Chapter 18

Multicultural Education Is/as/in Prosocial Education

Tinia R. Merriweather

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

—Richard Shaull, Foreword to Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970/2000)

This chapter aims to connect the principles of multicultural education with the goals of prosocial education. It asserts that multicultural education is prosocial education. All of the key tenets of multicultural education are also prosocial in nature. The chapter also considers multicultural education as prosocial education. It argues that many of the aspirations of prosocial education are met by multicultural education. Finally, it explores multicultural education in prosocial education, connecting the ideas of this chapter to the rest of this volume. The chapter is divided into three sections. It begins with an introduction to multicultural education and the assumptions undergirding the chapter. The first section also identifies and defines key terminology commonly used in multicultural education. Specific connections to prosocial education are considered in the second section. The third section presents a theoretical framework for multicultural education, which serves as the organizing feature for the programs that are reviewed within the chapter. It also contains questions to ponder and concludes with recommendations for future inquiry.

Section One: Foundational Understandings of Multicultural Education

Multicultural education has emerged as a vehicle for including diverse groups and transforming the nation’s educational institutions (Banks 1994a, Banks & Banks 1992). Multicultural education tries to create equal educational opportunities for all students by ensuring that the total school environment reflects the diversity of groups in classrooms, schools, and the society as a whole. (Banks, 1994, p. 4)

Multicultural Education Is Prosocial Education

Multicultural education is inherently prosocial education. Multicultural education was birthed out of a framework that involves relating to one another. It is a response to a blatantly or implicitly Eurocentric worldview offering the central idea of valuing others not as “others,” but as part of a multifaceted, complex world. As we progress further into the twenty-first century, we undeniably means being able to interact effectively with those who are both similar to and different from us. Prosocial education involves the social, emotional, and ethical competencies that students need to develop healthy relationships with others. It also involves the transformation of schools and schooling to create the conditions for optimal development and learning. Given the demographics in the United States and the increased global interconnectedness afforded by social networking and other technology, multicultural education is a necessity. As referenced in chapter 1 of this volume, the goals of education include active learning and knowledge attainment, fostering optimal development, and socializing students into diverse communities of social and civic worlds.

Multicultural Education as Process

What we now call multicultural education . . . is a composite. It is no longer solely race, or class, or gender. Rather it is the infinite permutations that come about as a result of the dazzling array of combinations human beings recruit to organize and fulfill themselves. Like jazz, no human being is ever the same in every context. The variety of “selves” we perform have made multicultural education a richer, more complex, and more difficult enterprise to organize and implement than previously envisioned. . . . Like jazz, multicultural education is less a thing than a process. It is organic and dynamic, and although it has a history rooted in our traditional notions of curriculum and schooling its aims and purposes transcend all conventional perceptions of education. (Ladson-Billings, 2003, pp. 51–52)

Multicultural education is education for, by, about, and inclusive of all. It also involves the process for achieving this ideal and the framework for critiquing where we fall short. It faces the fact that education has not been and is not for all with forward momentum to change. Multicultural education embraces the ultimate goals of education for learning and development in the face of the institutionalized and systemic forces that work against these goals. It actively resists being centered in whiteness, maleness, or privilege while it simultaneously examines these. It is also not centered in otherness, which is a shallow inversion of the former. Multicultural education has multiple and intersecting centers. It embraces the tensions of this intersectionality—it rests in the both/and.

Like jazz, multicultural education is a process, not a finite set of knowledge that can be memorized. It includes how teachers respond moment by moment in a classroom, frame the class, and interact with the students and their families. It also includes policy-level decisions that impact school communities. Because of its complexity, multicultural education resists a simple definition, but it is identifiable. One can know what it is—and what it is not. This process, this forward leaning into the best hopes of what education can be, is why it is prosocial.

Multicultural education is also a method for inquiry about education. Multicultural education interrogates the idea of educational or other experts, similar to the orientation of critical participatory action research (see Public Science Project program explanation in section three below), which values radical inclusion and privileges knowledge and wisdom found outside the academy (Torre, Fine, Stoudt, & Fox, 2010). Multicultural education asks critical questions: What is an expert? How did an expert get to be one? Who are the gatekeepers of expertise? Who is kept out of the expertise pipeline? Multicultural education certainly has renowned established scholars who have written extensively about the topic. Yet multicultural education does not only exist in published scholarship. Its foundation is giving a platform to voices that have gone unheard, valuing multiple perspectives, and leveraging access to opportunity. Multicultural education exists in the everyday lives of teachers and students in schools. Therefore, this chapter emerges not only out of my academic training in the field of applied developmental psychology, but it is also centered in my many years of experience as a teacher and diversity practitioner.

In diversity practitioner circles, the building blocks of multicultural competence are often described in terms of knowledge, awareness, and skills (Sue & Constantine, 2005). Much of my multicultural competence comes from engaging colleagues and students in diversity dialogues, reading books and articles, watching documentaries, taking various courses about multicultural ideas, and attending multiple multicultural professional development seminars. But some of my knowledge, awareness, and skills were formed in my everyday lived experiences of being a person of color in the United States. With the exception of my four years at Spelman College, a historically black college for women in Atlanta, Georgia, all of my experiences of school, from pre-K to graduate school—both as a student and as a teacher—have been overwhelmingly white. Several scholars have previously described this lived experience.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (DuBois, 1903/2007, p. 5)

The old people say being Indian today is like having your feet in two canoes. One foot in one canoe, one foot in another; one foot in one world, one foot in another. Trying to balance both canoes at the same time while the water underneath is constantly changing; trying to live in two worlds, while the rules are constantly changing. This is what it is like for my students of color, as well as for me. (Flyswithhawks, 1996, p. 35)

Author’s Stance

This chapter is a negotiation of the balance of my multiple identities. As a person, I want to reflect familiar truths in an authentic way. As an educator, I want to discuss how I aim to make my pedagogy radically inclusive and progressive as I continue to challenge my students, colleagues, and myself to deeper understandings of multiculturalism. As an emerging scholar, my goal is not to fit into the academy but to transform it. I hope this chapter is useful to both scholars and educators. Because I straddle both worlds, I aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice in how multicultural education is understood. Freire (1970/2000) defines praxis as a task for radicals—as reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. Consistent with this, my goal is to cause others to critically question, to reflect, and to enable them to act.

History of Multicultural Education

Multicultural education emerges out of several traditions. One of the earliest works cited as multicultural education is Carter G. Woodson’s (1933/2006) The Mis-Education of the Negro. Other historical influences include African American studies, women’s studies, gay/lesbian studies, Chicano studies, and other group studies. In terms of theory, multicultural education is most closely linked to the scholarship of critical pedagogy and thinkers such as Paulo Freire, but there are philosophical connections to the other critical theories, such as critical race theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. In its present form, multicultural education emerged out of the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s in which the desire for social change included access to, equity in, and transformation of educational institutions. In the 1980s, the preeminent scholars of what we now call multicultural education began publishing. These include James Banks (1995, 2007, 2009); Geneva Gay (2010); Carl Grant (2011); Sonia Nieto (2005); and Christine Sleeter (2005). In 1990, the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) was formed by Rose Duhon-Sells (1991).

National Association for Multicultural Education

NAME is a nonprofit volunteer organization that works to advance equity and justice in education, with over 1,500 members in the United States. It aims to provide professional development opportunities for scholars from various disciplines and educational practitioners by maintaining an electronic repository of information related to multicultural education, holding national conferences, supporting locally organized chapters, and advocating for educational policies that support the goals of multicultural education through position papers and policy statements.

