Introduction

Multicultural education means different things to different people. However,

the differences are not as great, confusing, or contradictory as some critics and
analysts claim. Many of these differences are more semantic than substantive, a
reflection of the developmental level in the field and the disciplinary
orientation of advocates. One should expect people who have been involved in
a discipline or educational movement for a long time to understand and talk
about it differently from those who are new to it. Similarly, educators who look
at schooling from the vantage point of sociology, psychology, or economics
will have differing views of the key concerns of schooling. Yet, these disparate
analysts may agree on which issues are the most critical ones. Such differences
over means coupled with widespread agreement on substance are naturally
found in discussions of multicultural education. But this diversity should not be
a problem, especially when we consider that multicultural education is all about
plurality.

The field includes educational scholars, researchers, and practitioners from a

wide variety of personal, professional, philosophical, political, and pedagogical
backgrounds. Therefore, we should expect that they will use different points of
reference in discussing ethnic diversity and cultural pluralism. Yet, when
allowances are made for these differences, a consensus on the substantive
components of multicultural education quickly emerges. Such agreement is
evident in areas such as the key content dimensions, value priorities, the
justification for multicultural education, and its expected outcomes. Only when
these fundamentals are articulated do variations emerge.

Some advocates talk about expected outcomes, while others consider the major
determining factor to be the group being studied; the arena of school action is
the primary focus for one set of advocates, and still others are most concerned
with distinctions between theory and practice. Some people are selective about
where to begin and what to emphasize in cultural pluralism. Others are more
inclusive and want its impact to be felt in all dimensions and on every level.
Regardless of these variations, all conceptions of multicultural education share
four characteristics: (1) they are based upon a common set of assumptions, (2)
they evolve out of common concerns, (3) they contain common guidelines for
action, (4) they share a desire to make cultural pluralism and ethnic diversity
integral parts of the educational process.

When planning for multicultural education in school programs, it is important

to allow different conceptions of multicultural education to be expressed in the
school decisionmaking process rather than to insist on one definition.
Conceptions of multicultural education contain value beliefs and reflect the
varying levels of understanding among people involved in the school
decisionmaking process. Conceptions of multicultural education and the value
beliefs within them delineate the scope, focus, and boundaries of the field of
multicultural education. These conceptions are guidelines for action and need
to be clearly understood early in the process of making educational decisions.
Accordingly, this synthesis includes various conceptions and definitions of
multicultural education and outlines the implications of these definitions for
practice.

Definitions of Multicultural Education

Definitions of multicultural education vary. Some definitions rely on the

cultural characteristics of diverse groups, while others emphasize social
problems (particularly those associated with oppression), political power, and
the reallocation of economic resources. Some restrict their focus to people of
color, while others include all major groups that are different in any way from
mainstream Americans. Other definitions limit multicultural education to
characteristics of local schools, and still others provide directions for school
reform in all settings regardless of their characteristics. The goals of these
diverse types of multicultural education range from bringing more information
about various groups to textbooks, to combatting racism, to restructuring the
entire school enterprise and reforming society to make schools more culturally
fair, accepting, and balanced. For this reason, the field of multicultural
education is referred to interchangeably as multicultural education, education
that is multicultural, and antiracist education.

The following are the most frequently used definitions of multicultural

education:

• An idea, an educational reform movement, and a process intended to

change the structure of educational institutions so that all students have
an equal chance to achieve academic success
• A philosophy that stresses the importance, legitimacy, and vitality of
ethnic and cultural diversity in shaping the lives of individuals, groups,
and nations
• A reform movement that changes all components of the educational
enterprise, including its underlying values, procedural rules, curricula,
instructional materials, organizational structure, and governance policies
to reflect cultural pluralism
• An ongoing process that requires long term investments of time and
effort as well as carefully planned and monitored actions (Banks &
Banks, 1993).
• Institutionalizing a philosophy of cultural pluralism within the
educational system that is grounded in principles of equality, mutual
respect, acceptance and understanding, and moral commitment to social
justice (Baptiste, 1979)
• Structuring educational priorities, commitments, and processes to reflect
the cultural pluralism of the United States and to ensure the survival of
group heritages that make up society, following American democratic
ideals (AACTE, 1973; Hunter, 1974)
• An education free of inherited biases, with freedom to explore other
perspectives and cultures, inspired by the goal of making children
sensitive to the plurality of the ways of life, different modes of analyzing
experiences and ideas, and ways of looking at history found throughout
the world (Parekh, 1986, pp. 2627)
• A humanistic concept based on the strength of diversity, human rights,
social justice, and alternative lifestyles for all people, it is necessary for a
quality education and includes all efforts to make the full range of
cultures available to students; it views a culturally pluralistic society as a
positive force and welcomes differences as vehicles for better
understanding the global society (ASCD Multicultural Education
Commission, in Grant, 1977b, p. 3)
• An approach to teaching and learning based upon democratic values that
foster cultural pluralism; in its most comprehensive form, it is a
commitment to achieving educational equality, developing curricula that
builds understanding about ethnic groups, and combatting oppressive
practices (Bennett, 1990)
• A type of education that is concerned with various groups in American
society that are victims of discrimination and assaults because of their
unique cultural characteristics (ethnic, racial, linguistic, gender, etc.); it
includes studying such key concepts as prejudice, identity, conflicts, and
alienation, and modifying school practices and policies to reflect an
appreciation for ethnic diversity in the United States (Banks, 1977)
• Acquiring knowledge about various groups and organizations that
oppose oppression and exploitation by studying the artifacts and ideas
that emanate from their efforts (Sizemore, 1981)
• Policies and practices that show respect for cultural diversity through
educational philosophy, staffing composition and hierarchy, instructional
materials, curricula, and evaluation procedures (Frazier, 1977; Grant,
1977)
 • Comprehensive school reform and basic education for all students that
challenges all forms of discrimination, permeates instruction and
interpersonal relations in the classroom, and advances the democratic
principles of social justice (Nieto, 1992)

These various definitions contain several points in common. Advocates agree

that the content of multicultural education programs should include ethnic
identities, cultural pluralism, unequal distribution of resources and
opportunities, and other sociopolitical problems stemming from long histories
of oppression. They believe that, at best, multicultural education is a
philosophy, a methodology for educational reform, and a set of specific content
areas within instructional programs. Multicultural education means learning
about, preparing for, and celebrating cultural diversity,or learning to be
bicultural. And it requires changes in school programs, policies, and practices.

Multiculturalists explicitly value diversity and agree that the specific content,
structures, and practices employed in achieving multicultural education will
differ depending on the setting. Therefore, it is useful for educators to develop
their own definitions of multicultural education, within the general boundaries
outlined above, to fit their specific needs, rather than imposing a universal
structure to implement multicultural education.

Multiculturalists also agree that multicultural education has implications for

decisionmaking that will affect operations at all levels of education, including
instruction, administration, governance, counseling, program planning,
performance appraisal, and school climate. Thus, everyone involved must play
an active role in implementing multicultural education. Promoting diversity
means acknowledging diversity, incorporating diversity into all levels, and
demonstrating pride in cultural pluralism along with a sincere belief that
diversity is desirable.

The actions taken in schools to adopt multicultural education should reflect the
race, language, ethnicity, habits, and customs of ethnic groups throughout the
global community. In order to promote a comprehensive understanding of
cultural groups, we must use a variety of methods and a composite of various
areas of scholarship, including the humanities, arts, social sciences, history,
politics, and sciences.

