Multicultural education refers to any form of education or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds. At the classroom level, for example, teachers may modify or incorporate lessons to reflect the cultural diversity of the students in a particular class. In many cases, “culture” is defined in the broadest possible sense, encompassing race, ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, and “exceptionality”—a term applied to students with specialized needs or disabilities.
Generally speaking, multicultural education is predicated on the principle of educational equity for all students, regardless of culture, and it strives to remove barriers to educational opportunities and success for students from different cultural backgrounds. In practice, educators may modify or eliminate educational policies, programs, materials, lessons, and instructional practices that are either discriminatory toward or insufficiently inclusive of diverse cultural perspectives. Multicultural education also assumes that the ways in which students learn and think are deeply influenced by their cultural identity and heritage, and that to teach culturally diverse students effectively requires educational approaches that value and recognize their cultural backgrounds. In this way, multicultural education aims to improve the learning and success of all students, particularly students from cultural groups that have been historically underrepresented or that suffer from lower educational achievement and attainment.
Instructionally, multicultural education may entail the use of texts, materials, references, and historical examples that are understandable to students from different cultural backgrounds or that reflect their particular cultural experience—such as teaching students about historical figures who were female, disabled, or gay (a less common practice in past decades). Since schools in the United States have traditionally used texts, learning materials, and cultural examples that commonly—or even exclusively—reflect an American or Eurocentric point of view, other cultural perspectives are often absent. Consequently, some students—such as recently arrived immigrants or students of color, for example—may be placed at an educational disadvantage due to cultural or linguistic obstacles that have been overlooked or ignored.
The following are a few representative ways in which multicultural education may play out in schools:
- Learning content: Texts and learning materials may include multiple cultural perspectives and references. For example, a lesson on colonialism in North America might address different cultural perspectives, such as those of the European settlers, indigenous Americans, and African slaves.
- Student cultures: Teachers and other educators may learn about the cultural backgrounds of students in a school, and then intentionally incorporate learning experiences and content relevant to their personal cultural perspectives and heritage. Students may also be encouraged to learn about the cultural backgrounds of other students in a class, and students from different cultures may be given opportunities to discuss and share their cultural experiences.
- Critical analysis: Educators may intentionally scrutinize learning materials to identify potentially prejudicial or biased material. Both educators and students might analyze their own cultural assumptions, and then discuss how learning materials, teaching practices, or schools policies reflect cultural bias, and how they could be changed to eliminate bias.
- Resource allocation: Multicultural education is generally predicated on the principle of equity—i.e., that the allocation and distribution of educational resources, programs, and learning experiences should be based on need and fairness, rather than strict equality. For example, students who are not proficient in the English language may learn in bilingual settings and read bilingual texts, and they may receive comparati