The Multicultural Education

Shawne Murphy
Chapter 5
Blog 6
Rigorous Researcher AND Literary Luminator

Rigorous Researcher:

Multicultural Education is an area of study that has been implemented in order to increase the equality of all students.  Multicultural education fosters the differences between students including cultural differences, economic and social class, ethnicity, race, language and gender.  Multicultural education is on the rise in education and the following statistics have proven it to be true:

-          37% or 1 out of every 3 students are considered to be of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds

-          By 2020 44% of students will be minorities

-          By 2050 54% of students will be minorities

-          The amount of minority students in school has increased by 73% over the last 25 years

Statistics on Multicultural Education. (2010, December 11). Educational Psychology [Multicultural Education]. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from https://sites.google.com/site/educationalpyschology/statistics-on-multicultural-education

Literary Luminator:

“Building on students’ strengths means, first, acknowledging that students have significant experiences, insights, and talents to bring to their learning, and, second, finding ways to use them in the classroom” (Nieto, 2010, p. 136).

All students come into the classroom setting with previous knowledge and a thirst to learn more.  In order to be able to add into the students thirst for knowledge as educators, we need to find out what they students are interested in, what talents they have, and how they learn.  With the information that we learn, we need to take it and find ways to incorporate the student’s interests and learning styles into the classroom setting and our teaching styles.

“Critical pedagogy begins where students are at; it is based on using students’ present reality as a foundation for further learning rather than doing away with or belittling what they know and who they are” (Nieto,, 2010, p. 131).

Just like all students come into the classroom setting with background knowledge and a thirst for new knowledge, they also come into the classroom with a different level of knowledge and understanding.  We need to find out where they students are based on their knowledge in order to continue learning and enhance upon the students knowledge.  We cannot look down upon our students based on the information that they do not know.

“…she turned her classroom into ‘problem posing forums’ in which the issues that were important to students became the focus of the curriculum” (Nieto, 2010, p. 142).

Students become more interested in the classroom environment and classroom discussions when the topic being covered relates to their own personal lives and society that they belong to.  When bringing in current societal issues, the students are more apt to participate and become active in the classroom because they may have strong feelings.