Educational Psychology / Unit 9 EDP 0818 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Banks's Five Dimensions
The idea
James Banks describes multicultural education in five dimensions. Content integration uses examples and content from many cultures. Knowledge construction helps students see how knowledge is shaped by the perspectives of those who create it. Equity pedagogy adapts teaching to help students from diverse groups achieve. Prejudice reduction helps students develop positive attitudes toward other groups. An empowering school culture reorganizes the whole school, including grouping, activities and climate, so every group can succeed.
In practice
Worked example: a history teacher adds accounts from Mexican Americans to a unit on the Southwest, which is content integration. The class compares two textbooks' accounts of the same war and asks who wrote each, which is knowledge construction. The teacher adds cooperative groups and varied strategies so students from every group can succeed, which is equity pedagogy.
Where people slip
Multicultural education is more than content integration: adding diverse examples touches only the first dimension. The other four reach how knowledge is made, how teaching adapts, how attitudes change and how the whole school is organized.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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