ABSTRACT

The field of multicultural education emerged as the result of the social upheavals of the1960s and the concern of many educators that there was a critical need for research-based knowledge of the socio-cultural contexts of education (Banks, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2001; Lynch & Hanson, 1998a; Sleeter & Grant, 2003). The multicultural educational approach was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s and continued to expand as educators and policy makers began to link race, ethnicity, language, culture, gender, and disability issues toward making schools celebrate human diversity and equal educational opportunity (Nieto, 2001). Socially concerned educators have spread the beliefs that all educators should know, respect and value the cultural heritages of their students and colleagues. Likewise, all students and colleagues should have the right to know and develop pride in their own cultural heritages and be able to appreciate the cultural heritages of others. In the United States, the main rationale for this pluralistic perspective has been that the country is a racially and ethnically diverse nation, and that diversity is reflected in all educational settings, especially in schools. Census and school demographic data confirm that the school population continues to diversify and that both urban and suburban schools show a significant increase in culturally and linguistically diverse students. Presently, there are more immigrant students, more students learning English as a second language, and more students representing a diversity of ethnic backgrounds.