To implement multicultural education fully, fundamental changes will need to

be made in the conception, organization, and execution of the educational
process. These changes require modifications in an educational system that has
been governed with a monocultural orientation based on Eurocentric, middle
class cultural norms. Thus, implied in the definitions given above is another
concept that finds general agreement among multiculturalists: multiculturalism
requires simultaneous changes on multiple levels of schooling. These changes
must be deliberate, longrange, ongoing, and,most important,comprehensive.

The Need for Multicultural Education

Multicultural education should become a regular part of education in the United

States for three major reasons: the social realities of U.S. society, the influence
of culture and ethnicity on human growth and development, and the conditions
of effective teaching and learning. These reasons explain not only the need for
multicultural education, but also what its content emphasis should be and how
it should be taught. Each reason plays an important and unique role in
establishing the justifications, parameters, and directions for multicultural
education.

Social Realities

The United States is extremely culturally pluralistic, socially stratified, and

racially divided. Popular news magazines, such as Time and U.S. News and
World Report, often reiterate this fact. The April 9, 1990, issue
of Time examined the growing percentage of people of color in the U.S.
population. A November 1993 special edition of the same magazine explored
the effects of immigration on the "changing face of America." Diversity of
race, culture, ethnicity, social class, religion, language, and national origin is a
fundamental feature of interpersonal interactions and community structures.

However, in the more formal aspects of society, such as institutional policies,

practices, and power allocation, Anglocentric and middleclass cultural values
predominate. The organization and government of schools provides one
illustration of this condition. Most school structures and procedures are
grounded in mainstream cultural conceptions of law, order, reason, and
rationality. Another illustration of the predominance of Anglocentric,
middleclass culture is that the significant power positions in politics and
economics tend to be held by people from this cultural background. A third
illustration of this predominance is the extent to which intimate relationships
are established along ethnic, racial, and social lines in the United States. In
forming marriage partnerships and religious affiliations (two of the most
intimate contexts of interpersonal relations), United States citizens are
predominantly ethnic in their choices.
Despite the pluralism of United States society, most people live in relatively
isolated enclaves, away from others who are racially, socially, and culturally
different. Individuals from the same ethnic groups live in close proximity to
one another, creating largely single race or ethnic group geographic clusters,
such as Anglo suburbs, Hispanic barrios, Chinatowns, Little Italys, and Little
Japans. The population tends to be separated along economic lines, so that
members of the middle, upper, and lower social classes within and across
ethnic groups do not interact with one another on substantive or egalitarian
levels. The divisions between these groups are increasing instead of
diminishing.

Separation along racial and economic lines is pronounced in the United States
even in regions that appear to have racially mixed residential areas. This
mixture only appears on the surface; in reality, these apparently desegregated
communities contain insulated ethnic and racial pockets. Similarly, even in
many legally desegregated schools, the students tend to resegregate themselves
in social interactions and friendship choices.

The relative physical isolation of ethnic groups in the United States means that
individuals in these groups are much more likely to engage in qualitative
interactions with people who are like themselves than with people from
different ethnic groups. Interactions with people who are different are transitory
and perfunctory. The absence of close and significant interactions across ethnic,
social, and cultural lines may reinforce stereotypes and cause individuals to be
suspicious and distrustful,even fearful,of those who are different. Multicultural
education is needed to help reverse these trends and attitudes by teaching youth
about culturally different groups and by providing opportunities for individuals
from diverse backgrounds to learn, live, and work together.

Although laws exist to prohibit discrimination based on race, color, gender,

age, and creed, the society of the United States continues to be plagued by
attitudes and behaviors that are derogatory to some ethnic, cultural, and social
groups, and preferential to others. Thus, unofficial inequality flourishes,
manifesting itself in racism, ethnocentrism, prejudices, favoritism,
discrimination, cultural appropriation, and cultural hegemony. One revealing
sign of such inequality is the frequency with which racial hostilities are
reported in headline news. Another is the absence of some ethnic groups, such
as Native Americans and Latinos, in leadership positions, and their virtual
invisibility in the national popular culture.
Many people in the United States still believe that there is a single acceptable
way to live, look, and behave as an American and a human being. The
standards for determining what is appropriate derive from the Eurocentric
mainstream culture. Anyone who deviates from these standards is considered to
be unAmerican; they become objects of scorn and are subjected to
discrimination, being denied equal access to institutional opportunities, political
rights, economic rewards, and respect for their human dignity. Multicultural
education is a potential means for correcting these distortions and inequities.

The recent revival of racial hate groups such as the skinheads and neoNazis;
acts of racial hostility such as racial slurs directed toward AfricanAmericans,
KoreanAmericans, and MexicanAmericans; cross burnings in AfricanAmerican
neighborhoods; attacks by groups of ethnic youths against other ethnic groups;
and recent cases of blatant police brutality against AfricanAmericans in Los
Angeles and Detroit are symptoms of the inherent social racism that prevails in
United States society, where citizens have not learned to understand, respect,
and value diversity. Another indication of this social deficiency is the
persistence of stereotypic attitudes toward ethnic groups. In a recent study of
ethnic images, Smith (1990) reports that negative perceptions of groups of
color,especially AfricanAmericans and Hispanics,are common in contemporary
society. These groups are still considered to be less hardworking, more violent,
less intelligent, and more unpatriotic than Anglos.

Research being conducted by Margaret Beale Spencer (1984, 1985, 1988)

indicates that even though AfricanAmerican children between 3 and 11 years
old obtain high scores on personal selfconcept measures, society still shows a
preference for whites and a tendency to attribute positive traits to whites, while
assigning negative traits to blacks. Thus, even young students seem to have a
double consciousness, because they are able to separate their personal identities
and selfesteem from knowledge about racial groups in society. They can
simultaneously feel good about themselves and have negative attitudes toward
their racial and ethnic groups.

Discrimination and racism are evident in the patterns of unemployment,

imprisonment, poor health care, and educational failures, in which the numbers
of individuals of color are disproportionately high. These attitudes and
behaviors directly contradict the American democratic ideals of freedom,
equality, and justice for everyone. They also belie the claim that significant
progress is being made in correcting social inequalities. Multicultural education
programs that help youths learn to value and celebrate diversity and engage in
social action to institutionalize these values have the potential to help society
live up to both the letter and spirit of its democratic ideals.

The widely held assumption held in the United States that American society
should be a homogenized melting pot has destructive results. This assumption
works to demean some segments of society and deny acceptance of diversity.
Pluralism is a vital functional force in society, even though it is not supported
and embraced in institutional policies and practices (e.g., in housing authorities,
school districts, and city government) and in the habits of communities. Many
culturally different individuals and groups have stopped trying to deny their
ethnicity for the sake of being accepted unconditionally into mainstream
society. They now insist that there is no inherent contradiction between
allegiance to their own ethnic and cultural heritages and being an American.
Instead, these dual identities are complementary and should be respected and
promoted.

One of the most distinctive and salient traits of the United States is the way in
which its incredible diversity has been fashioned into a unique culture that is a
mosaic or synergy of elements from many cultures. Ethnic and cultural
pluralism is an everpresent influence in all aspects of American history, life,
and culture. No significant event in the historical and contemporary
development of the country has occurred without some kind of ethnic influence
and contribution. This vitalizing presence is evident in science and technology,
economics and politics, art and literature, business and industry, entertainment
and recreation, and popular culture. If one of the primary functions of schooling
is to transmit the sociocultural legacy of the nation to its young citizens, then
our educational system must incorporate multiculturalism as a persistent and
routine component of programs and practices.

