Week Six Notes

Hi there, it's great to be back with all of you after my visit to Canada to spend some time with friends and relatives. I want to again comment on the strength and insights, that I have observed in reviewing all of your blog posts. I have now read all of them, and though it is not possible for me at this time to go back and comment on all of them, please know that I have certainly been impressed with the quality and value of your contributions as well as the mutual support evident.

Tonight's topic was multicultural education, and, after reviewing weeks three through five, we spent some time first looking at the case for, or need for, multicultural education, which is strongly impacted by the need for us to get away from ethnocentrism: That is the tendency to see our own culture as being superior to others in the world community. We talked about four parts of multicultural education, involving curriculum reform, equity pedagogy, multicultural competence, and teaching toward social justice. We then looked at some stories which helped us to understand the challenges students face when studying from a cultural mindset other than their own.

The class went on to review a sample definition of multicultural education, involving the relationship of three key themes: cultural pluralism, cultural diversity, and our interconnected world. We looked at some of the challenges with how we define and implement multicultural education in our classrooms here in Thailand.

Following this, we looked at multicultural competence in some detail, including how the concept was important to working with both students and parents effectively. Part of this discussion involved the key understanding of the twin concepts of equality (treat everybody the same) and equity (treatment based on student need) and how these played out in a multicultural classroom, when and where each may apply in turn depending of the situation at hand.

The landmark 1983 US study "A Nation at Risk" was presented as an example of the way that failure to account for cultural differences can lead to improper decisions in terms of instructional delivery, in this case the over focus on testing in US classrooms as a way of remediating the academic needs apparent in the study. The testing however, resulted in little improvement and in some cases adversely affected quality of education, by restricting what was taught to the material on a state mandated test.

Two valuable film resources were suggested for students who wanted to take a further look at multicultural education issues:

Go to www.youtube.com

Review one or both of these movies-

Stand and Deliver (warning: contains profanity)

Freedom Writer