Multicultural education practice in Malaysia

The primary goal of multicultural education is towards offering fair opportunity to all children with different cultural background and simultaneously enable them to interact with the community of various background, hence, producing a quality and unwavering future generation integrating physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual element. Therefore, Islamic Education teachers must be committed to the realization of multi-cultural education and must understand the concept of cultural differences through distinction of ethnicity, language, and cultural practices. To promote cultural diversity, teachers should be using methods that are appropriate to the cultural diversity of the students so that they will not fall behind in their learning process. This study is aimed to explore the practice of Islamic education teachers in implementing multicultural education in the teaching of Islam. This is a qualitative study using case study design. Data were obtained through semi-structure interviews and analysed using Nvivo 8. Five Islamic Education participants have been chosen through a purposive sampling technique. The study found that teachers have been using various methods of strategies in implementing multicultural education. Such methods are the methods of advice, explanation, flashback, drilling, talk, storytelling, contextual, lectures, and discussions. It is hoped that this study can serve as a guide for the teaching of Islamic Education in a classroom with students from various backgrounds and stimulate peaceful interaction and integration. (C) 2015 The authors Published by Elsevier Ltd.