ABSTRACT
Multicultural curriculum recognises the multicultural history of a country, reflects the diversity of its society, and incorporates content that is academically rigorous and culturally inclusive and representative of the experiences and cultures of all students in schools. Multicultural curriculum challenges the ways in which school knowledge is constructed, selected, organised, and presented by integrating experiences and perspectives of diverse students and their communities who historically have been – and who are still – excluded and marginalised in the curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation process on the basis of their race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, nationality, and (dis)abilities.
Multicultural curriculum is culturally inclusive and responsive because it helps students from a variety of cultural backgrounds to attain clarified, reflective understandings of their cultures and to develop cross-cultural competence needed to effectively function in a multicultural, global society. It is socially just because it helps students to better understand concepts, issues, and events from diverse perspectives, especially those of the historically marginalised and minoritised groups, and increases educational equity for students from diverse backgrounds. Multicultural curriculum also empowers students to construct transformative knowledge and to develop critical thinking and decision-making skills for political and civic action and social improvement.
Students and their communities are actively engaged in the multicultural curriculum development process so that the curriculum is meaningful, relevant, and responsive to their cultural experiences, histories, and identities. Multicultural curriculum also engages students with a variety of curricular materials and learning activities in order to accommodate their diverse learning needs and preferences and uses a diverse range of ways and strategies to evaluate the quality of the curriculum and its impact on student learning.