NAME emphasizes that multicultural education is a process that places students and their diverse experiences at the center. It has the goal of enabling all students and teachers to work toward structural equality in institutions by equipping them with the requisite skills for the redistribution of power equitably across diverse groups. To achieve this, schools must have a culturally competent and diverse faculty and staff, pedagogical practices that embrace multiple perspectives, and curricula that directly address all forms of injustice. Multicultural education distinguishes between equality and equity and attempts to offer all students equitable educational opportunities (NAME, 2003). The current (2011) president of NAME, Christine Sleeter, discusses how multicultural education and the current push toward standards-based education are both compatible and incompatible. The idea that every student should be presented with a rigorous curriculum is absolutely part of multicultural education, but reducing knowledge to bubbles on standardized tests is not—an idea promoted in this handbook (Corrigan, chapter 23). Fully capturing students’ abilities on a standardized test is impossible; however, it is possible to integrate the skills necessary for success on these tests into a lively, engaging, culturally relevant curriculum. Nieto (2005) discusses schools for a “new majority” and challenges the idea of highly qualified teachers purported by No Child Left Behind as limited, especially given the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students being taught primarily by what Nieto describes as a largely monolithic, monocultural, and monolingual teaching force.

Demographic Realities

In America, all education is in the process of becoming multicultural education. Demographic shifts make this an inevitable necessity. According to the 2010 census, among children seventeen and under, 46 percent are children of color and 54 percent are white. Projections indicate that by 2023, a decade from this writing, fewer than half of all children in this country will be white (Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2011). The changing demographics of the nation are being encountered daily in the nation’s schools. Many school systems, including the largest public school systems in the country, are populated primarily by students of color. In some, these statistics incite fear—fear of the unknown and of the other, fear that the browning of America also indicates its decline. Our way of dealing with this fear has a visible history in the “white flight” to the suburbs surrounding many cities that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. Instead of fear and flight, multicultural education presents an opportunity for encounter and embrace. In a country that is highly diverse and almost sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), education cannot be conceived of as for whites only. Though clearly we have moved beyond the Little Rock Nine (1957) and Ruby Bridges (New Orleans, 1960), education should not still be The Problem We All Live With as the aptly titled (1964) Norman Rockwell painting says. And yet it is. It cannot be “separate, but equal” over 110 years after Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). And yet, in many places, schools are more segregated along racial and economic lines than prior to formal integration (Orfield, Lee, & the Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2007). In a statement to the Supreme Court in 2006, 553 scholars from 201 different social science disciplines from 201 academic institutions affirmed the importance of diversity and integrated schools for both educational and community benefits (The Civil Rights Project, 2006). If prosocial education is rooted in democratic ideals for education and society, then multicultural education is a method for making this possible because such societal shifts are welcomed rather than feared. While some have systematically benefitted from the implicit power structure, all have also been damaged by it, not just those who have been oppressed (Wise, 2011). Because multicultural education sets itself against reinforcing the current inequitable system with a goal for educational excellence, equity, and justice for all, all will benefit. Diversity multiplies our strengths.

Recognizing the heavy costs already borne by those marginalized in education, multicultural education does not subscribe to the scarcity-dominated, inequality-reproducing idea that there is a limited supply of power. Rather, it rests in embracing the notion that the supply of power is endless and can be regenerated (Tuck, 2009a). Certainly multicultural education is not naive about the realities of differential access to resources and inefficient, inequitable funding streams (Rutter & Maughan, 2002). There are real implications of changing the socioeconomic power structures of the current educational system, yet philosophically reimagining education as equitable and just is the source of the idea that all will truly benefit.

The Importance of the Language of Multicultural Education

In multicultural education, how language is used is key. In the 2011 introduction to the fortieth-anniversary edition of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Macedo explains that the word oppressed was chosen for a reason—to denote action. The oppression of people does not exist by happenstance; people and systems actively oppress other people.

Imagine that instead of writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire had written Pedagogy of the Disenfranchised. The first title utilizes a discourse that names the oppressor, whereas the second fails to do so. If you have an “oppressed,” you must have an “oppressor.” What would be the counterpart of disenfranchised? (Macedo, 2011, p. 2)

Because of the importance of language, I am choosing to use the actual language of various scholars to allow their ideas to speak for themselves, thus reinforcing the notion that multicultural education is about valuing multiple perspectives. Tatum (2003) explains the significance of choosing language carefully when identifying groups of people.

I have used the term people of color to refer to those groups in America that are and have been historically targeted by racism. This includes people of African descent, people of Asian descent, people of Latin American descent, and indigenous peoples (sometimes referred to as Native Americans or American Indians). Many people refer to these groups collectively as non-Whites. This term is particularly offensive because it defines groups of people in terms of what they are not. (Do we call women “non-men?”) I also avoid using the term minorities because it represents another kind of distortion of information which we need to correct. So-called minorities represent the majority of the world’s population. While the term people of color is inclusive, it is not perfect. As a workshop participant once said, White people have color, too. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “people of more color,” though I am not ready to make that change. (Tatum, 2003, p. 15)

A good rule of thumb for naming groups is to be as specific as possible and to use the terms preferred by members of the group, while recognizing that groups of people are not monoliths; therefore, there will be no perfect terms, and terms change with the times (Castania, 2003). For example, when referring to people of African descent in the United States—a group of which I am a member—some prefer the term African American, while others prefer black. I will not attempt to speak for all the members of my group, but I can illuminate the language I use and why. In casual conversation, I use the terms interchangeably, but I prefer black in part because my parents came of age during the Black Power movement and “Black Is Beautiful” era, and black is the term I heard in my home. To me, being black is much deeper than color; it is my culture and my consciousness. When being formal, however, I use black to refer to my race and African American to refer to my ethnicity. My understanding is that African American refers to the descendents of the slave trade in the United States. Immigrants from African countries or other parts of the African diaspora, even if descendent from the slave trade in the Caribbean Islands or in South America, are not technically African Americans. Though in subsequent generations, people from these groups who grew up in the United States may embrace the term African American.

Similarly, multiple names abound in other groups. Some may prefer Native American, others may prefer First Nations, or American Indian, Native, indigenous, First American, or the specific group involved, such as Cherokee. Naming groups is not an exact science. Throughout this chapter, when I use the term people of color, in the U.S. context, I am referring to black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Middle Eastern, and multiracial peoples living in the United States. Like Shakespeare, when he asked, “What’s in a name?” some may question whether finding the right name to refer to a group is worth the trouble. Castania (2003) explains—

It is work for all of us, but with time, the process will feel as natural as driving a standard shift car: we will feel more at ease trying new terms, asking questions comfortably, and not letting mistakes interfere with our willingness to build relationships across differences. (Castania, 2003, p. 1)

Language is not only important in describing individuals and groups of people; it is important to be clear about concepts, as well. Therefore, it is critical to define how I am using some key terms of multicultural education.

Key Terminology in Multicultural Education

• Multiculturalism—of many cultures that are equally valued; a qualitative experience of this value.
• Diversity—similarities and differences in social identity categories; can be measured quantitatively. “The goal of diversity is to undo itself” (C. Robinson, personal communication, August 11, 2011).
• Social identifiers—these are relatively fixed social identity categories that exert both individual and intersectional influences on individuals and groups. While some diversity practitioners use slightly different versions, these eight are most common: (1) physical, mental, and emotional ability, including the ability to learn; (2) age; (3) social class and socioeconomic status (SES); (4) ethnicity, including nationality and first language; (5) gender and gender identity; (6) sexual orientation; (7) race (in a U.S. context); and (8) religion, including spirituality.
• Some multicultural educators have found the eight too exclusive given multicultural education’s goal of inclusion and the multiple other facets of identity that are relevant to education (Batiste, 2010). Other important identities include (1) immigration status, including undocumented, first-generation, and so forth; (2) language fluency, including bilingualism, monolingualism, and speaking with an accent; (3) appearance and body image; (4) living in a geographic region of the United States; and (5) family structure. The importance of these multicultural social identity categories is to remind us that these and other identities (political party affiliation, first-year teacher, new student, smoker, etc.) are both important but also exist at the surfaces of our lives. Multicultural education helps us to honor each other’s visible and invisible identities and those we use to describe ourselves, as well as creating supportive schooling structures in which we each can explore those identities and those that we come to believe and know are common to us all.

