The current study provides an overview of the current educational conditions of “multicultural students,” encompassing three major groups: children of international-marriage couples, children of foreign workers, and children who are North Korean defectors (or born in South Korea to parents who are North Korean defectors). In particular, current school attendance of children from multicultural families and the educational challenges they face in school and at home are described. Then, this study introduces current policies and programs enacted by various agencies to deal with the diverse needs of those multicultural students and also to increase awareness among citizens of multicultural issues. Finally, this chapter closes by suggesting directions for further policies and efforts to promote multiculturalism in Korean education.

In schools across the nation, several strategies have proven to yield positive outcomes for multicultural students, especially those with special needs. For example, the responsiveness to intervention program (RTI) was implemented to aid English language learners in California (Boswell, 2005). The RTI program was fueled by the notion that even after implementing the best practices in schools a lot still deserved to be done. Students needed more intervention. Hence, in addition to existing interventions, fourth- and fifth-grade students still struggling spent an extra 45min of instruction with a speech and language pathologist or resource specialist over a nine-week period. As a result of this intervention, these students gained more than a year's growth in reading (Boswell, 2005). Furthermore, after the first year of the program, only 4 of the 63 participating students were referred for special education services. According to Boswell, in 2005, this program received the Golden Bell Award by the California School Board Association. In addition to programs like RTI, another intervention is administering effective mentoring and tutoring programs. Mentor programs have proven to be very successful in decreasing absenteeism and increasing academic achievement in students. Gensemer (2000) noted that peer mentor programs in elementary schools can increase the use of critical thinking skills, improve interpersonal skills, and increase the use of conflict resolution skills. Students learning from each other have proved to be very successful. Barone and Taylor (1996) contended that cross-cultural tutoring enhances students’ self-esteem, academic learning time, and sense of responsibility.

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactions among superintendents' chief executive school officers, multicultural attitudes and actions for children from marginalized populations.

Members of the American Association of School Administrators, 945 school superintendents, completed the self‐reported, single‐staged, electronic survey. The survey consisted of four sections: a modified multicultural questionnaire; a modified diversity action survey; a national diversity leadership questionnaire; and a personal heritage questionnaire.

Respondents scored moderate (2.0‐3.0) on both multicultural attitudes and diversity actions. The study found a positive correlation between multicultural attitudes and diversity actions. Through a regression analysis, a significant model predicting diversity actions from multicultural attitudes was selected. The study found a positive significant correlation between attitudes and diversity actions.

There is limited theoretical and practical implications regarding the multicultural attitudes of school leaders and how these attitudes influence their decision making. This paper addresses this.

The purpose of this paper is to examine teaching approaches adopted by teachers in ex-Model C English medium secondary schools (former mono-ethnic White Schools) currently in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, after schools became desegregated in 1994 and changed from being mono-ethnic to multi-ethnic.

This study was conducted through a qualitative research approach against the backdrop of a phenomenological design according to the interpretivist paradigm. Data were elicited through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 teachers from four ex-Model C English medium secondary schools (former White schools) who had experiences of teaching both pre-1994, when schools were mono-ethnic, and post-1994 when the schools were multi-ethnic. The interviews were transcribed, and the data were analysed and categorised into themes and sub-themes.

The findings indicated that although the teachers were positive towards teaching in multi-ethnic contexts, the majority of them tended to adopt approaches that militated against multicultural education in their classes; such as assimilationist, colour blind and business-as-usual approaches, while a minority incorporated various aspects of multicultural education in their teaching to a limited degree.

The study is original in the sense that it focused on the application of Castagno’s framework of typologies to teachers’ approaches to teaching in multi-ethnic classes. Research of this nature, which explored teachers’ approaches to diversity within their multi-ethnic contexts according to Castagno’s framework, has not been previously undertaken in South Africa.

This paper aims to attend to the issues that remain veiled and excluded in the name of multiculture.

This paper problematizes South Korean multicultural education policies through Bourdieu’s concept of capital as a theoretical frame.

First, the paper discusses that material wealth is unequally distributed to most of the multicultural families, resulting in their lack of economic capital. Second, it notes that students from multicultural families are deprived of cultural capital, as they are racialized in Korean society. As a strategy used to distinguish and exclude a so-called different minority from the unnamed majority, race enables the possession of cultural capital. Third, insufficient social capital identified with resources emerging from social networks positions students from multicultural families as a perpetual minority. As the accumulation of various forms of capital secures power and privilege (Bourdieu, 1986), multicultural education in its current state would continuously reproduce the existing power dynamics where students from multicultural families are subordinate.

Given this, policies for multicultural education in South Korea should cover a wide range of issues, including race, class and network and be redesigned to resolve realistic problems that have been hidden under the name of celebration of culture.

The Korean multicultural education policy has not been analyzed through Bourdieu’s concept of capital. Using a different theoretical viewpoint would be valuable to figure out the problems underlying the policy.

Schools maintain a monocultural approach to teaching even with a growing CLD school population. Multiculturalism supports the idea that school curriculum should represent and reflect the cultural make-up of the school population. Multicultural education is democratic, and it promotes cultural differences as assets rather than liabilities.

Developing a sense of belonging among immigrant youth in multicultural contexts has attracted significant attention from scholars during the last few decades. Studies have already underscored how various educational factors hinder or facilitate students’ sense of belonging to the school or the larger society. Although most students in Hong Kong schools are ethnic Chinese, a significant number of non-Chinese children make students diversity an essential aspect of schooling. The study investigated how schools can develop a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong.