The increasing ethnic diversity of the United States population makes

multicultural education for all students an imperative, particularly if education
is to fulfill its basic functions by being personally meaningful, socially relevant,
culturally accurate, and pedagogically sound. Demographic analyses of the
population distribution of U.S. citizens indicate that Hispanics and
AfricanAmericans account for the highest percentage of population growth.

The total population of students of color grew between 1980 and 1988 to
almost 30 percent, compared to 24 percent in the 1970s (U.S. Department of
Education, 1992). As with the general population, these trends are expected to
continue well into the next century. The diversity of the student population is
further increased by the high rate of AfricanAmerican and Hispanic youths
living in poverty (45.1% and 39.3% in 1987) and the growing number of
immigrant students from Latin American and Asian countries whose first
languages are not English and whose home cultures are not based on a
Eurocentric or Western model.

The net result of these demographic changes is that the United States is
becoming a more pluralistic society than it has ever been. Diversity in
education, based on ethnicity, social class, language, nonWestern national
origins, economic status, cultures, and interests, is no longer a luxury or a
matter of choice,it is a necessity for the survival of society. Unfortunately,
while educational policies, programs, and practices that systematically ignore
these demographic realities are unethical, immoral, and reprehensible, they are
not technically illegal. If the principles of access and availability that are
embedded in desegregation laws were extended to educational programs, then
failure to make the substance of curriculum and instruction culturally pluralistic
would be illegal.

As different ethnic, racial, social, and cultural groups grow in size and political
significance, they will demand that social policies and programs be responsive
to their particular needs and interests. Satisfying these demands will require
more cultural sensitivity, "rainbow" coalitions, and pluralistically negotiated
compromises. Ethnic and special interest group tensions may accelerate as a
result of competition for limited resources such as jobs, housing, and political
power; definitions and visions of what it means to be American will change;
and there will be greater differences of opinion about the sources of the nation's
present success, future potential, and most desirable images and symbols
(Henry, 1990). None of these issues will be resolved without some fundamental
knowledge of, sensitivity to, and respect for culturally and ethnically diverse
experiences, perspectives, and peoples, and without some power sharing among
these groups. Multicultural education can develop skills to meet these needs.
Therefore, the wellbeing of U.S. society and education for and about cultural
pluralism are inextricably linked.

Another feature of American society that underscores the importance of

multicultural education is its growing involvement in global affairs, increased
global interdependence, and the shifting international balance of power. Some
recent examples of international developments that have direct ramifications
for the continuous leadership of the United States in global affairs are the
challenge to U.S. dominance of the world's marketplace by Japan, Germany,
and Korea; military crises in the Middle East that affect the oil supply and
reserves; the U.S. fiscal resource allocations between military and social
services expenditures; governmental instability in South and Central America,
which places incredible demands on U.S. military support and foreign loan
capacity; famine and droughts in Africa and Asia that require U.S. support in
health care and food supplies; increasing birth rates and epidemic illnesses;
human rights issues around the globe; and growing foreign investments in the
United States.

These developments mean that U.S. citizens must interact in different ways and
under different circumstances with unfamiliar peoples at home and abroad.
Successful interactions and relationships require the use of knowledge,
attitudes, and skills about cultural diversity within a global context. For
example, the success of U.S. international diplomacy is becoming increasingly
dependent upon knowledge and principles of cultural pluralism. Multicultural
education can create a foundation for effective and successful diplomacy in the
global context (Bennett, 1990).

Culture and Human Development

Culture shapes human behavior, attitudes, and values. Human behavior results
from a process of socialization, and socialization always takes place within the
context of specific cultural and ethnic environments (Kallen, 1970; Novak,
1975; Pai, 1984). As Kimball (1987) states, the basic caretaking practices of
human survival are essentially the same for everyone, but their pattern,
organization, and learning are specific. Hence, humans are social beings who
carry within them their individual biological and psychological traits as well as
the legacies of their ethnic group's historical background, collective heritage,
and cultural experiences.

When educators claim that their top priority is to treat all children like human
beings, regardless of ethnic identity, cultural background, or economic status,
they are creating a paradox. A person's humanity cannot be isolated or divorced
from his or her culture or ethnicity. One cannot be human without culture and
ethnicity, and one cannot have culture and ethnicity without being human. As
Lisa Delpit states, "If one does not see color, one does not really see children"
(Delpit, 1992). Therefore, to acknowledge and respect one another,to be fully
human,requires mutual understanding and appreciation based on cultural
understanding (Gay, 1991; Spindler, 1987).

The influences of culture and ethnicity are established early and thoroughly in
the process of human growth and development, and they prevail thereafter for
the remainder of one's life. Some secondary elements of culture can be
modified over time and with experience, but the core features continue to be the
mainstay of a person's sense of being and identity throughout life. Kallen
(1970, pp. 184185) makes this point cogently in the following observations:

Deeply ingrained cultural socialization becomes problematic in education when

the schooling process operates on one cultural model to the exclusion of all
others, or when culturally different children are expected to set aside all their
cultural habits as a condition for succeeding in school. Such a demand is not
only unreasonable, but is impossible to achieve. Attempts to comply with it
may lead to cultural adaptation, marginality, alienation, and isolation. With the
exception of adaptation, none of these responses is conducive to maximizing
the human wellbeing and academic success of students. The incompatibilities
or discontinuities between the culture of the school and those of different ethnic
groups need to be major issues of analysis in making decisions about
educational programs and practices that reflect and promote cultural diversity
(Spindler, 1987b). These incompatibilities or discontinuities are especially
important to any understanding of the aspects of human behavior that most
directly affect teaching and learning, such as values orientation, interpersonal
relations, communication styles, time usage, performance styles, procedural
rules, and systems of problem solving and cognitive processing (Boggs,
WatsonGegeo, & McMillen, 1985; Kochman, 1981; Shade, 1981, 1989).

Many of the significant discontinuities that exist between mainstream culture,as

displayed in school procedures,and the cultures of various ethnic groups
operate on a subconscious level and without deliberate intention. The
discontinuities occur when people behave naturally, because their behavior is
strongly influenced by cultural conditioning. Responsible education
decisionmaking in a pluralistic society cannot result if educational leaders
continue to function without being conscious of how culture shapes their own
and their students' attitudes, values, and behaviors. By becoming more aware
that they are products of their cultures and live within given value and symbol
systems and by reflecting on this condition, educators can free themselves from
the tyranny of their own cultures and free children from the damaging effects of
premature, inaccurate, and prejudiced interpretations of their culturally induced
behavior (Spindler, 1987a).

Teaching and Learning

One premise of multicultural education is that teaching and learning are

cultural processes that take place in a social context. To make teaching and
learning more accessible and equitable for a wide variety of students, students'
cultures need to be more clearly understood. Such an understanding can be
achieved by analyzing education from multiple cultural perspectives and
thereby removing the blindness imposed on education by the dominant cultural
experience (Spindler, 1987b).