Intersectionality

Some have argued that even within the Big 8, there exists a hierarchy. Some have posited a Big 3 of race, class, and gender, or a Big 4 of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Still others have argued that at least in the U.S. context, race supersedes all other identifiers (Carter, 2000). These scholars assert that all other identities are experienced through the lens of race. So, for example, I experience my gender as a black woman, not just as a woman, which leads to the idea of intersectionality in identity. Many research studies only examine identities in relative isolation, although in schools and in society these identities themselves do not have isolated impacts. Strolovitch (2006) adopted the term intersectionally marginalized to describe such overlaps, coined by a legal scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). This term is appropriate to consider in schools that serve students of color in poor neighborhoods. While even a passing glance at census statistics would show that there are many citizens of color who are not in poverty, and there are many families in poverty who are not people of color, the prevailing image of an “inner-city student” is one who is in fact a person of color, particularly African American or Latino, and poor. Overall child poverty is estimated at one in five children in the United States. While the poverty rate is higher in some communities of color, in raw numbers, the majority of U.S. children in poverty are white. Data from 2009 report the numbers of American children in poverty by race as follows: white (507,000), black (259,000), some other race (99,000), and children of two or more races (160,000) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Though poverty and people of color are often inaccurately and stereotypically conflated, there are historical underpinnings to the confound between class and race.

Class structures are connected to the history of race in the United States. Early in the nation’s history, measures of wealth included land and slaves, both of which have racial implications—from the displacement of indigenous peoples and the seizure of their land to the institution of slavery in which African people were considered property. More recently, the impact of the GI Bill, which was intended as an equalizing policy but benefited whites disproportionately, and the current class struggles of undocumented workers—many of whom are people of color—as well as the persistent health disparities along both racial and socioeconomic lines are examples of a continued linked legacy. Because of these confounds and because of the reality that many students are impacted based on the intersection of race and class, scholars should begin to examine these effects with an intersectional understanding of the combined effects of multiple identities, which may be different and likely even greater than their individual impacts (Cole, 2009).

Reframing the Deficit Model

One of the ways that race and class affect how schools treat students rests in a deficit ideology. Multicultural educators reject the common tendency to problematize students, families, communities of color, and poor communities of any racial or ethnic background. This chapter posits that the myriad problems plaguing the schools that serve students of color and/or poor students are the result of systemic inequities, not deficiencies within the individuals in the school communities (see also Artiles, 2011). For instance, it is useful to reframe the “achievement gap” as an “opportunity gap” (Hill, 2010). This term suggests that the structural supports and resources necessary for students to achieve should be accessible to all and equitably distributed. Achievement can only be understood in the context of the opportunities provided for students to achieve (Ladson-Billings, 2006, 2007).

It is also critical to interrogate the metrics used in assessing achievement. White students should not be the standard against which all other students are measured (D. Sawyer, July 6, 2011, personal communication). Using measures of white students’ achievements as the target for students of color reinforces two things that are antithetical to multicultural education—the idea of white as “normal” or the standard and the negative implications of the deficit model. Instead, excellence should be the universal standard.

Another important term to examine and reframe is the term at risk. This term, too, is a symptom of deficit thinking—wrongly ascribing the risk to students. Marginally better is the term placed at risk, which at least conjures the conditions in which students find themselves. Gordon and AERA (2004) argue that the term resilience must also be reconceptualized, coining a new term, defiance.

Our introduction of the concept of defiance into the literature on resilience involves more than a semantic shift. The difference between resilience and defiance is best understood as a difference between survival in the face of challenge, and acts of active resistance to a challenge and pushing against obstacles standing in the way of personal achievement. (Gordon & AERA, 2004, p. 124)

Similar deficit terminology, such as underprivileged, disenfranchised, inner-city, and minority all connote images of black and Latino youth in the “ghetto,” with associated educational hardships and failures. Fine and Ruglis (2009, p. 20) suggest the idea of “circuits of dispossession” to describe the experiences of these youth, which places the onus on the system itself rather than on those dispossessed by it. This is an example of a key goal of this handbook—that is, to underline, emphasize, and insist that the work of prosocial education is to change and optimize schooling and schools for the development and achievement of students; thus, the various orientations of prosocial education stress universal interventions for school change, not targeted or selected programs to change only some students, such as those defined by a deficit model.

Schools Are Racialized Spaces

School experiences exist in racial contexts. For many of the issues plaguing education, such as chronic low achievement and high dropout rates, race is paramount. While an intersectional understanding of race, class, and to a lesser degree gender is crucial to understanding some of the problems of education, the reality is that too often these problems happen disproportionately in schools that serve students of color because of the circuits of dispossession and the opportunity gap. Even in schools in high-SES neighborhoods, racial experiences still manifest. From the institutional racism that is perpetuated by school systems (Taylor & Clark, 2009), to the implicit bias perpetrated unintentionally by teachers (Chugh, 2012), to the stereotype threat experienced by students on standardized tests (Steele, 2010), race matters. When using race, I will not merely be referring to black/white relations in the United States. Certainly, the historical implications of black/white relations and landmark decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) are still relevant today. For example, the restructuring of the Memphis school system planned for 2013 is bringing many racial and economic tensions to the surface (Dillon, 2011). However, the racial landscape in the United States has broadened since the civil rights movement, and so must the discussion. I will not use race as a euphemism for black, which is inaccurate and misleading. Nor do I assume that the effects of racial experiences are only felt in communities of color (Chugh, 2012; Wise, 2011). But I consider schools to be racialized spaces, which means that there are racial impacts on all students and adults—black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American, Middle Eastern, and multiracial.

Multicultural Education Is Not Color-Blind

Some mistakenly think that color blindness is a desired outcome of multicultural education. They have romanticized the line in Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” (1963) speech, about not judging his four little children by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, to mean that color should not be noticed. This is problematic on many levels. First of all, race is more than color—it includes culture and consciousness as well as other facets of the social construct noted in the definition above. Secondly, none of us is blind to race, not even babies (Katz, 2003). Thirdly, as Bond (2003) noted, to be color-blind is to be blind to the consequences faced by communities of color in the United States. Similarly, Gorski (2010) observed, “Colorblindness denies people validation of their whole person.” When naive educators suggest that they don’t see color, not only are they lying, but they are also committing racial microaggression (Sue, 2010).

An Equity and Justice Framework

The ultimate goal of multicultural education is equity and justice in education, from the classroom level through educational policy. While many want to see this goal come to fruition, there are some who call themselves multicultural educators who do not share this goal. Some are content with the heroes, holidays, foods, and festivals brand of multicultural education, but I most certainly am not. To have students wearing sombreros and eating tacos but to not address the historical and current implications of U.S.–Mexico relations is to do a huge disservice to educating our young people (Gorski, 2008). Beyond the fact that there are many distinct cultures found in Central and South America, there are so many issues more relevant to the education of Latino/a students than hats and food. Given current political controversy about whether or not undocumented students should have access to a quality education and higher education, there are implications for all Latino students and other immigrant groups, whether citizens or not.