As the education system in Hong Kong lacks a multicultural education policy, how can schools help develop a sense of belonging to the school and the larger society among young ethnic minority people? To answer this question, this paper consolidates the two sets of data originally gathered for two research projects. The data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine secondary school teachers (Chinese and non-Chinese) and 15 students (non-Chinese) and analysed thematically.

The thematic analysis of the qualitative data identified several challenges and opportunities for developing ethnic minority students’ sense of belonging in Hong Kong.

Researchers in comparative education can further explore how multicultural education and inclusive education approach together can help ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all and cater to students' diverse learning needs across the education systems.

Given that the aims of multicultural education and inclusive education resonate with each other, schools can focus on the Whole School Approach to developing a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong. However, policymakers and practitioners may need to adopt a multifaceted perspective on inclusive education that strives to ensure equitable quality education for all.

The study contributes to the existing body of scholarship on multicultural education and inclusive education. The study findings underscore the importance of an interdisciplinary research framework in education and advocate an integrative approach to supporting students with diverse learning needs in multicultural contexts.

This paper aims to present the qualitative findings on students’ and teachers’ experiences in communicating and interacting with students and teachers from different ethnic backgrounds in the Malaysian vision schools initiative.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted involving 15 informants comprising of three headteachers, three teachers and nine students. The interviews centred on the informants’ experiences and views living and experiencing the reality of the vision schools which is comprising three major races; Malays, Chinese and Indians; which is represented by the three school types which are a national school, Chinese vernacular and Indian vernacular schools.

The interview data revealed that the intercultural communication in the vision schools had triggered intercultural understanding and awareness of cultural diversity in the schools. However, the interview data with experienced teachers showed some drawbacks of the intercultural dynamics at the school complex. Among the weaknesses were the absence of structured and formal training on intercultural and multicultural education, lack of trust and poor social skills which may have hindered effective intercultural communication from taking place.

This study presents the informants’ experiences and views on the reality of intercultural interaction among students and teachers in the context of the Malaysian vision school initiative.

Norway is becoming increasingly multicultural, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the capital Oslo. While immigrants only make up 7 per cent of the population at the national level, the figure is 20 per cent in Oslo, where in addition, 35 per cent of all pupils in primary and secondary schools belong to a linguistic minority. In Norway, and especially in the capital Oslo, multiculturalism is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception. At the same time reading tests show that immigrant and minority children have special problems. Successful integration of “new Norwegians” starts in the kindergartens and schools, including the school library. In this situation traditional librarianship training is inadequate. Improved pedagogical and communicational skills are required of the librarian in multicultural school libraries, and drama is a promising technique to improve language proficiency among pupils. The article presents some insights from Vahl Primary School in Oslo which has the highest concentration of multicultural pupils in the country – 95 per cent.

Based on the aforementioned data, the risk index (RI) identifies the percentage of all students of a given racial/ethnic group in a given disability category. The RI is calculated by dividing the number of students in a given racial/ethnic group served in a given disability category (e.g. LD) by the total enrollment for that racial/ethnic group in the school population. The 1998 OCR data revealed risk indices for all racial/ethnic groups that were higher for LD than those found for MR. The NRC (2002) report stated that, “Asian/Pacific Islander have placement rates of 2.23%. Rates for all other racial/ethnic groups exceed 6%, and for American Indian/Alaskan Natives, the rate reached 7.45%” (p. 47). The second index, odds ratio, provides a comparative index of risk and is calculated by dividing the risk index on one racial/ethnic group by the risk index of another racial/ethnic group. In the OCR and OSEP databases, the odds ratios are reported relative to White students. If the risk index is identical for a particular minority group and White students, the odds ratio will equal 1.0. Odds ratios greater than 1.0 indicate that minority group students are at a greater risk of identification, while odds ratios of less than 1.0 indicate that they are less at risk. Using the 1998 OCR placement rates, the LD odds ratio for American Indian/Alaskan Natives is 1.24, showing that they have a 24% greater likelihood of being assigned to the LD category than White students. Odds ratios for Asian/Pacific Islander are low (0.37). For both Black and Hispanic students, the odds ratios are close to 1.0. The third index, composition index (CI), shows the proportion of all children served under a given disability category who are members of a given racial/ethnic group and is calculated by dividing the number of students of a given racial or ethnic group enrolled in a particular disability category. Two underlying assumptions of the CI are that the sum of composition indices for the five racial/ethnic groups will total 100%, and baseline enrollment of a given racial/ethnic group is not controlled. More specifically, the CI may be calculated using the percent of 6- through 21-year old population with the racial/ethnic composition of IDEA and U.S. census population statistics. For example, if 64% of the U.S. population is White, 15% is Black, 16% is Hispanic, 4% is Asian, and 1% is American Indian these data not interpretable without knowing the percentage of the racial/ethnic composition with IDEA. Hypothetically, IDEA data may show that of the 6–21 year olds served under IDEA, 63% are White, 20% are Black, 14% are Hispanic, 2% are Asian, and 1% is American Indian. To calculate disproportionality, a benchmark (e.g. 10%) against which to measure the difference between these percentages must be used. If the difference between the two percentages and the difference represented as a proportion of the group’s percent of population exceeds +10, then the racial/ethnic group is overrepresented. Conversely, if the difference between the two percentages and the difference represented as a proportion of the group’s percent of the population is larger than −10, then, the racial/ethnic group is underrepresented.