Schools are microcosms of mainstream society (LaBelle, 1976). In their

procedural norms, codes of behavior, structural arrangements, and distribution
of power, privilege, and responsibility, they mirror Anglocentric cultural
values. Just as classroom teachers, school administrators, and policymakers
carry their cultural experiences and perspectives into their educational
decisions and actions, students from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds do
likewise in their learning attitudes and behaviors. The inevitable result when
these different systems encounter each other in pluralistic classrooms is cultural
conflict that, when not deliberately mediated, can jeopardize the effectiveness
of the instructional process. Educational activities and processes that are not
scrutinized for their cultural content and implications can inadvertently give
preferential treatment to students whose cultural backgrounds are most like
school cultural norms:

The way…in which the teacher responds to student behavior, the often subtle
distinctions made between the sexes, the nature of the classroom control
mechanisms, the topics and issues chosen for classroom study, the schedule of
activities in terms of the amount of time devoted to particular aspects of the
school day, the spatial organization of the classroom, and the rewards and
punishments meted out are…culturally loaded and…transmit messages [that]
reinforce certain student behaviors and discourage others. (La Belle, 1976, p.
73)

School leaders often operate on the faulty assumption that their values, beliefs,
and actions are the norm for everyone, exist beyond any cultural constraints, or
are culturally neutral. They assume that their notions of what is desirable
knowledge and how it can best be taught and learned are governed entirely by
general principles of good pedagogy, which has nothing to do with any specific
culture. This belief is far from the truth. Culture influences and shapes all
dimensions of the learning and teaching processes employed in schools.

Schools are expected to serve the human needs of cultural socialization,

transmission, and selfperpetuation, and teach academic skills. Every action that
they take is, unavoidably, culturebound. Effective understanding of the
educational process in a pluralistic society such as the United States requires
that teaching and learning be viewed as aspects of various cultural milieux
(Kimball, 1978).
Because ethnic and cultural diversity in U.S. society is not sufficiently reflected
in educational decisions and practices, schools frequently become
discontinuous or out of sync with the populations that they are supposed to
serve. This discontinuity exists most often when schools are controlled by
individuals from the dominant culture who use only their standards to guide
actions, but the population that they serve does not practice similar cultural
standards (La Belle, 1976). The resulting disjunctures cause students and
teachers to misinterpret one another's attitudes and actions. These cultural
incompatibilities are often mistaken for intellectual inabilities, and pedagogical
decisions are made accordingly. Failing to understand the cultural style of some
AfricanAmericans, for example, may cause teachers erroneously to conclude
that these students have limited critical thinking and reasoning abilities. The
reluctance of American Indian children to operate on a tightly controlled time
schedule and engage in highly individualistic and competitive activities may be
misinterpreted as lack of initiative, motivation, and responsibility.
Consequently, educators often engage in "miseducating practices" because of
their failure to understand the cultural characteristics of their ethnically,
racially, socially, and linguistically diverse students.

General theories of learning and principles of developmental psychology that

educators frequently use as the bases for making instructional decisions must
be operationalized in the context of culturally pluralistic school situations and
student populations. Of particular significance are the field psychology
principles of contiguity, similarity, and continuity; the basic idea of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, which holds that some psychological needs must be
satisfied before others can be addressed; Erikson's principles of identity
development; the notion that for educational experiences to be relevant they
must be perceived as personally meaningful to students; the detrimental effects
that stress and anxiety can have on academic efforts and achievement; and the
extent to which school learning follows procedural rules and guidelines that are
compatible with those that students are accustomed to in their cultural
communities. Embedded in these principles is recognition of the fact that the
process of learning involves more than intellectual ability and mastery of
cognitive content. It also includes the psychoemotional disposition of the
students and teachers, and the environmental settings or climates in which
teaching and learning take place.

If students feel that the school environment is alien and hostile toward them or
does not affirm and value who they are (as many students of color believe),
they will not be able to concentrate as thoroughly as they might on academic
tasks. The stress and anxiety that accompany this lack of support and
affirmation cause their mental attention, energy, and efforts to be diffused
between protecting their psyches from attack and attending to academic tasks.
Thus, stress "adversely affects students' daily academic performances by
reducing their willingness to persist at academic tasks and interfering with the
cognitive processes involved in learning" (Gougis, 1986, p. 147). Furthermore,
learning is a highrisktaking enterprise that works better when students are made
to feel secure and centered in who they are and what they are already capable
of doing before they are asked to take on new ventures. Psychological security
and a positive feeling of selfworth are prerequisites for the more abstract need
to know and learn. These are some of the ideas and agruments that undergird
the theory of Afrocentricity and the efforts by some school districts such as
Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Seattle to create Afrocentric schools
(Asante, 1991/92; Hilliard, 1991/92).

For educational experiences to be relevant to culturally different students, they

must reflect and connect with the students' particular life experiences and
perspectives. This need reflects the fact that learning is more effective when
new ideas are related to prior knowledge and initially are taught in ways
familiar to students (e.g., the principles of continuity and similarity) (Boggs,
WatsonGregeo, & McMillen, 1985; Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1985; Neisser,
1986). It evokes two other beliefs common to U.S. education philosophy: "start
teaching where students are" and "expand the social, cultural, and intellectual
horizons of students." These beliefs and principles require that cultural
diversity be a driving force in all educational decisionmaking, from
determining students' readiness for learning to designing curricula, selecting
instructional materials, appraising performance, and developing appropriate
programs and teaching techniques for culturally different students. The reason,
simply stated, is that students learn in different ways and under different
conditions, many of which are governed by their cultural socialization.

Some of the most salient specific ideas embedded in the three general
categories of assumptions about the nature of society in the United States and
the relationships between culture, humanity, teaching, and learning discussed
above can be summarized as follows:

• Multicultural education is a basic for all students in a culturally,

ethnically, and socially pluralistic society such as the United States.
• Ethnicity and culture are influential variables in shaping individual
identity and behavior.
• cultural socialization are ingrained early and deeply in the human
personality and persist thereafter.
 • Cultural diversity is a normative description of U.S. society.
• Multicultural education is compatible with U.S. democratic ideals and is
complementary to quality education.
• Because most people in the U.S. live in ethnic and cultural enclaves,
they have only tangential interactions with and superficial knowledge of
people who are culturally different from themselves.
• Ethnicity, culture, and humanness are inextricably linked and
interrelated.
• No one model for being American or human is equally applicable to
everyone.
• Culture shapes human behavior, values, and beliefs
• Culture and ethnicity have both intrinsic worth and instrumental value
for creating an effective and representative system of education that
mirrors social realities in the United States and the world.
• The increasing diversification of U.S. society and persistent racial
tensions heighten the need for multicultural education in all schools.
• Education decisions made without due consideration of cultural
pluralism cannot serve the needs of the greatest number of students in
the best possible way.
• Application of and knowledge about cultural pluralism improve the
quest for educational access, equity, and excellence for all students.
• Incompatibilities in cultural structures, procedural rules, value
orientations, referent points, and performance styles may cause school
failure more than intellectual ability for some culturally different
students. Thus, maximizing school success requires social competence,
academic capability, and cultural congruity.