Conversations about access and equity are not easy, nor are steps to making significant social change to ensure educational quality for all. Sue and Constantine (2005) have noted that some have inappropriately utilized multicultural education as a scapegoating practice to avoid difficult dialogues about race. Initiating conversations about religion and gender in the name of multicultural education, but with the aim of ignoring racial and class privilege or shifting the conversation away from the hard truth with false color blindness, is fundamentally opposed to the goals of multicultural education. There is danger in having too broad a focus in multicultural education because it could dilute its power to transform educational institutions for equity and justice, especially if it allows educators to feel that they are celebrating diversity without making substantive changes in their curriculum and pedagogy (Gorski, 2010).

Equity vs. Equality

Neither color blindness nor equality is a goal of multicultural education. Equality means giving every student the same. Equity means giving every student the opportunity to have what she or he needs to be successful. Given how inequitable education currently is, treating every student the same would perpetuate inequity. Underresourced schools that have been underserved by the educational system require more than equal resources to achieve equity. Equity and educational justice from a multicultural perspective goes beyond proposals for longer school days or cutting time from the arts and physical education for standardized test preparation. Equity means accessible opportunities fitted to the needs and strengths of all students. Every student must have highly qualified teachers, rigorous content taught in an engaging and skillful manner, academic feedback and guidance, technological resources, safe and clean school buildings, creative and critical thinking opportunities, physical and aesthetic education, and other means of developing the whole child.

Hope

Finally, multicultural education is possible and it is transformative. While many inequities in schooling exist, there are also many schools that fulfill the goals of multicultural education. And even in schools where the institution as a whole might fall short of the goals, individual educators within the school do uphold them. A belief in the ability of people and institutions to become more equitable and just is necessary. Radical transformation does not happen overnight, but it can happen. Every step in the direction of equity and justice moves us closer. For many of us, the process of getting there is multicultural education. These goals of equity, justice, and transforming schools are consistent with the goals of the prosocial interventions and perspectives discussed in this handbook.

Section Two: Multicultural Education and Prosocial Education

Multicultural education can be considered prosocial education because it is the vehicle for socializing students into our diverse society. The chapters of this handbook demonstrate that prosocial education affects human development through its expression of values, ethics, and morality, and it fosters and motivates academic and life learning (chapters 1, 5, and 25). Multicultural education meets these three essential criteria.

Multicultural Education and Development

Multicultural education’s effect on development is fairly straightforward. Schools are the most important extrafamilial context for development. If schools allow some young people to develop academically and socially but hinder others’ ability to do so, this has an impact. We know that finishing high school is a key milestone, with those students earning a high school diploma having better outcomes on a variety of indicators and better life chances. We also know that there are contextual influences found in schools that promote or hinder students reaching this milestone. These conditions—opportunity, access, and resources, along with pedagogical and school structures—are what is examined in multicultural education. High schools that are “dropout factories,” meaning that the graduating class is less than 60 percent of the ninth-grade class, are schools that disproportionately serve students of color and students in poverty. This is a multicultural issue and a developmental one as well. Too many students are dropping out of school, or rather, as some have reframed it (Brownstein, 2009), being pushed out of school. This has far-reaching developmental implications for these students—and the next generation of students. But even before the extreme of leaving school without a diploma, a school’s impact on a student’s self-esteem, identity development, academic knowledge, social skills, and a host of other developmental indicators is paramount. All of these indicators are of great concern to multicultural and prosocial educators.

While specialized school settings designed to meet the developmental needs of students may seem like a positive trend, when students of color, particularly black and Latino males, are routinely, disproportionately overreferred to them, both prosocial and multicultural education must shine a light on this practice. Why is this happening? On the other side, students of color are dramatically underrepresented in gifted programs given their proportion in local populations and across the nation. Research has demonstrated that teachers overlook markers of giftedness in students of color (Kern, 2009).

On the more positive side, research has shown that people who have interracial friendships as children have less prejudiced racial attitudes as adults (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003; Dayanim, 2006) and that vicarious experiences with diversity through curricula, videos, and simulations, even in homogenous school settings, have a positive effect. The impact of relationships is key in children’s development in the school setting. The quality of teacher–student and student–peer relationships is also integral to multicultural education. Class climate and school culture have also been shown to have profound positive impacts on interracial friendships (Hallinan & Williams, 1987; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1991).

Multicultural Education and Society’s Values

Society uses schools to reinforce its values and provide continuity into the future; however, society also recognizes the power of education to question the status quo and to keep alive its ideals (Higgins-D’Alessandro, chapter 1, in this volume). Multicultural education, with its roots in critical race, feminist, queer, and other status-quo challenging theories, is also a framework for examining when society is not living up to its values—or for calling society out when its values fail to live up to its ideals. Like other social movements throughout the history of this country, multicultural education can use words espoused in our country’s sacred documents—for example, “liberty and justice for all”—as a litmus test for its values. In this sense, multicultural education offers a critique to prosocial education for socializing students into a value system without specifically examining the ramifications of reproducing the social inequities of the system.

Multicultural Education and the Knowledge Base

Multicultural education also raises questions about how scholars contribute to the knowledge base. In an era where “evidence-based practice” is a new buzz term, it critically questions the evidence on which we should base our practice (Torre, 2009). Because of a long historical legacy of exclusionary, multiculturally misguided, and inappropriate research that produced harmful evidence (Guthrie, 2003), this is an important concern. Is the research paradigm situated in a deficit ideology? To what end is the research being conducted? Are the measures being used culturally sensitive? How will the results be used? Is the sample culturally and economically diverse? Is there economic diversity within the racial diversity and vice versa? Even as scholars have attempted to have more diverse samples—or at least acknowledge the lack of diversity as a limitation—Tuck (2009b) warns against retelling what she refers to as damage-centered narratives, for example, negative statistics of underachievement and stories only of hardship and struggle, and suggests a desire-based framework as an alternative. Toldson (2010) also resists the idea of reinforcing negative stereotypes with statistical evidence, noting that inappropriate metrics are often used, and misleading conclusions can be drawn. Like any field, multicultural educators and scholars should and do value evidence, but it resists evidence that may not share assumptions of equity and justice.

Multicultural Education in Prosocial Education

There are many connections that can be made between multicultural education and specific assumptions or foci of prosocial education. Each prosocial education area has to deal with the multicultural contingencies placed on a society with changing demographics. Some share assumptions of equity and justice and have been “multicultural” before this term was popular. However, other areas that have not traditionally explicitly espoused a multicultural focus will need to grapple with the reality that being multiculturally competent is an integral part of what it means to be prosocially competent in the twenty-first century.

Service Learning

One potential place of conflict is in service learning. Chapter 10 and its case studies also make this point and give examples. Because service learning has a helping orientation integrated into the learning process, service learning must ask, who is the helper and who must be helped? When the helper/helpee divide cuts across diversity dimensions and multicultural lines, this must be examined in a sensitive manner. For example, when wealthier schools go to poorer areas to perform community service, care must be taken to not invoke a deficit ideology by pathologizing the communities and the people who are being served. This can be particularly problematic in magnet schools or independent schools where students come from many types of neighborhoods. School trips to do service in what may very well be a student’s own community set up an interesting duality for that student. Also, students should not encounter certain communities only in the context of needing help, especially if they haven’t encountered the resources and strengths of these communities in other ways. Valuing the knowledge of the community agency personnel and clients is critical in not setting up a “Great White Hope” dynamic where students are inadvertently reinforced for thinking of themselves as saviors and of others as in need of saving. While certainly there are people and communities in need, and students benefit tremendously from the act of serving others, service learning programs must be careful not to reinforce stereotypes in the process.

