Running head: CULTURE AND LEARNING  1

Culture and Learning 

Name

Institution Affiliation
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Introduction

Educational strategies created to help teachers to be able to respond effectively to the

numerous issues brought by the ever-changing demographics of students is known as

multicultural education. Students are provided with knowledge regarding cultures, diverse

groups’ contributions as well as histories. Multicultural education takes the assumption that

future society will be pluralist. During the 1960s and 1970s period of the civil rights movement

is when multicultural education came out. James (1993) came up with five dimensions of

multicultural education, and they will be the focus of this essay.

Content Integration

This concept illustrates how teachers can use examples as well as content gotten from

different cultures to show essential aspects, generalizations, theories of their discipline area, and

principles. The most known approach is the contribution approach. When teachers implement

this approach, they insert facts which are isolated regarding ethnic as well as cultural community

heroes into the school curriculum without structural change of the planned lessons and units.

According to Lee's (1993) study regarding culturally responsive learning, it showed, if a teacher

uses the cultural characteristics of his or her student, the academic achievements of his or her

student who came from a diverse community is enhanced.

The Process of Knowledge Construction

This concept portrays teaching activities that assist students in being able to understand,

investigate, as well as determine, reference frames, researcher's biases, textbook authors'

influence on how knowledge gets constructed. The curriculum center is not interested in

dominant groups and mainstream instead it concentrates on an issue that is viewed from a lot of
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different viewpoints. According to Maciel (2004), they discovered, multicultural curriculum

resulted in positive impact on teacher's racial attitudes as well as students who were in first and

second grade.

Prejudice Reduction

This concept seeks to assist students in growing positively as well as develop democratic

racial attitudes. Students can understand the influence of ethnic identity using schooling content

and attitudes as well as dominant group beliefs. According to Paluck (2009), it has influenced

research as well as theory in the relations of intergroup. He further suggested that prejudice could

get minimized using interracial contact when the situation has some characteristics like; be

cooperative and not competitive, and a person's experience should equal the status.

Equity Pedagogy

This concept takes place when teachers are able to modify teachings to ease the academic

achievements of their students who came from different language groups, diverse racial and

socioeconomic. It may comprise of using different teaching styles as well as approaches which

are consistent with learning techniques within different cultures and ethnic groups. Slavin (2001)

research showed that if this concept is implemented, it will assist students in developing racial

attitudes which are positive and in return create a lot of cross-racial relations.

Empowering School Culture

It comprises restructuring culture as well as the organization of schools to facilitate

students who come from different diverse racial, language groups, socioeconomic to experience

equality. Balkar (2015) study found that children that experience discrimination develops little

prejudice beliefs as well as attitudes towards other people. To get a school which has an
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empowering structure, it will require development of qualitatively different relations between

people within the school.

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References

Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural education and curriculum transformation. Journal of Negro

Education, 390-400.

Lee, C. D. (1993). Signifying as a scaffold for literary interpretation: The pedagogical

implications of an African American discourse genre. National Council of Teachers of

English, 1111 W. Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 44713-3050: $16.95

members, $22.95 nonmembers).

Slavin, E. (2001). Cooperative learning and intergroup relations. In Handbook of research on

multicultural education, ed. James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.

Balkar, B. (2015). Defining an empowering school culture (ESC): Teacher perceptions. Issues in

Educational Research, 25(3), 205.

Paluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Prejudice reduction: What works? A review and

assessment of research and practice. Annual review of psychology, 60, 339-367.

Maciel, D., Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (2004). Bidirectional process of knowledge

construction in teacher-student transaction. Communication and metacommunication in

human development, 1.