Multicultural Education, Approaches to Curriculum Reform

The approaches to multicultural curriculum reform is a conceptualization developed by James A. Banks in 1989 to help teachers integrate their curriculum with ethnic and cultural content at increasingly higher levels of complexity and sophistication. The ultimate aim of the approaches' typology is to help teachers develop a transformative approach to curriculum reform that will help students acquire critical thinking skills and the knowledge, attitudes, and action needed to help their communities, nation, and world become democratic and just. This entry defines and illustrates each of the four levels of the Banks approaches to multicultural curriculum reform.