Four Levels of Multicultural Education (James Banks)

James A. Banks, a leading scholar in the field presented four levels of multicultural
education namely: contributions, additive, transformational and social action approaches.

According to him, the first level contributions, deals with heroes, holidays and discrete
cultural elements. Teachers conveniently infuse cultural themes like holidays and heroes into
the curriculum.

DepEd Memo No. 28 of 2011 identified a portion of the 22 days within the school year
for national and local events celebrations is enjoined to plan out activities related to the
celebrations, to discuss contributions of local and national heroes and to encourage learners to
glean life lessons from the autobiography of the same.

The second level, additive approach is, where teachers add content, concepts, themes,
and perspectives that are multicultural without changing the structure of their instructional
materials. Here teachers work hard to infuse multicultural themes, content, and perspective
into the main curriculum. This usually entails worksheets and reading materials on specific
cultural activities related to the main topic being taught.

The same memo mandates inclusion of themes, nation-wide celebrations, as well as

local festivities. The regional offices are encouraged to draft their customized calendars to give
room to local celebrations and holidays.

The classroom activities may include; Linggo/ Buwan ng Wika Culminating Activity,
United Nations, Linggo ng Kasuutang Pilipino and many others. Reading materials on these
festivities are usually available in the pupils' textbooks.

The third, transformative approach requires teachers to change the structure of their
curriculum to enable students to engage concepts, issues, events, and themes from a
multicultural perspective. Here the teacher uses the mainstream subjects like mathematics, the
arts, and language and literature to acquaint students with the ways the country's culture and
society has emerged from a complex synthesis and interaction of the diverse cultural elements
that originated within the various cultural, racial, ethnic and religious groups that make up the
society. Here students engage and critique issues and concepts which deal with diversity and
social justice. They learn to take a stand.

The fourth, the social action approach allows the students to make decisions on
important social issues and take actions to help solve them.

The last two are best implemented by weaving culture appreciation and cultural
awareness issues into the existing curriculum: mathematics, language arts, history/social
studies and science.

It is in the planning of their instruction of the basic subjects that teachers are able to
weave in multicultural education.