ABSTRACT
The quantity and range of multicultural educational materials have grown exponentially during the last 3 decades. When the first edition of this text appeared in 1989, the authors noted that the number of multicultural educational resources published in the 1980s had doubled in the last decade. In the intervening 12 years, the number has tripled or even quadrupled. Informal surveys of professional conferences on educational research and practice reveal a similar surge of interest in the topic of multicultural issues. Many state curriculum guidelines and teacher certification requirements include multicultural standards. Likewise, national organizations such as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) include multicultural items in their accreditation standards. Clearly, forces in our national experience are bringing multiculturalism to the fore, even as other pressures seek to diminish its impact.
