Search results

This study explores how a group of middle school social studies teachers at a school, whose student population is primarily affluent and white, include multicultural content in their curriculum. Interviews and observations along with an analysis of the textbooks, state standards, and the school’s scope and sequence were the main sources of data collection. Three common themes arose in this study in relation to the incorporation of multicultural content into the social studies curriculum: (a) There is a discrepancy between teachers’ perceptions and practices; (b) the teachers’ background in multicultural education is limited, and (c) though there is some inclusion of multicultural content, it is not put into practice in any substantial way because it is not seen as applicable to their school environment.

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.

This paper aims to identify and investigate barriers to multicultural education in Iran.

This research is a qualitative research that was done using the phenomenological method. Participants included all experts and key informants in the field of multicultural education in the country who were selected as a statistical sample in different stages of the research using purposeful sampling. The semi-structured interview was used to collect information. Two ways, including member checking and external auditing, were used to validate the information. The thematic analysis method (theme analysis), which is based on open and core coding, was used to analyze the data.

The interview data revealed that barriers are generally identified in both structural and executive parts. The structural part had two main obstacles, political and scientific-professional, and the executive part had two technical and socio-cultural barriers. Also, barriers to multicultural education in curriculum design are the ideological education system, lack of a clear framework for multicultural education, etc. Furthermore, barriers to multicultural education in the curriculum implementation are hidden curriculum, the inability of teachers to implement multicultural education, etc. Finally, barriers to multicultural education in curriculum evaluation are misconception of evaluation and limited evaluation methods.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that presents the experts' viewpoints and experiences on the barriers to multicultural education in Iran.

This paper aims to show the value of a direct handling of multicultural issues and some of the details of how to go about motivating a multicultural workforce.

Completely empirical, all based on hard‐won experience in several companies although only one is shown here.

The potential gain from properly addressing multicultural issues is huge.

This paper provides an empirical, hands‐on, front line view of the multicultural situation, not an academic or theoretical view. The information has been tested and works.

This paper presents information not otherwise available due to the personal, hands‐on experience in this subject by this author.

Web 2.0 is a collaborative web development platform that has had tremendous usage in building effective, interactive, and collaborative virtual societies at home and abroad. Multicultural study is another trend that has tremendous possibilities to help people in the fight against racism and enables them to become active members of a democratic society. Based on the advanced and interactive features, Web 2.0 technologies could be appropriate media to build many virtual collaborative societies among students in local and global classrooms. Students and teachers from any corner of the world would be able to participate in such virtual communities to practice effective multicultural skills with no or minimum cost. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

This is a conceptual framework of a Web 2.0 model. This paper focuses the background of Web 2.0 technologies and multiculturalism and a feasibility study of using Web 2.0 technologies in the teaching and learning of multiculturalism, and depicts a conceptual framework involving use of a Web 2.0‐based collaborative model for a multicultural classroom using one of the simple but powerful Web 2.0 tools, blogging technology.

Web 2.0 technologies could be crucial tools for students, teachers, educators and social workers to build and participate in many virtual collaborative societies to practice effective skills of multiculturalism.

Participants from different corners of the world are able to participate in virtual communities simultaneously to practice effective multiculturalism.

This is a newly developed model.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the double infusion (DI) model, which was developed to offer technology and multicultural teacher educators a systematic process for helping prospective teachers to become proficient in using technology to enhance student learning in K‐12 environments, while they work toward strengthening their own conceptions of critical multicultural education.

This paper reports on the implementation and conceptual analysis of this DI model, which was piloted in a 16‐week graduate level instructional technology course for future educators. Data collected for this analysis included student course projects, a focus group interview with students, and an interview with the course instructor.

The preliminary findings for this pilot project yielded that the participants had the critical dispositions needed to understand and make meaning of the “doubly infused” content, however, the opportunities they had in their graduate programs to reflect upon how these ways of thinking can be reflected in technology‐based applications were few to non‐existent.