Section Three: Five Dimensions of Multicultural Education

James A. Banks, past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), is arguably multicultural education’s preeminent scholar. Banks (1995) describes multicultural education across five dimensions: content integration, knowledge construction, equity pedagogy, prejudice reduction, and creating an empowering school culture. He created these five dimensions to help educators recognize that they each can play a role in multicultural education. This section illustrates the range of multicultural education efforts by using examples to illustrate each of the five dimensions. Narrow conceptualizations of multicultural education as simply content education falsely make it the domain of English, history, and social studies (Banks, 1995). Banks points out that math and science teachers have a responsibility to include mathematicians of color and women scientists. Failing to do this, we render students vulnerable to what Adichie (2009) describes as the danger of a single story. Without being “taught,” students “know,” for example, that Albert Einstein was a scientist. Without meaning to, teachers who do not consciously introduce students to other scientists reinforce a single story of what it means to be a scientist in children’s minds, potentially leaving them with the image of scientists as white and male. Content integration is the first dimension of multicultural education.

Content Integration

The work of multicultural educators over the last few decades has done much to include more diverse perspectives in the curriculum. Curriculum has a significant impact on students; it is intricately connected to how students see themselves and others. Emily Style (in Nelson & Wilson, 1998) described curricula as a function of both eyesight and insight, arguing that multicultural curricula should serve both as a window and a mirror. While this is a complex topic worthy of its own volume (Sleeter & Stillman, 2005), it suggests that students should have access to worlds they are not members of through curricula, and equally important, they should see themselves reflected in the materials presented in classes. A multicultural perspective on curricula includes learning about the authors of literature and textbooks, the characters in stories and historical figures, and contexts and illustrations of oppression, discrimination, injustice, justice, and peace.

While there is still much more that can be done, many schools now use curricula that include more women, more people of color, more gays and lesbians, and so forth. The idea is not to just include something as an add-on, but to fully integrate these perspectives throughout the curriculum on an ongoing basis. One should also go one step further than inclusion, but one should also examine the representation in the inclusion. For example, an English teacher should not just include the one book from a certain group each year if the characters in that book reinforce stereotypical notions, such as a black family being poor and trying to save their farm or a Latino family trying to learn to speak English, lose accents, and assimilate to the mainstream culture. Some teachers think including these stories makes their curriculum more multicultural, and on some levels this is true, but if the multicultural representation creates or reinforces more stereotypes than it dispels, then it likely does not serve the goals of equity and justice well.

Teaching Tolerance is a program that aids educators in content integration (see table 18.1).

Table 18.1. Review of Teaching Tolerance

Program	Teaching Tolerance
First dimension: Content integration	Teaching Tolerance is best known for their curricular materials, which support teachers in exposing students to diverse content. Some Teaching Tolerance’s resources, such as the Teaching Diverse Students Initiative (2009) and ongoing professional development tools, also illustrate other dimensions of Banks’ framework.
Origin	Teaching Tolerance was begun in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). SPLC was founded in 1971 as a nonprofit civil rights organization by two civil rights lawyers, Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr.
Mission	Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations, and supporting equitable school experiences for children in the United States.
Format	The program provides free educational materials including the free self-titled magazine Teaching Tolerance, which is sent to approximately four hundred thousand educators twice each year. Other resources include a website with curricular downloads, documentaries, and support materials for school activities, such as National Mix It Up Day, which is geared toward helping students eradicate social boundaries.
Connections to prosocial education	Teaching Tolerance uses the term tolerance to refer to the broad range of skills that people need to live together peacefully. The term prosocial is used in the explanation of what the organization stands for. The definition of tolerance from the UNESCO Declaration on the Principles of Tolerance (1995) is used as the philosophical underpinning of the organization. Teaching Tolerance views tolerance as a method of thinking, feeling, and acting to promote the human values of peace and respect and the courage to act on them.
Successes	Teaching Tolerance has won two Oscars, one Emmy, two Golden Lamp Awards, and twenty other awards for its work.
Challenges	The term tolerance has some negative connotations associated with it, such as having to deal with something unpleasant rather than full acceptance. Though the organization is explicit about their understanding of and use of the term, Teaching Tolerance is frequently questioned about the idea of tolerance not going far enough in promoting acceptance and harmony. The SPLC which supports Teaching Tolerance is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that operates solely from donations and receives no government funding. The current financial status of the organization and its endowment are deemed sound according to the SPLC website.
Empirical support	There are references to scientific surveys, but no links to research studies were found on either the Teaching Tolerance or SPLC websites. After an extensive search through the ERIC and PsycINFO databases, only two articles were found, but neither were research studies on the impact of the program in schools.

Sources:

Organization websites: http://www.tolerance.org, http://www.splccenter.org.

Articles: Peebles-Wilkins (2006), Stevens and Charles (2005).

Knowledge Construction

The second dimension of Banks’ (1995) theory of multicultural education is knowledge construction. This dimension challenges teachers and students to examine the assumptions about how knowledge bases are built over the years. When U.S. history textbooks (Loewen, 2007) include chapters about “Westward expansion,” this dimension asks, “From whose perspective is this author writing?” As Banks points out, it wasn’t west for the Lakota Sioux; it was home—the center of their universe. It wasn’t west for Mexicans; it was north. It wasn’t west for the Japanese; it was east. It was west for a particular group of people, the European settlers, which in too many cases is taken as the norm, and as such has gone unexamined.

Understanding processes of knowledge construction is critical to both multicultural and prosocial education. Both approaches foster students’ abilities to take the perspectives of others in the classroom and through the curricula of past and future others. Some multicultural education efforts offer further development of perspective taking and critical thinking, encouraging students to explicitly examine processes of knowledge construction. As Howard (2006) pointed out in the poignant title of his book, We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know, if we educators weren’t taught to critically examine basic ideas such as the “discovery of America,” which negates the presence of the indigenous peoples that first inhabited the “New World” and ignores the accomplishments of other explorers like the Afro-Phoenicians who “discovered” the area previously (Loewen, 2007), how will they help their students to build a full, rich picture of historical epochs? In 2010, an educator friend of mine was given a textbook, Bound for America (Meltzer, 2002), to teach sixth grade social studies. This title ignores the perspectives of those first Americans who were already here. My friend immediately noticed the unfortunate use of the term bound. For some, the word may invoke feelings of being excited for a new journey, but to others, it may conjure images of the millions of people who were literally bound in chains as they were stolen from their continent and brutally forced into more than four hundred years of unpaid labor in the construction of this nation. This dimension of multicultural education uncovers these hidden truths by asking the hard questions about how knowledge is constructed.

Construction of knowledge operates on many levels—in examining curricular texts, in the dynamic processes of the classroom, and in research. The Public Science Project (see table 18.2) is an organization that utilizes critical participatory action research as a method that co-constructs knowledge.

