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Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is a philosophical stance that advocates for equal opportunity for individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. As such, multiculturalism affirms the rights of individuals to the pursuit of personal meaning, equality, social justice, and democratic participation, regardless of cultural background or composite cultural makeup. Based upon the great foundational documents of U.S. democratic government, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, multiculturalism strives to extend the rights portrayed in these documents to all cultural groups in the United States. Multiculturalism is sometimes viewed as an approach to studying culture in an effort to analyze the effects of various microcultural characteristics upon access to the normalized rights of middle-class individuals in the United States.
As such, multiculturalism has implications for leadership, policy, curriculum, and instruction in the formal educational settings of prekindergarten, elementary, secondary schools, and of colleges and universities. While diversity-related scholarship has traditionally focused upon the cultural characteristics of class, race, and ethnicity, present-day scholarship includes the additional microcultures of gender, sexual orientation, age, ability and exceptionality, religion, language, and geography, among others. The preponderance of current research, however, involves the microcultures of race, ethnicity, gender, language, and class, or some combination of these factors in support of multiculturalism as a foundational element in multicultural education as a field of study.
Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education as a Field of Study
Scholarly writing on the subject of multiculturalism falls primarily within the purview of multicultural education as a field of study. Scholarship in the field of multicultural education, while integrating tenets of each, differs from global education and international education, both of which support their own fields of study. Most scholarly findings outlined from here forward refer to multicultural education as a field of study.
James A. Banks offers a definition of multicultural education that promotes a focus on increased equity in education for all students. As a field of study, multicultural education focuses upon students who are marginalized because of their specific microcultural makeup and upon solutions to issues of inequality in educational settings. Various aspects of this definition follow.
Fundamental Assumptions of Multicultural Education
Current scholarship identifies fundamental assumptions of multicultural education: (a) cultural differences have strength and value, (b) expressions of human rights are valued, (c) social justice and equality are central to curriculum design and instruction, (d) a function of schooling is to promote the attitudes and values associated with the continuance of a democratic society, (e) a function of educational institutions is to promote the redistribution of power among diverse groups through its instruction and policies, (f) educators in their work with families and communities promote supportive environments for multiculturalism, and (g) there is a focus upon reducing prejudice and stereotypes and supporting individuals and groups in developing positive images of themselves.
Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant argue for five approaches to multicultural education with implications primarily for race, class, and gender: (1) teaching the exceptional and culturally different, (2) promoting human relations, (3) incorporating single-group studies, (4) instituting multicultural education in all aspects of schoolwork, and (5) promoting education that is multicultural and social reconstructionist. Sleeter and Grant promote education that is multicultural and social reconstructionist as having the most potential for sustained positive change because of its use of the following practices: replicating democracy, analyzing the circumstances of one's own life, developing social action skills, and forming coalitions for combating oppression.
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