Cultural Content

Cultural content, used to promote diversity in education, involves the integration of examples, concepts, perspectives, and the lived practices of diverse cultural and ethnic groups into the mainstream curriculum and schooling processes. The identification and incorporation of accurate, authentic, and comprehensive cultural content from diverse cultural and ethnic groups goes beyond replicating static or normative models of culture to portray how people live culturally within their concrete social circumstance. Geneva Gay notes that cultural content in the school curriculum should involve both tangible and intangible aspects of culture and a variety of sources, including textbooks, literature, mass media, music, personal experiences, and social science research. This approach characterizes teachers as cultural learners who must continually work to develop a deep knowledge base and understanding of the unique cultural experiences and identities of their students and the communities in which they live.

James A. Banks identifies four levels for the integration of ethnic and cultural content into the school curriculum that progresses from an infusion of discrete cultural elements to a transformation of the mainstream curriculum and problem solving to take social action against injustice. The first level, the contributions approach, involves the insertion of heroes and discrete cultural content such as food, dances, music, and artifacts. The second level, the additive approach, integrates concepts, themes, and perspectives without restructuring the purposes and goals of the curriculum. Ethnic and cultural content is viewed from the perspective of mainstream scholars. The third level, the transformation approach, enables students to view concepts, events, and themes from the perspectives of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. The fourth level, the social action approach, challenges students to analyze social problems and take action against injustice. Other models that monitor the type of cultural content in curriculum materials, particularly textbooks, involve checklists that assess the degree to which bias and stereotypes are represented.

Several challenges arise in the integration of cultural content in schools. First, teachers may argue that diverse cultural content is appropriate in certain subject areas (e.g., social studies) but irrelevant for others (e.g., science). Second, there tends to be an imbalance of how cultural content is integrated across ethnic groups of color, with African Americans and their experiences often receiving the most attention. Third, schools that attempt to include cultural content often adopt a “contributions” or “heroes and holidays” approach that adds some cultural content but fails to challenge the underlying mainstream cultural assumptions or address systematic societal inequities.

Although multiculturalists have theorized about the value of culturally diverse content for improving student achievement, the empirical evidence is sparse. Further studies are needed that analyze how the integration of diverse cultural content affects achievement across subject areas for all ethnic groups.