Table 18.2. Review of the Public Science Project: Center for Critical Participatory Action Research (cPAR)

Program	Public Science Project
Second dimension: Knowledge construction	cPAR exemplifies knowledge construction because it is built upon the democratization of the systematic production of knowledge. It expressly values knowledges that have been traditionally undervalued in the academy and in education. cPAR is rooted in the co-construction of new knowledge by empowering those who may traditionally have been “the researched” to become “the researchers” by leveraging various capacities within research collectives, usually made up of youth, scholars, and practitioners or community members.
Origin	The Public Science Project is a center for Critical Participatory Action Research (cPAR) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York under the direction of Maria Torre, PhD. cPAR’s use of social historical context is an extension of the ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey (1883) and W. E. B. DuBois (1898, 1903), with roots in liberation scholarship (Freire, 1970) and social psychology (Lewin, 1946). cPAR research is grounded in critical theories (i.e., critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, etc.), in action research, and in qualitative methods.
Mission	The goal of the Public Science Project is to conduct research honoring the following principles, among others: To value knowledges that have been historically marginalized and delegitimized (i.e., youth, prisoner, immigrant) alongside traditionally recognized knowledges (i.e., mainstream scholarship). To share various knowledges and resources held by individual members of a research collective, across the collective, so members can participate as equally as possible. To collaboratively decide appropriate research questions, design, methods, and analysis as well as useful research products. To conceive of action on multiple levels over the course of the cPAR project. To think through consequences of research findings for actions. To negotiate conditions of collaboration over time.
Format	cPAR is an epistemology rather than a program. It is a way of approaching research design, research methods, data analyses, and empirical results sharing through a lens of democratic participation.
Connections to prosocial education	cPAR is intricately connected to prosocial education because of its focus on democratic participation and is explicitly used by some civic education approaches. The collaboration necessary to engage in a cPAR project, on both individual and institutional levels, is inherently prosocial in theory, process, and outcome goals. Its goal of using research as a strategy for a more just world resonates with the goals of prosocial education.
Successes	The Public Science Project publishes scholarly articles, presents at conferences, and consults widely; just as important, it directly reports findings to community agencies emphasizing action steps. Its biggest successes may lie in the capacity built within youth who before may have been trapped in circuits of dispossession (Fine, 2010) and afterward see themselves as valuable contributors as researchers and change agents in their communities.
Challenges	There are many challenges at multiple levels in undertaking research projects aimed at undoing systemic injustice, from getting IRB approval and the ethical challenges in working with vulnerable populations, including negative legacies of history and unrealistic promises of change, to providing youth or others opportunities to learn and to co-construct research goals and methods.
Empirical support	cPAR is well documented empirically; theoretical articles include Torre, Fine, Stoudt, and Fox (2010); Fine and Torre (2006); and Tuck et al. (2008). Various cPAR projects have also been documented in videos, performances, websites, and other data-sharing products (Fine et al., 2004). Links to data-sharing products can be found at http://www.publicscienceproject.org: Red Flags, the Food Justice Project, Polling for Justice.

Sources:

Websites: http://www.publicscienceproject.org, http://www.thefoodjusticeproject.org.

Videos:

Red Flags: http://www.viddler.com/explore/mestizoartsactivism/videos/2.

Polling for Justice: http://www.publicscienceproject.org.

Articles: Fine et al. (2004); Torre et al. (2010).

Equity Pedagogy

The third dimension of the framework is equity pedagogy. Equity pedagogy means that teachers employ teaching methods that allow for equitable achievement by students from all backgrounds. This dimension incorporates ideas for modifying and enriching the kinds of pedagogy normally used in classrooms to ensure the success of each student. Successful examples are cooperative learning groups, collaborating on problem solving, and student leadership opportunities, among many others. Natural ties to prosocial education are evident as prosocial educators also employ these and other pedagogical strategies to enhance individual learning.

Equity pedagogy relates to actions teachers take to ensure that all students are successful. This can take various forms depending on the situation. In schools where many students have the means to procure outside tutoring at exorbitant rates, a teacher committed to equity pedagogy would ensure that every student had the opportunity to be successful by securing school funding for all students to have access to an outside tutor, providing extra one-on-one assistance to students unable to get a tutor, or communicating proactively with all families. In schools where parental participation is minimal, equity pedagogy might mean thinking creatively about how to involve parents and being flexible about means of communication. Because this dimension refers to process, the National SEED Project is an excellent illustration (see table 18.3).

Table 18.3. Review of the National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project

Program	The National SEED Project
Third dimension: Equity pedagogy	SEED is involved in ensuring that the curriculum, teaching methods, and school climate become more multicultural; thus it fits multiple levels of the framework. However, since it is process oriented and run by teachers for teachers, it is best located in the equity pedagogy dimension.
Origin	The SEED Project, founded in 1985 by Peggy McIntosh, PhD, is an outgrowth of her (1983, 1990) Interactive Phases of Personal and Curricular Re-Vision theory. SEED’s philosophy is that teachers are the authorities on their own experiences and as such can seed the process of school transformation. SEED is both an acronym and a metaphor. SEED Project’s website highlights its philosophy. “Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed . . . and I am prepared to expect wonders.”—Henry David Thoreau.
Mission	Its mission is to have faculty-driven faculty development in which teachers examine the textbooks of their lives in conversation with other faculty in order to transform themselves and their schools. A key SEED idea is that personal faculty development needs to be supported over time for real change to happen; once teachers are the center of their own growth processes, they can in turn put students’ growth and development at the center of their educational goals.
Format	School-based, three-hour SEED seminars are held monthly with a SEED group leader (a teacher involved in a weeklong intensive summer institute) and faculty volunteers. SEED purposely seeks diverse and various participants to cocreate their summer institutes.
Connections to prosocial education	SEED’s emphasis on interactive exercises, group dialogue, and democratic process makes it prosocial. Like prosocial education, it can be a preventive intervention. It is proactive and exemplifies the equitable distribution of respect, power, access, support, and opportunity.
Successes	SEED seminars have been led by almost two thousand SEED leaders in schools throughout the United States and across the world for more than twenty-five years. Participants report that SEED had an impact on multiple aspects of their lives, including how they teach, learn, make policy, and relate to students (Nelson, 1991).
Challenges	Because participants volunteer, SEED may not reach faculty in need of this type of reflective training in pedagogy. Each SEED seminar is a unique reflective process, so by design, standardization across SEED groups is difficult.
Empirical support	SEED is housed in the Wellesley Centers for Women. Articles by the founder, Peggy McIntosh, PhD, and current directors, Emily Style, MA; Brenda Flyswithhawks, PhD; and Emmy Howe were found. No empirical articles by other scholars were found.

Source:

SEED project website: http://www.wcwonline.org/Active-Projects/seed-project-on-inclusive-curriculum.

Prejudice Reduction

Prejudice reduction is the fourth dimension and involves facilitating the development of positive multicultural attitudes. Because research indicates that students come to school with prejudices about different groups (Killen, Rutland, Ruok, & the Society for Research in Child Development, 2011; Pfeifer, Brown, Juvonen, & the Society for Research in Child Development, 2007), it is important for teachers to counteract any false and negative stereotypes with positive experiences. From this perspective all teachers are accountable, regardless of subject area expertise. Sometimes math, science, physical education, or other teachers may feel that they cannot be as involved in multicultural education as teachers of history or English, but this dimension emphasizes equal opportunity and equal responsibility for prejudice reduction. When students make prejudicial comments to one another; imitate or otherwise make fun of students with disabilities; or tell racist, sexist, or homophobic jokes, all teachers have a responsibility to intervene.

Reducing prejudice, obviously, is an important goal of prosocial education. But, as is pointed out by many authors in this volume, prosocial education involves more than diminishing antisocial behavior; it must also promote positive social interactions and ultimately productive citizenry. Similarly, Banks (2009) holds that positive multicultural attitudes can be developed and lead to positive social interactions across groups. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond is an organization that works toward the dismantling of racism in individuals and institutions (see table 18.4).