Major Goals of Multicultural Education

The expected outcomes of multicultural education are embedded in its

definitions, justification, and assumptions, and they exhibit some clearly
discernible patterns. While specific goals and related objectives are quite
numerous,and vary according to contextual factors such as school settings,
audiences, timing, purposes, and perspectives,they fall into seven general
clusters. They cover all three domains of learning (cognitive, affective, and
action) and incorporate both the intrinsic (ends) and instrumental (means)
values of multicultural education. These goal clusters are ethnic and cultural
literacy, personal development, attitude and values clarification, multicultural
social competence, basic skills proficiency, educational equity and excellence,
and empowerment for societal reform. Each one is discussed briefly below.
Developing Ethnic and Cultural Literacy

One of the primary and persistent reasons for the movement to include cultural
pluralism in school programs is to correct what advocates call "sins of omission
and commission." First, we must provide students with information about the
history and contributions of ethnic groups who traditionally have been excluded
from instructional materials and curricula; and second, we must replace the
distorted and biased images of those groups that were included in the curricula
with more accurate and significant information. These goals continue to be
major concerns of multicultural education, because many students still know
too little about the history, heritage, culture, and contributions of groups of
color in the United States. Groups that are highly visible in the popular culture,
such as AfricanAmericans and Mexican Americans, are somewhat more
familiar to students than others that are smaller in number and less accessible in
the public press, such as Asian Americans and Native Americans. The
information about and images of ethnic group members and experiences
portrayed in popular culture and mass media are often inaccurate, distorted,
superficial, onedimensional, and incomplete. The prominence of
AfricanAmericans in the music and professional athletics industries and their
disproportionate representation in penal institutions may lead some students to
conclude that the only contributions to U.S. society by these groups has been in
these highly visible areas. Similarly, if students are exposed only to racist
portrayals of Native Americans, which cast them as noble savages caught
forever in a historical time warp, wearing skimpy clothes, feathers, and war
paint, living in teepees, and riding horses bareback, they have no idea of how to
place Indians accurately in contemporary times, productively engaged in the
wide variety of activities that characterize human life.

The persistence of these types of caricatures about ethnic groups, coupled with
restricted interethnic group interaction, reinforces the need for students to learn
accurate information about ethnic groups' contributions to the history, life, and
culture of the United States. Thus, a major goal of multicultural education is to
learn about the historical backgrounds, languages, cultural characteristics,
contributions, critical events, significant individuals, and social, political, and
economic conditions of various majority and minority ethnic groups, such as
AfricanAmericans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians, and
Eastern Europeans. This information should be comprehensive, analytical, and
comparative, and should include similarities and differences within and among
groups.
This goal is appropriate for both majority students and for those who are
members of various ethnic minority groups. A mistake frequently made by
educators is to assume either that members of ethnic minority groups already
know their culture and history or that this kind of knowledge is relevant only to
them. Multicultural education argues to the contrary. Membership in an ethnic
group does not guarantee selfknowledge or exclusive ownership of knowledge
about that group. Acquiring knowledge about the history, life, and culture of
ethnic groups is appropriate for all students because they need to learn more,
with greater accuracy, about their own cultural heritages and those of others.
Furthermore, knowledge about ethnic pluralism is a necessary foundation for
respecting, appreciating, valuing, and celebrating diversity, both nationally and
internationally.

Personal Development

The psychological underpinnings of multicultural education explain its

emphasis on developing greater selfunderstanding, positive selfconcepts, and
pride in one's ethnic identity. Emphasizing these areas is part of multicultural
education's goal of contributing to the personal development of students, which
contends that a better sense of self contributes to the overall intellectual,
academic, and social achievement of students. Students who feel good about
themselves are likely to be more open and receptive to interaction with others
and to respect their cultures and identities. This argument is further justified by
claims made about the reciprocal relationship between selfconcept, academic
achievement, ethnicity, culture, and individual identity.

Many students have internalized the negative and distorted conceptions of their
own and other ethnic groups, a process that has been promoted in larger
society. Students from groups of color may be convinced that their heritages
have little of value to offer, while those from dominant groups may have
inflated notions about their significance. Developing a better understanding of
their own and other ethic groups and cultural experiences can correct these
distortions. Multicultural education also helps educators to fulfill the goals of
maximizing human potential, meeting individual needs, and teaching the whole
child by enhancing feelings of personal worth, confidence, and competence. It
creates a psychosocial state of readiness in individuals and learning
environments, which has a positive effect upon academic efforts and task
mastery.

Attitudes and Value Clarification

Strong ethnic prejudice and ethnocentric values persist in U.S. society, based
upon and driven by beliefs that have no basis in fact, but are commonly evoked.
Several examples illustrate this point. The high unemployment rates among
AfricanAmericans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and American Indians
lead some people to believe that these groups are lazy and have no work ethic.
The control of most major institutions and power positions by European
Americans cause some people to think that these positions were acquired
because European Americans have innate intellectual superiority and are
destined to be leaders. The prominence of recent immigrants and racial group
members in lowlevel service jobs cause some people to conclude that their
economic status is synonymous with their human worth, and to act accordingly.
Asian Americans are thought to be highly intelligent because Japanese and
Chinese Americans often perform well on selected measures of intellectual
ability.

The tendency to ascribe attributes and behaviors of individuals to the entire

ethnic group to which they belong is the basis for perpetuating stereotypes,
prejudices, and racism. This tendency, along with the disparities in distribution
of opportunities and rewards in American society, supports multicultural
education's goal of clarifying ethnic attitudes and values. It includes
confronting prejudices, stereotypes, ethnocentrism, and racism directly; critical
analysis of the sources, expressions, and effects of negative ethnic attitudes and
values; reconciling differences between ethnic beliefs and truth, supported by
documented facts; and developing new, more positive, and enriched ethnic
attitudes, beliefs, and values to replace the old, negative ones.

Multicultural education also promotes the core values that stem from the
principles of human dignity, justice, equality, freedom, selfdetermination, and
democracy. The intent is to teach youths to respect and embrace ethnic
pluralism, to realize that cultural differences are not synonymous with
deficiencies or inferiorities, and to recognize that diversity is an integral part of
the human condition and U.S. life. Clarifying ethnic attitudes and values is
designed to help students understand that some conflict of values is
unavoidable in ethnically and racially pluralistic societies; that conflict does not
have to be corrosive and divisive,when managed well it can be a catalyst for
social progress; that there is strength in ethnic and cultural pluralism; that
ethnic allegiance and national loyalty are not irreconcilable; and that
cooperation and coalition among ethnic groups are not dependent upon having
identical beliefs, values, and behaviors (NCSS, 1992). Analyzing and clarifying
ethnic attitudes and values are key steps in the process of unleashing the
creative potential of individuals for selfrenewal and of society for continuous
growth and development.

Multicultural Social Competence

It is imperative that students learn how to interact with and understand people
who are ethnically, racially, and culturally different from themselves. The
United States and the world are becoming increasingly more diverse, compact,
and interdependent. Yet, for most students, the formative years of their lives are
spent in ethnically and culturally isolated or encapsulated enclaves. This
existence does not adequately prepare them to function effectively in ethnically
different environments and multicultural settings. Attempts at crosscultural
interactions are often stymied by negative attitudes, values, and expectations;
cultural blunders; and by trying to impose rules of social etiquette from one
cultural system onto another. The results are often heightened interracial and
interethnic group frustrations, anxiety, fears, failures, and hostilities.

Multicultural education can ease these tensions by teaching skills in

crosscultural communication, interpersonal relations, perspective taking,
contextual analysis, understanding alternative points of view and frames of
reference, and analyzing how cultural conditions affect values, attitudes,
beliefs, preferences, expectations, and behaviors. It also can help students learn
how to understand cultural differences without making hasty and arbitrary
value judgments about their intrinsic worth. Attaining these goals can be
expedited by providing wide varieties of opportunities for students to practice
their cultural competence and to interact with different ethnic peoples,
experiences, and situations.

Basic Skill Proficiency

A major goal of multicultural education is to facilitate the teaching and learning

of basic literacy skills of ethnically different students. Its importance evolves
from the persistence and magnitude of school failure of Hispanics,
AfricanAmericans, and American Indians; the relationships among relevance of
instructional materials, academic efforts, and achievement; and the fact that
multicultural educationincludes content and process, ideology and
methodology. It builds on the premise that some of this failure is due to
methodological or pedagogical inadequacies of schools and teaching instead of
the intellectual abilities of students of color.

