The definition of multicultural education includes: content preparation, method of implementation, pedagogy perspective, knowledge of multiculturalism, etc. Some countries do not need multicultural education, such as India, China, Philippines, Russia, why? From my point of view, these are the countries that do not have many ethnic groups. It might happen in these countries that whether individual schools can adopt multicultural education depends on their students and where they are from. The schoolmust cater for providing quality education by looking at these students’ cultural background, religion, language, understanding and way of thinking. How do we prepare multicultural education. I have some suggestions below from an Australian society perspective:
Multiculturalism is becoming popular in present-day Australian society. I recalled back in the eighties when I first migrated into this lovely country, Australia, there were hardly any migrants. I was the only student from the ethnic groups in Year 9 who came as an overseas student. Later on, I became a migrant in 1988.
I became interested in multicultural education just recently. Krause, Bochner & Duchesne (2003) stated:
1. Content integration – Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures in their teaching.
2. An equity pedagogy – An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, gender and social-class groups.
3. An empowering school culture – Grouping and labeling practices, sports participation, disproportionally in achievement, and the interaction of the staff and the students across ethnic and racial lines must be examined to create a school culture that empowers students from diverse racial, ethnic and gender groups.
4. Prejudiced reduction – This dimension focuses on the characteristics of students’ racial attitudes and how teaching methods and materials can modify these.
5. Knowledge construction – Teachers need to help students, investigate and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives and biases within a discipline influence the ways that knowledge is constructed.
I noticed from my own experience that the ethnic students have different study behaviours with the native speaking Australian. Australian children prefer learning from being socialised and playing with their peers. Through authentic play and touch and experience the nature and world around them is a good way of learning for young kids.
Reference
Krause, K.L., Bochner, S. & Duchesne, S., (2003). Educational Psychology for learning and teaching. Nelson Australia Pty limited.