Table 18.4. Review of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB): Undoing Racism

Program	The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond: Undoing Racism
Fourth dimension: Prejudice reduction	The PISAB Undoing Racism workshop is an example of prejudice reduction. Banks argues that all educators should be involved on an ongoing basis in prejudice reduction. This workshop helps participants understand more about how the system of racism works so that they can be empowered to work toward dismantling it. Although the Undoing Racism workshop is focused at the structural level and Banks frames this dimension in terms of individual responsibility, the Undoing Racism workshop provides systemic analysis with the aim of increasing individual agency in deconstructing racism.
Origin	The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) was founded in 1980 by Ron Chisom, a community activist in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jim Dunn, PhD, a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. PISAB is a national and international collective of antiracist, multicultural activists and educators committed to social transformation through helping individuals, communities, organizations, and institutions move beyond addressing symptoms of racism to undoing its causes with the goal of creating a more just and equitable society. Undoing Racism is PISAB’s signature program.
Mission	Its mission is to build a multicultural and antiracist movement for social change. The organization believes that if racism was constructed, it can be undone. The Undoing Racism workshop focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists, and how it can be undone. The workshop is founded on several antiracist principles including undoing racism, learning from history, sharing culture, developing leadership, maintaining accountability, networking, analyzing power, gatekeeping, undoing internalized racial oppression, and identifying and analyzing manifestations of racism.
Format	Undoing Racism is a two-day intensive workshop led by a multicultural team of facilitators. The training is intentionally grounded in communities of color, which, while inclusive of all, purposely resists the dominant culture. It utilizes large-group presentations and dialogue. It also incorporates participant reflection, role-playing, and strategic planning. The goal of the workshop is to create effective organizers for justice.
Connections to prosocial education	Similar to prosocial education efforts (e.g., Character Education Partnership, Association for Moral Education), one of its goals is to build coalitions. Moreover, working together toward the common goal of social transformation is prosocial. The use of multiracial teams of trainer/facilitators models collegial working relationships across dimensions of difference for participants.
Successes	The program has trained almost five hundred thousand individuals in its thirty years. It has a wide variety of participants including youth groups, parent groups, educators, social service agencies, community activists, civic organizations, and schools. It was recognized by the Aspen Institute as a leading racial justice organization in 2002.
Challenges	Its theory of change rests on antiracism and multiculturalism, which remains in need of greater theoretical research and support according to Paluck and Green’s (2009) review of what works in prejudice reduction.
Empirical support	The Aspen Institute’s review of several racial justice training programs is the only scholarly reference outside PISAB’s own materials that was found. As a practitioner, I have encountered several references to Undoing Racism, including in multiple trainings at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Fordham University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Dorothy Day Center for Social Justice, and recommendations from other diversity practitioners at schools in the New York City area.

Sources:

Website: http://www.pisab.org.

Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion: A Guide to Selected Programs by the Aspen Institute (Shapiro, 2002).

Personal interaction with some of the PISAB trainers, several personal recommendations about the program by recent participants.

Empowering School Culture

The fifth and last dimension moves outside of the individual classroom to the school level to focus on empowering school culture and social structure. This dimension examines an entire school’s policies and programs for equity. Grouping, tracking, labeling practices, participation, and leadership within the curriculum and in extracurricular activities are reviewed. Disproportionate rates of underachievement and discipline referrals and policies that contribute to disproportionality are also explored. If, for example, physical bullying carries an automatic suspension, but relational or social bullying, the bullying in which girls are more likely to engage (Swearer, Espelage, Vaillancourt, & Hymel, 2010) does not, then this is inequitable. If students of different groups receive different punishments for the same offenses, this also should be examined and rectified. Gregory, Skiba, and Noguera (2010) reviewed several studies and found race as a significant predictor of school discipline reports when controlling for SES. They found disproportionality in disciplining black students, especially black male students, at much higher rates than any other group. Discipline patterns should be examined alongside patterns of academic achievement for different groups. Gregory et al. (2010) interpreted findings of interactions between the discipline gap and the “achievement gap” as grounded in societal stereotypes, implicit bias, and cultural mismatch between teachers and students. Further research is needed in this area.

The demographic composition of the school faculty and staff as compared to the student body is key information from a multicultural education standpoint, as it sends implicit messages about who has authority and who can become teachers and other professionals, which influences students’ sense of autonomy and possibility. For example, if the kitchen and maintenance staffs are entirely Latino, but only a small percentage of the faculty are Latino and they only teach Spanish language classes, the message to Latino students can be that they should limit their aspirations. In the case of an almost entirely white student body, this would mean that most of the students’ interactions with Latinos exist in a service capacity. In the case of a largely Latino student body, this would mean that the students would not see themselves represented broadly in various facets of the school in the adult population. The Equity Collaborative exists to help educators collaborate with colleagues at other schools to transform their school cultures (see table 18.5).

Table 18.5. Review of the Equity Collaborative

Program	The Equity Collaborative
Fifth dimension: Empowering school culture	The Equity Collaborative fits the fifth dimension because it focuses on organizational development and building school teams working in various roles to support multicultural education antibias programming for students. Teachers, school leaders, student support people, and parents all attend the Equity Collaborative to work together to create an empowering school culture.
Origin	The Georgetown Day School Equity Collaborative was founded in 2007 by the Equity and Social Justice Program under the leadership of Elizabeth Denevi and Mariama Richards at the Georgetown Day School (GDS) in Washington, D.C. GDS opened in 1945 as an integrated school in a segregated city, and it continues to be a model multicultural education school. It is the 2004 recipient of the National Association of Independent Schools Leading Edge Award for Equity and Justice.
Mission	Its goal is to help educators develop institutional road maps for creating and supporting multicultural education and antibias curricula in both public and independent schools. A focus on organizational development and strategic planning for equity and diversity initiatives in essential school teams is a unique feature. The GDS Equity Collaborative defines an essential school team as two school leaders (such as heads of school or principals), two student support people (such as deans or directors of diversity and multicultural affairs), and one classroom teacher.
Format	The Equity Collaborative is a leadership program held in June when schools dismiss for the summer. This weeklong intensive session for educators consists of workshops, speakers, field trips, and sustained dialogue in small and large groups. Groupings include school planning groups; school role affinity groups (i.e., teachers, principals, directors of diversity, etc.); participant choice workshops; and so forth. It emphasizes participants and facilitators learning from one another and provides an online forum for continued dialogue throughout the next school year.
Connections to prosocial education	The Equity Collaborative is prosocial in its name and processes. Prosocial education approaches all emphasize the Equity Collaborative’s prevailing idea that educators should be enabled to support one another in creating just and equitable schools. Like prosocial education, it focuses on students’ lives, inclusive of but also beyond academic learning; thus both approaches recognize the importance of including student support staff in their training. Finally, the process of the leadership program employs many prosocial ideas, specifically with the explicit focus on the establishment of positive community norms.
Successes	The Equity Collaborative has been held for the past five years, with many alumni returning. Not only have participants spoken highly of their experiences, but they have shared testimonials about leveraging knowledge gained at the collaborative toward institutional transformation during the following school year. The essential school team model of organizational development used during the summer workshop is rare in diversity trainings that focus primarily on individual awareness. The Equity Collaborative also attempts to forge partnerships between public and independent schools, another feature that sets this program apart.
Challenges	The intensive, intimate nature of the Equity Collaborative, which seems to be key to its success, may make this program difficult to scale up; therefore the program has intentionally remained confined to a relatively small community. The regular fees of approximately $1,500 per person may be out of reach for some schools.
Empirical support	Because the program is new, small, and grassroots based, it has not been empirically validated; however, various features of the program are built on empirical support. Guest speakers are often scholars from major research universities who connect contemporary, relevant research findings to program features.

Sources:

Website: http://www.equitycollaborative.org.

Personal experience as a collaborative participant in 2008 and 2009.