Multicultural education can improve mastery of reading, writing, and

mathematical skills; subject matter content; and intellectual process skills such
as problem solving, critical thinking, and conflict resolution by providing
content and techniques that are more meaningful to the lives and frames of
reference of ethnically different students. Using ethnic materials, experiences,
and examples as the contexts for teaching, practicing, and demonstrating
mastery of academic and subject matter skills increases the appeal of the tools
of instruction, heightens the practical relevance of the skills to be learned, and
improves students' time on task. This combination of conditions leads to greater
focused efforts, task persistence, skill mastery, and academic achievement
(Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1985; Garcia, 1982; Boggs, WatsonGregeo, &
McMillen, 1985).

Another aspect of multicultural education that contributes directly to the

attainment of higher levels of basic skills achievement is matching teaching and
learning styles. Disjunctures in how different students learn in their cultural
communities and how they are expected to learn in school cause much time and
attention to be devoted to resolving these conflicts instead of concentrating on
academic tasks. Teaching students as they are accustomed to learning
minimizes these conflicts and channels more energy and effort directly into the
academic tasks to be accomplished (Boggs, WatsonGregeo, & McMillen, 1985;
Spindler, 1987; Neisser, 1986). Thus, culturally contextualized teaching for
making the educational process more effective for ethnically diverse students is
a fundamental principle of multicultural education.

The kinds of social climates that exist in classrooms also affect students'
performances on academic tasks. This influence is particularly true for ethnic
groups that consider social relationships and informal settings imperative to the
learning process. When teachers respond to these needs by including ethnic
symbols, images, and information in the classroom decorations, curriculum
content, and interpersonal interactions, ethnic students feel validated, at ease,
and have greater affiliation with the school. These feelings of personal
affirmation and comfort create the backdrop of personal connectedness that is
essential to students' taking ownership in learning, which, in turn, leads to more
sustained attention, effort, time on task, and improved task mastery and
academic achievement.

Educational Equity and Excellence

This goal of multicultural equity is closely related to the goal of basic skill
mastery, but is much broader and more philosophical. It derives from the notion
that educational excellence is unattainable for any student when certain groups
are denied a fair chance to receive the highest quality education possible and
when some contributions are systematically excluded from the U.S. and human
stories. It builds upon the idea that comparability instead of sameness is the key
to providing equitable educational opportunities for ethnically different
students (Gay, 1988).

In order to determine what constitutes comparability of learning opportunities,

educators must thoroughly understand how culture shapes learning styles,
teaching behaviors, and educational decisions. They must then develop a
variety of means to accomplish common learning outcomes that reflect the
preferences and styles of a wide variety of groups and individuals. By giving all
students more choices about how they will learn,choices that are compatible
with their cultural styles,none will be unduly advantaged or disadvantaged at
the procedural levels of learning. These choices will lead to closer parallelism
(e.g., equity) in opportunities to learn and more comparability in students'
achieving the maximum of their own intellectual capabilities (e.g., excellence).
Other aspects of this goal include teaching accurate information about all
segments of U.S. society; developing a sense of social consciousness, moral
courage, and commitment to equality; and acquiring skills in political activism
for reforming society to make it more humane, sympathetic toward cultural
pluralism, morally just, and egalitarian. Therefore, the multicultural goal of
achieving educational equity and excellence encompasses cognitive, affective,
and behavioral skills, as well as the principles of democracy (Banks, 1990,
1991, 1992).

Personal Empowerment for Social Reform

The ultimate goal of multicultural education is to begin a process of change in

schools that will ultimately extend to society. This goal will be accomplished
by cultivating in students attitudes, values, habits, and skills so that they can
become social change agents who are committed to reforming society in order
to eradicate ethnic and racial disparities in opportunities and are willing to act
upon this commitment. To do so, they need to improve their knowledge of
ethnic issues as well as develop decisionmaking abilities, social action skills,
leadership capabilities, a sense of political efficacy, and a moral commitment to
human dignity and equality (Banks, 1991b; NCSS, 1992). That is, they not only
need to understand and appreciate why ethnicity and cultural pluralism are
salient features of human life and U.S. society, but also how to translate this
knowledge into decisions and actions related to key sociopolitical issues,
events, concerns, and situations.
This goal and related skill development are designed to make society more
genuinely egalitarian and more accepting of cultural pluralism. They also are
intended to ensure that ethnic and cultural groups that traditionally have been
victimized and excluded will become fullfledged participants at all levels of
society, with all of the attendant rights, privileges, and responsibilities.
Multicultural education contributes directly to developing skills for democratic
citizenship in the United States and the global village. This function of
multiculturalism is what Banks (1990, 1991/92, 1993a) meant by his proposal
to use a social action approach to multicultural education, which teaches
students how to become social critics, political activists, change agents, and
competent leaders in a culturally pluralistic and ethnically diverse society and
world. It is also similar to Sleeter and Grant's (1988) conception of
multicultural education for social reconstruction. This approach focuses on
oppression and social structure inequalities, with the intention of creating a
society that better empowers and serves the needs and interests of all groups of
people. It builds personal empowerment in students by establishing relevance
between school learning and social living, providing practice in applying
knowledge and taking action to direct their own lives, and demonstrating the
power of knowledge, collaborative efforts, and political action in effecting
social change.

Approaches to Multicultural Education

Advocates of multicultural education offer many different suggestions for how

it can be accomplished in school practice. Christine Bennett, James Banks,
Ricardo Garcia, Sonia Nieto, Geneva Gay, Christine Sleeter, Carl Grant, and
Margaret Gibson are among the leaders in the field who have developed models
for implementing multicultural education. These models tend to be
developmental and cumulative, as well as somewhat historical in nature. They
start with the simplest techniques and proceed to more complex ones. They also
tend to indicate how current efforts to implement multicultural education have
evolved from those that appeared when the movement began in the late 1960s.
For example, Banks (1993a) identifies four approaches to multicultural
education, each increasingly more significant and comprehensive: (1) teaching
about contributions of culturally different groups and individuals; (2) an
additive approach in which multicultural lessons and units of study are
supplements or appendages to existing curricula; (3) a transformation approach
in which the basic nature of curriculum and instruction are changed to reflect
the perspective and experiences of diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, and social
groups; and (4) a decisionmaking and social action approach that teaches
students how to clarify their ethnic and cultural values, and to engage in socio
political action for greater equality, freedom, and justice for everyone.

Sleeter and Grant (1988; Grant & Sleeter, 1993) reviewed the published
literature on multicultural education to determine how the field was being
conceptualized. Their analysis generated four common approaches: (1)
teaching culturally different students to fit into mainstream society; (2) a
human relations approach that emphasizes diverse peoples living together
harmoniously; (3) the single group studies approach, which concentrates on
developing awareness, respect, and acceptance of one group at a time; (4)
focusing on prejudice reduction, providing equal opportunities and social
justice for all groups, and the effects of inequitable power distribution on ethnic
or cultural groups. To this list they added a fifth: education that is multicultural
and social reconstructionist and teaches students to become analytical and
critical thinkers and social reformers who are committed to redistribution of
power and other resources among diverse groups.

