Evaluating Multicultural Education Courses: Promise and Possibilities for Portfolio Assessment

As multicultural education continues to evolve, better assessments are necessary to provide a holistic measure of the effectiveness of multicultural education in the academy. Unfortunately, as multicultural scholars champion the cause for social justice, equity, and access for school children they remain vulnerable to negative promotion and tenure determinations due to misaligned measures of teaching effectiveness in the academy. In this article, a Black female teacher educator at a Predominately White Institution describes how she utilized a Multicultural Education Teaching Portfolio (METP) as a means to inform the measurement of her instructional quality and effectiveness. This discussion provides an overview of current challenges to assessing quality within Multicultural Education courses and provides an outline of possible components of the METP for further consideration.     

Overcoming Cultural Racism: The Promise of Multicultural Education

The author argues that cultural racism undergirds both individual and institutional racism, and, thus, it is the driving force behind racist policies and practices in educational institutions and in society. Because both liberal and conservative agendas operate within an ideology of White supremacy, both have been inadequate in addressing cultural racism. A multicultural movement that explores the concept of "Whiteness" and that encourages educators and students to take an antiracist stance can provide an important response to cultural racism.     

When Multicultural Education Is Not Enough

In the face of rising white nationalism, multicultural education is simply not enough. In addition to suggestions for curriculum and instruction, in this article the author suggests that teachers, parents, administrators, and students need to be organizing to push back against this tide of racism, sexism, and xenophobia and find ways to concretely support their students and communities.     

Celebration and Separation: A Troublesome Approach to Multicultural Education

Middle school classrooms can be fertile ground for positively impacting students' cultural and racial assumptions and understanding, given an effective multicultural curriculum and school structure. This article presents a narrative of the author's contrasting experiences teaching a text with racial themes. Applicable literature provides a framework for explaining the students' differing levels of receptivity towards the text. Three particular areas of study provide the framework for explaining student response: a school's approach to multicultural literature; school structure, in particular, tracking; and theories of racial identity development. In addition, the author challenges adults involved in the educational system to implement truly multicultural approaches to learning, despite the potential discomfort or unpopularity of such change.     

Moving Beyond Test-Prep Pedagogy: Dialoguing With Multicultural Preservice Teachers for a Quality Education

In a “post-NCLB era,” the schooling experiences of mostly low-income students of color continue to be consumed by a test-prep pedagogy—narrowed curriculum, low expectations, and ignored relationships. In this article the author describes a pedagogical approach using educational dialogues to engage preservice teachers to critically define a quality education.     

The Mutual Symbiosis Between Inclusive Bi-lingual Education and Multicultural Education

In this article the authors postulate a mutual symbiosis between multicultural and inclusive bi-lingual education. Combining bi-lingual and multicultural education to create a symbiotic relationship can stimulate reform in schools and can promote inclusive educational systems, thereby keeping native languages and cultures alive for minority students and enhancing native English speakers’ language and cultural understandings.     

The Global and the Multicultural: Opportunities,Challenges, and Suggestions for Teacher Education

Most teacher education programs today include at least a minimal component of multicultural education. Higher educational institutions are also engaging more broadly in global education in a variety of forms. Though there is significant overlap in the aims of these two fields, they are often not used in complementary ways, or may even be seen as competing fields of study. This article outlines ways in which global perspectives can inform several multicultural concepts used in teacher education. It then explicates the challenges and limitations to this approach, which are not trivial. Finally, it suggests a number of ways in which teacher education programs and institutions can minimize the challenges of a global approach to multicultural education, while simultaneously moving toward institutionally transformative goals of multicultural education.     

Understanding the Power of Words in Multicultural Education

Historically, words are powerful! In many cases, they are used appropriately when we value people and used inappropriately when we hate them. As a result, they have become powerful tools in multicultural education and interactions. In today's changing world with demographic shifts in power and paradigm, the society is bombarded with words that hate and words that love. As it appears, words are used to satisfy jaundiced and myopic views, and they are constructs that frequently lead to labels, stereotypes, and illusory generalizations. While we do not advocate policing or legislating words, we advocate words that can help individuals to maximize their fullest potential in our multicultural society. In this article, we advance this premise and suggest ways to increase multicultural education in schools and communities.     

Strategies for Incorporating "Racism" Into a Multicultural Education Foundations Course

A primary component of any course in multicultural education must be the issue of racism. However, strong consideration must be given on how best to approach this topic. Although there is no "one best way" to help preservice teachers begin to understand and confront the issue of racism, this article provides an overview of the approach used by the authors in a required course on multicultural education at the University of Nebraska. Key aspects of the approach include establishing a safe learning environment based on the principles of effective dialogue, cultural immersion tactics, and specific resources. Several strategies are shared to generate discussion and to help preservice teachers understand the many dimensions of racism and the ways in which it has been perpetuated.     

Multicultural Education Within the Era of Internalization and Globalization

In this article, the author presents the results of a multistate study examining how teachers, and specifically secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers, conceptualize and implement teaching for social justice in standards-based contexts. Additional analysis underscores how this practice both reflects and extends earlier equity-oriented reform movements.