The five dimensions put forth by Banks (1995) support the goals of prosocial education as well as illuminate the goals and strategies of multicultural education. Schools that are successful in fully implementing multicultural education demonstrate evidence of all five dimensions on an ongoing basis; they also would likely be exemplary prosocial education schools as well. Multicultural education is an ever-evolving process in which educators continually strive to enhance their knowledge, awareness, and skills toward the full development and learning of all students and the creation of equitable schools whose existence and graduates will help move our society toward greater justice.

The preceding section explained the prevailing theoretical framework for multicultural education, illustrated by existing programs that connect theory to practice. The first sections of this chapter elaborated the assumptions and principles of multicultural education and explicated parallels with prosocial education. I will conclude with further thoughts about bridging theory and practice in schools.

Conclusion: Points to Ponder

Given the richness of Banks’ (1995) theoretical framework and the context provided by this chapter on the history and practice of multicultural education, I think it is most fruitful to consider each dimension’s implications for school policies and practices.

Content integration. Multicultural curricula should be infused throughout. Regular audits of curricular content should be examined both horizontally (across grade level in every discipline) and vertically (across each discipline at every grade level Pre-K–12) for inclusion of multicultural educational principles and ideas. They should be transformative of curricula rather than additive (Gorski, 2008). Style’s windows and mirrors theory (in Nelson & Wilson, 1998) can be a useful framework. Given that students have multiple, intersecting identities, the way that they see themselves and others throughout curricula should address these intersections. Even curricula that attempt to be multicultural can fall into the trap of being one dimensional. For example, if a unit on protest movements in the United States highlights only black men in the civil rights movement and white women in the women’s suffrage or women’s liberation movements, where will black young women see themselves mirrored? This too frequent failure to represent intersectional identities resulted in the aptly titled black women’s studies book, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: But Some of Us Are Brave (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1993).

Every student in the classroom should have windows and mirrors. If the classroom is not demographically diverse, this does not let teachers off the multicultural education hook. What If All the Kids Are White? (Derman-Sparks, Patricia, & Edwards, 2011) gives suggestions for incorporating multicultural education in every classroom.

Knowledge construction. Students must be taught the skills of critically analyzing sources of knowledge. Rather than being empty receptacles for deposits of information, students are active, engaged learners who ask critical questions. Students must also be encouraged to recognize the validity of multiple narratives as well as the idea that conflicting narratives can occupy the same space at the same time and both be right and true.

Equity pedagogy. When educators, school systems, and scholars reject deficit ideologies and recognize that every student has a right to high-quality educational opportunities, equity pedagogy helps to ensure equity and justice. Equity pedagogy can be measured. If certain groups are being “left behind,” the answer is not more testing but changing school structures. Equity pedagogy is the commitment to ensuring that all students get what they need to be successful and recognizes strengths in diversity of curricula, classrooms, and educational opportunities. Diversity equals academic excellence (Denevi & Richards, 2009). Gurin and colleagues (2003) found that students who learn in diverse environments demonstrate both academic and social growth, in fact with differential effects for white students and students of color. White students tended to benefit more than students of color from diversity efforts. Gurin discusses the idea that interaction with white students is less novel to students of color given the prevalence of their access to white students in this culture. Keeping this in mind, many schools have created affinity groups for students of color to allow them to have a safe space to discuss racial experiences in their school. Some schools have also instituted clustering policies, so that no student of color is an “only” in a class when there are options to do otherwise.

Because family involvement is important for ensuring student success, equity pedagogy is also involved in collaborating with families. Schools need to think carefully about how communication with families is handled. Some schools have new, green, sustainable initiatives that require all communication to be sent electronically—from notices about PTA meetings to student report cards. If not all families have easy, regular access to the Internet, this is inequitable. Sending all communication in English to families with limited English proficiency is also inequitable. Equity pedagogy means thinking through scenarios proactively and in the moment. For example, in a school that is accessible to people with disabilities with an elevator, what is the contingency plan for when the elevator is not working? Can a student’s classes all be temporarily moved to the first floor? Will a parent be able to reach the conference room for a meeting? These everyday multicultural contingencies make up equity pedagogy. The key question to ask in these situations is how do we ensure that every student and family has the opportunity to get what they need to be successful?

Prejudice reduction. Educators have the responsibility to become involved in reducing prejudice in their school communities. While many educators would likely interrupt the use of derogatory racial slurs, some choose not to intervene when other types of prejudice occur in schools, for example, using the phrase “That’s so gay.” This is heard countless times per day at schools all over the country, but not every educator recognizes the saying as one that is rooted in a stereotype, nor do all educators feel empowered to stop it. Other expressions, such as “Don’t throw like a girl,” can also be heard regularly. Educators need to step up and stop even these little, insidious acts of prejudice whenever they are found. Students also need to be empowered in this regard to no longer be bystanders but to become upstanders for equity and justice in schools.

Empowering school culture. This dimension incorporates all of the above dimensions into a cohesive school culture that is supportive of multicultural education. There are real implications for school policies and programs in whether or not a school culture is empowering. Tatum (2003) distinguishes between active racism and passive racism with a metaphor that explains the need for an empowering school culture.

Because racism is so ingrained in the fabric of American institutions, it is easily self-perpetuating. All that is required to maintain it is business as usual.

I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. . . . Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. Some of the bystanders may feel the motion of the conveyor belt, see the active racists ahead of them, and choose to turn around, unwilling to go to the same destination as the White supremacists. But, unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt—unless they are actively antiracist—they will find themselves carried along with the others. (Tatum, 2003, p. 11)

Tatum’s airport people-mover analogy provides an excellent rationale for the comprehensive model of creating an empowering school culture. Though her work talks specifically about race, it can be applied to other dimensions of diversity and the totality of multicultural education. If the media inundate students with stereotypes, schools must present even more contrary, positive examples. If adult society models relatively segregated social behavior, schools must provide explicit, active opportunities for interracial friendship formation. If part of our culture dictates that discussions involving diversity and multiculturalism are taboo, or at least politically incorrect, schools must open the dialogue in a meaningful way, including constructive methods for dealing with conflict, which in turn can be used as catalysts for learning. Schools must be proactively involved in creating an empowering school culture that supports both multicultural and excellent education. Faculty and staff hiring and retention play a key role in this effort. As Irvine (2003) put it, “They Bring More Than Their Race: Why Teachers of Color are Essential in Today’s Schools.” Given the proliferation of stereotypes that abound in the media, society and mainstream culture may be moving schools along in a racist, sexist, and homophobic direction. This is likely unintentional, but it is the result of an unexamined status quo. The media, along with the cultural norms, expectations, and socialization practices of our society, bombard young people with detrimental stereotypical information regularly. The only way to offset this is for schools to move in the opposite direction—toward multicultural education, equity, and justice—and move toward this goal faster.

This chapter connects the principles of multicultural education with the goals of prosocial education. Multicultural education is prosocial education. All key tenets of multicultural education, such as inclusion, equity, and justice are prosocial in nature. The chapter also considered multicultural education as prosocial education. The ideals of prosocial education are met by multicultural education in its optimization of the developmental context of school; its emphasis on understanding, accepting some, and critiquing other societal values—so that society itself becomes more multicultural; and its interrogation of and contribution to the existing knowledge base. Multicultural education is also found throughout prosocial education, such as in service learning; civic, moral, and character education; after-school programming; and other areas. The programs explored as illustrations of the five dimensions of Banks’ (1995) theoretical framework represent different models of multicultural education. Finally, because multicultural education is an ever-evolving process, the work is never finished; however, through focusing on multicultural education, practitioners and researchers grow closer to the ideal of equitable and just schooling for all.

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