Since other proposed approaches to multicultural education are variations on

these suggestions by Banks and Grant and Sleeter, there is no need to elaborate
upon them here. However, three general approaches can be extrapolated from
these more specific approaches: (1) teaching content about cultural pluralism,
(2) teaching culturally different students, and (3) using cultural pluralism to
teach other academic subjects and intellectual skills. Teaching about cultural
pluralism is the most traditional and common approach. It is primarily
contentcentered, with an emphasis on developing units of instruction (lessons,
modules, courses) about the history, heritage, contributions, and social issues of
ethnic groups. These units may be designed to be included in any school
subject, but most often appear in social studies, language arts, and fine arts.
Another manifestation of this approach is analyzing textbooks and other
instructional materials for their treatment of people of color and revising them
when necessary to increase their accuracy and overall representation of cultural
diversity. Regardless of the particular strategy used, teaching about cultural
diversity tends to concentrate on providing more factually correct information
about ethnic and cultural groups that traditionally have been underrepresented
in U.S. society and educational programs or have been treated with prejudice
and bias.

Teaching the culturally different is more processoriented than contentoriented.

Its center of attention is establishing more effective instructional relationships
and rapport with students from different ethnic, cultural, and racial
backgrounds as a basis for improving educational opportunities and outcomes.
Teachers, administrators, counselors, and supervisors learn about the cultural
values and experiences of different cultural groups to determine how they may
affect attitudes and actions in teachinglearning situations. The new insights
gained are then used to determine the kinds of changes that are needed in the
educational process to make learning opportunities for ethnically different
students more comparable in kind and quality to their middleclass, Anglo
counterparts.

The underlying premise of this approach to multicultural education is that an

interactive relationship exists between culture and cognition, education and
ethnicity, and teachinglearning styles and cultural conditioning. The extent to
which these concepts are made explicit in educational decisionmaking has a
significant impact on culturally different students' access to equal status
knowledge. Whereas teaching about cultural pluralism emphasizes materials
development and curriculum design, teaching the culturally different gives
priority to teacher education, staff development, and classroom instruction. The
idea behind it is that if the attitudes, values, and knowledge teachers have about
culturally different students are improved, then the decisions they make and
actions they take in planning and implementing programs will reflect these
changes. That is, teachers will be able to provide more culturally relevant
instruction for students from different ethnic, racial, and social backgrounds.

The third approach to multicultural education combines content and process,

and is often referred to as infusion. In practice, it means using culturally
pluralistic content, experiences, and perspectives in teaching other knowledge
and skills. Ethnic and cultural materials provide the contexts for students to
practice and demonstrate mastery of more general academic and subject matter
skills. For example, ethnic novels, poetry, stories, and folklore are used in the
process of teaching various reading skills, such as comprehension, vocabulary,
and inferring meaning. Patterns of ethnic migration and settlement might be
used to teach geographic directions and locations. Ethnic and gender
employment trends could be used for students to practice and demonstrate such
mathematical skills as ratio, percentages, proportions, and probabilities. Critical
thinking, problem solving, and values analysis skills might be developed as
students examine issues, events, and situations particularly germane to the
historical and contemporary experiences of different groups of color and social
class in the United States, such as their images and portrayals in mass media,
affirmative action, economic exploitation, and political oppression.
Additionally, the knowledge that teachers and other school leaders acquire
about how cultural conditioning affects behavior in learning situations is
employed in making decisions about what instructional strategies, performance
appraisal, curricular materials, needs assessment, and learning climates are
most appropriate to maximize the educational opportunities of culturally
different students.

Using cultural pluralism in all teaching and learning activities as a way to

implement multicultural education is based on four major premises: (1) using
diversified means to achieve common learning outcomes is the best way to give
culturally different students an equal chance at comparable quality educational
opportunities; (2) cultural diversity is a characteristic trait of American society,
and since a major function of schooling is socialization into the national
culture, ethnic and cultural pluralism should be a core element of the
educational process; (3) it is more pedagogically sound for the study of cultural
pluralism to permeate all dimensions of the educational process, rather than
being taught as a separate and isolated entity; and (4) effective multicultural
education requires comprehensive efforts that integrate attitudes, values,
content, and actions and involve all aspects of the education system
simultaneously.

Key Principles of Multicultural Education

Multicultural education is based on some commonly asserted principles. The

frequency and consistency with which these principles are declared across time
and advocates are other strong indications of the consensus that exists about
some essential, baseline features of multicultural education and a convincing
counterargument to claims that the field lacks conceptual clarity.

A principle is a basic or essential quality that determines the intrinsic nature of

something. Multicultural education includes several characteristics or traits
that, as a composite, distinguish its inherent nature and quality from other
educational innovations. Parekh (1986) sets the overall tone of multicultural
education in his judgment that multicultural education is good education for all
children. To endorse multicultural education is not to imply that the entire
education system should be destroyed or that the Anglocentric cultural
dominance existing in schooling should merely be replaced with the dominance
of other ethnic cultures; neither is it to deny the need for a common national
culture. Rather, it simply says that the education system needs to be improved
by becoming less culturally monolithic, rigid, biased, hegemonic, and
ethnocentric. The prevailing norm in educational decisionmaking and operating
procedures should be cultural pluralism and heterogeneity, instead of cultural
hegemony or homogeneity. Asante (1991/92) captures this intent and
orientation in his explanation that the goal is to achieve cultural pluralism
without hierarchy.

The general principles of multicultural education are supported by several more

specific ones. Multiculturalists describe the most salient "personality traits" of
multicultural education as follows:

• A personally empowering, socially transformative, and pedagogically

humanistic process
• Correcting and rehabilitating some of the mistakes that schools have
made in educating culturally different children, especially those of color
and poverty
• A search for scholarly honesty and truth by giving due recognition to the
contributions of diverse groups and cultures to the collective
accomplishments of humankind and the United States
• Fundamentally an affective and humanistic enterprise that aims to
achieve greater understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures and
peoples
• Both content and process, structure and substance, action and reflection,
knowledge and values, philosophy and methodology,an educational
means and an end
• For all students in all grades, subjects, and school settings
• A means of achieving parity in educational opportunities for diverse
students
• A process of systematic and systemic change that is developmental,
progressive, and ongoing
• A confluence of diverse cultural heritages, experiences, perspectives,
and contributions
• Has inherent merit for its own sake, as well as instrumental value for
facilitating other educational goals
• A bridge for making meaningful connections between the abstractions of
schooling and the actual life experiences of ethnically and culturally
different students
• A vehicle for and conduit of relevance, equity, excellence, and personal
meaningfulness in education for culturally diverse students
• An acceptance and celebration of diversity as a normal fact of human
life, U.S. society, and schooling
• A personification of the U.S. democratic ideal of equality as practiced in
school programs that accept all peoples' contributions, cultures, issues,
and experiences as worth educational content
Effects of Multicultural Education

Research findings that verify the conceptual claims about the effects of
multicultural education are rather sparse. This relative lack of research is due
largely to the nature and relative youth of the field. During the 25 or so years of
multicultural education's existence, most research and scholarship have been
devoted to defining the conceptual parameters of the field, documenting
cultural characteristics, and developing sample curricula and instructional
strategies for classroom practice. The fact that multicultural education is a very
heavily affective endeavor means that it does not lend itself easily to traditional
empirical research methods and paradigms. Furthermore, since the field is still
emerging, defining itself, and charting its directions, much of the scholarly
activities deal with various segments or components of the field rather than the
field as an entity. The empirical research that does exist deals with separate
segments of the field, such as selfconcepts, literacy, cooperative learning, and
ethnic identity development.