The authors found that the organizational structure of teacher education programs plays a critical role in helping students to envision how technology can be used to support the learning goals of critical multicultural education, and conversely, how critical multicultural education, can be used to support learning within a technology context.

To better meet the learning objectives in a multicultural leadership class, I developed an assignment that uses action research and community-based research as frameworks for the course’s culminating assignment. Called the Community-Based Action Research (CBAR) assignment, the experience invites students to develop research questions related to inclusion, connect with community partners to find the answers to these questions, then share their results through interactive dialogue with colleagues. Here, I discuss the structure and implementation of the CBAR. I then reflect on student interviews and completed CBARs to illustrate the assignment’s potential to support course learning outcomes, as well as its limitations.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how collective conceptual reflections facilitated by online blogs can promote pre‐service teachers' growth in multicultural education classes.

Analysis of one blog is used to demonstrate how information gained through that triggered the instructor's informed reflection and guided subsequent in‐class teaching/learning.

Through the analysis of the demonstrative blog, it becomes apparent that while pre‐service teachers were appropriating vocabulary used in the field of multicultural education, their narratives were superficial and oversimplified. Subsequent in‐class activities designed to attend to the conceptual gaps were used to problematize the simplistic views.

The data presented cannot be generalized to all pre‐service teachers. Since the purpose of this paper is to attend to the process and not the content, the demonstrative blog serves only as one possible example, which can be easily adapted with different concepts/goals.

It is proposed that the identification of students' collective zones of proximal development (Vygotsky) in key elements of the multicultural learning chain can provide important information to the instructor for the re‐design of future teaching.

Continual assessment of the effectiveness of multicultural education classes is needed, if such classes are to have a long‐term impact on pre‐service teachers' future practice. The micro‐level method proposed in this paper offers one possible way to manage the oftentimes overwhelming amount of information that they are built upon while continually monitoring students' learning.

The purpose of this study was to find out if colleges of education in Botswana were preparing teachers to meet the diverse needs of prospective students in primary schools, and what were the teachers’ attitudes toward teaching such students.

This study used questionnaire and interview methods to collect information from the students of a college of education in Botswana, who were undertaking teaching practices in various primary schools at the time of their study.

The findings of this study show that the pre-service teachers were aware of multiculturalism in schools, but were not prepared by their colleges of education to teach culturally diverse students.

The implication is that colleges of education should design programs that adequately prepare teachers to better meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students in formal education to achieve true democracy in education.

This study is essential in Botswana because multiculturalism seems to be lacking in the Botswana education system. Mokgosi and Jotia (2013) are concerned that the Botswana curricular lacks diversity in approach and is geared toward addressing the needs of the mainstream in Botswana society. In the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few (if any) studies that explores pre-service teachers’ preparedness for teaching multicultural students.

Valuing diversity emphasizes the awareness, recognition, and appreciation of human differences and revolves around creating an inclusive environment in which everyone feels esteemed. This generally takes place through a series of training programs that attempt to improve interpersonal relationships among workers by asking participants to become more tolerant—generally understood today as an approval and acceptance of others' practices and beliefs. Because tolerance is such a highly desirable quality in many Western societies, and seemingly one of its few non‐controversial values, rarely is its significance questioned. Nevertheless, contemporary interpretations of tolerance can be problematic for multicultural programs, and tolerance understood as respect and civility toward others may be a more appropriate tool to easing hostile tensions between individuals and groups and to helping communities move past intractable conflict. The purpose of this paper is to offer a reinterpretation of tolerance.

This literature review suggests that contemporary interpretations of tolerance often used in multicultural workshops as the recognition, appreciation, acceptance, and celebration of differences may be problematic.

An understanding of tolerance involving civility and respect for others, not their beliefs or conduct, may lead to greater effectiveness of diversity training efforts. This new interpretation of tolerance may also help counter the belief among a number of leaders, particularly in Europe, that multiculturalism has failed.

Given the resistance and backlash that sometimes emerge in response to terms such as “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “discrimination,” it is possible that focusing on civility instead could improve the efficacy of existing multicultural training programs.