Treating everyone with Equity Dignity and Respect!

When I started my University degree under the Concurrent Education program, I never actually thought about the importance of and need for integrating multicultural learning into all subjects (i.e. Math, Physical Education) as opposed to only subjects like the Social Studies and English's. I knew the importance of understanding the diverse cultures of the students within your classroom in order to gain a positive relationship with them but never considered the importance of teaching about and to these cultures in specific.  Banks and Tucker discusses how a math teacher said to banks after his Multicultural Education presentation that "What you said is fine for social studies, but it has nothing to do with me." He then discusses how teachers within the subjects of the maths and sciences must think that multicultural education was simply content integration and therefore he developed the

5 DIMENSIONS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

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According to Banks and Tucker the First Dimension is where it all started. By putting African Americans in the curriculum, then Mexican Americans in the curriculum, and then Asian Americans in the curriculum we began with the content integration. Content integration is important for multicultural education however Banks states "with content integration, language arts and social studies teachers can do more than the physics teacher" and that a physics teacher may be able to create a poster with famous female physicists or a minority physicists however this is not what we are trying to teach through Multicultural Education. Therefore the first dimension of content integration is important however you will notice that as I discuss the other 4 dimensions discussed by Banks and Tucker they allow for more teachers like the math and science teachers to get involved and be a part of multicultural education. 

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The Second dimension focuses on Knowledge construction. Within this dimension Banks and Tucker discusses that the teacher should guide the students learning in order to help them "understand, investigate and determine the implicit cultural assumptions and frames of reference and perspectives of the discipline they're teaching" and therefore help kids with the learning process. It is knowledge construction that helps students become critical thinkers and readers and therefore causes students to think about the content that they are reading about and writing about in order to better understand the content. 

Teachers are to change their teaching methods in order to provide students from diverse racial groups and of any gender with a positive learning environment to achieve. Changing these methods for the diverse racial groups and different genders is known as equity pedagogy and is the third dimension discussed by Banks and Tucker. As Discussed above Content integration is when a physics teachers creates a poster of famous female or minority physicists and therefore equity pedagogy would be a physics teacher changing his or her way of teaching in order to provide an environment for the female student and the African American student to learn physics more effectively. Therefore equity pedagogy focuses on providing different teaching methods within the classroom to meet the needs of the diverse students and allowing them to succeed. 

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According to Banks and Tucker the fourth dimension of their multicultural education is prejudice reduction. The third and fourth dimension is where all the teachers no matter the subject are able to be involved. Within this dimension teachers are to work within their classroom in order to reduce prejudice in the classroom. "All educators should use methods to help kids develop more positive racial attitudes (Banks and Tucker). 

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The fifth dimension goes outside of individual classrooms within the school and focuses on school wide culture and social structure. The goal within this dimension is to make the entire school culture more equitable and knowledgeable. It is about take the four other dimensions and growing them school wide. Within this dimension Banks and Tucker look at student groupings, teacher groupings, participation on sports teams and many other aspects of the school structure. Therefore the fifth dimension is about empowering school culture and social structure in order to allow every student and staff member to feel included and welcomed. 

As I discussed at the beginning of this post, I always considered learning about the students cultures within my classroom in order to gain a better relationship within them and ultimately promoting a more comfortable and inviting learning environment. However, after reading this article and learning about multicultural education into more detail I have learnt that it is more than this, it involved meeting all 5 dimensions that will ultimately provide each and every student with the opportunity to succeed. 

References

Banks, James A. and Michelle Tucker. “Multiculturalism’s Five Dimensions.” NEA Today Online. Retrieved from: https://lms.brocku.ca/access/content/group/EDUC8P02D01FW2016LEC001/Week%201/Multiculturalism%205%20dimentions%20_Banks_.pdf