Some of the most compelling verifications of the overall benefits of

multicultural education are autobiographical and anecdotal stories that leaders
in the field share among themselves in their interpersonal interactions.
Invariably, they testify to the positive effect of the principles and experiences
they accrued relative to their selfconcepts, selfesteem, sense of personal
confidence and competence, social and interpersonal skills, and academic
performance. These benefits, however, are not readily accessible to average
audiences, since they are not included in formal disseminations such as
conference presentations and scholarly publications. Consequently, research
findings on the effects of multicultural education are still largely preliminary,
tentative, and inconclusive. Much of it deals with identifying and describing
culturally pluralistic variables such as cultural values, learning styles,
communication styles, and presentation/performance styles of various ethnic
groups (Kochman, 1981; Neisser, 1985; Shade, 1989; Treuba, Guthrie, & Au,
1981). These findings, summarized here, should be understood accordingly.

Reviews of research compiled by Banks (1991a, 1993b) and Gay (1991) are
useful summaries for discerning the directions and trends that are emerging
about the effects of multicultural education. The Banks reviews focus on
modification of racial attitudes through the use of curriculum units and courses,
instructional materials, reinforcements, and teaching methods. Many of these
studies were conducted in the 1970s. While the results are not unequivocally
conclusive, they do indicate the following:
 • The racial, ethnic, and gender attitudes of students can be positively
affected by curriculum and instructional interventions.
• The effects of instructional intervention on student racial, ethnic, and
gender attitudes are influenced by the nature, structure, and direction of
the intervention and the characteristics of the students, teachers, school
environment, and local community.
• Cooperative learning leads to more positive racial attitudes for all
students, more interracial friendship choices, and academic gains for
students of color (especially Hispanics and AfricanAmericans). It has no
apparent effects on the academic achievement of Anglo students, since
they perform about the same in cooperative and competitive learning
environments. Cooperative, crossracial learning also increases student
instruction, selfesteem, and ability to empathize.
• To be most effective, cooperative learning experiences should engage
members in common goals and equal status relationships and should
allow individuals to get to know each other and be reinforced by
institutional support.
• Teaching interventions that reinforce positive attributes of
AfricanAmericans can reduce young black children's preferences for
whites. Deliberately designed instructional intervention also can reduce
prejudices toward all group members.
• Multicultural materials, vicarious experiences, role playing, and
simulations can help students develop more positive racial attitudes and
perceptions. Two cases in point are "The Eye of the Storm" and "A Class
Divided."

The research on cultural diversity and learning reviewed by Gay (1992) reveals
some findings of particular aspects of multicultural education that were not
included in the Banks review. One of the most compelling findings to emerge
from the Gay review is the effects of modifying teaching styles to match the
cultural characteristics and learning styles of different ethnic groups. One
graphic illustration of these effects is the Kamehameha Early Education
Program (KEEP). Several researchers have been documenting the effects of
this language arts program for young native Hawaiian children. The results
have been phenomenal. When the communication, interpersonal, and learning
styles of native Hawaiian students were employed in the classroom, both their
social and academic skills (including time on task, attention span, quality and
quantity of participation, school attendance, reading ability, and language arts
skills) improved significantly. Reading test scores increased from the 13th to
the 67th percentile in four years.
Some other studies produce similar results with other ethnic groups, although
the research is not as comprehensive and longitudinal as that of KEEP. With
AfricanAmerican students, the research shows that their engagement in
instructional activities and academic achievement improves when (1) different
and frequently varied formats are used to present learning tasks; (2) activities
and physical participation are routine elements of learning; (3) features of their
communication styles are incorporated into the teaching process; (4)
AfricanAmerican content is a part of the curriculum; and (5) the instuctional
materials and activities have high interest appeal (Boykin, 1982; Hale, 1982).
Several studies involving Native Americans in the United States and Canada
indicate that when teachers adapt their instructional classroom interactional
styles to approximate more closely those of the students, participation results
are positive. Using cognitive frameworks (patterns of thought, frames of
reference, styles of information processing, procedural rules, content materials)
familiar to culturally different, poor, and female students has been shown to
improve their reading skills, comprehension of learning tasks, and recall of
factual information (Banks & Banks, 1993, Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1985;
Greenbaum, 1985).

While findings from empirical research on the effects of multicultural

education are sparse, those that do exist are very encouraging:

• Negative racial and ethnic attitudes toward others can be changed

through deliberate intervention, but the process is longrange.
• Establishing a closer fit between teaching style and culturally different
learning styles has positive social and academic consequences.
• Alternative instructional means can be used to achieve common outcome
expectations without compromizing the educational standards and
quality of anyone.
• Some instructional techniques are more effective than others for some
members of ethnic and cultural groups.
• Instructional initiatives that work well for groups of color generally
benefit Anglo students, too. However, the converse is not true.
Educational interventions that are successful with Anglo students often
have negative consequences for culturally different students.
• The procedures of teaching and learning are important targets of
intervention for multicultural change. They are as significant as the
content and substance of teaching, if not more so.
• Culturally sensitive teaching techniques that work well with diverse
students appear to be effective across age, gender, school settings, and
subjects.
Reform Implications

Advocates agree on some common features of multicultural education. These

features provide the conceptual directions and parameters of reform initiatives
for implementation of multicultural education in school practice. Effective
multicultural education (1) requires total school reform; (2) is for all students in
all grades and subjects; (3) involves acquiring knowledge, clarifying attitudes
and values, and developing social actions and skills about ethnic and cultural
pluralism; and (4) includes recognizing, accepting, and celebrating diversity as
a fundamental fact and salient feature in human life, U.S. society, and world
communities.

These conditions are necessary if schools are to prepare all students for the
realities of living in a racially, ethnically, socially, and culturally pluralistic
world, and to become change agents to transform society so that it will be more
humane, egalitarian, and openly receptive to pluralism of all kinds. In content,
spirit, intent, and emphasis, multicultural education is highly compatible with
the democratic ideals of the United States, principles of good pedagogy, and
conceptions of educational equity. It has both intrinsic and instrumental value
for improving the overall quality, relevance, and effectiveness of education in
the United States for all students.

The following are more specific instructional messages gleaned from this
synthesis for multicultural education summarized above:

• Efforts undertaken to implement multicultural education should be

developmentally appropriate for the teachers, students, subjects, and
school community contexts.
• Multiple techniques are required to make multicultural education
effective.
• Both the content and processes of education should be changed to reflect
cultural diversity.
• Efforts for change need to be targeted for specific dimensions of the
educational enterprise and guided by deliberate and intentional purposes
and activities.
• Students and teachers should be allowed to engage in the process of
reform at multiple levels and in various ways.
• Cooperative learning efforts that engage culturally diverse students in
equal status interactions and relationships should be a common feature of
reform initiatives.
 • Teaching styles should be modified to incorporate sensitivity to a wider
variety of learning styles.
• Diverse formats of classroom organizations and activity structures
should be frequently used to allow for variability, active participation,
and novelty in learning.
• A conceptual orientation to multicultural education should be selected or
developed to use as a guideline for determining appropriate action
strategies and as a yardstick to determine progress.

Much remains to be done before the promise and potential of multicultural

education are fully realized. Its theoretical conceptualization is progressing
nicely. School practice and establishing the effects of multicultural education
are not nearly as advanced. Both of these steps offer numerous challenges and
opportunities for committed education to make a difference. Many action and
research possibilities are embedded in the theory of multicultural education.
Their potential is virtually limitless on many different levels as a way to reform
U.S. education; as a means of renewing and revitalizing society; as a
mechanism for making democratic ideals more meaningful in a culturally
pluralistic societal context; and as a tool for making education more effective
for culturally different students. The question now is whether we have the
courage and will to rise to the challenge and embrace the invitation to
transform U.S. education so that it really does serve the needs of all children.