Teaching for Social Justice in Multicultural Classrooms

Drawing on my work in the U.S., I briefly discuss four related hallmarks of teaching for social justice in diverse classrooms, supported by research on their impact on students. They include explicitly recognizing and working with students' culture as a basis for learning, teaching key concepts in the curriculum through content and examples drawn from more than one cultural group, involving students in structured dialoguing across their differences about social justice issues, and preparation young people to act collaboratively on social justice issues. I then illustrate what teaching for social justice actually looks like in classrooms through vignettes of three classroom teachers. The research and vignettes are based in the U.S., which is a limitation for an Asian audience. I conclude by urging readers to develop classroom-based elaborations and case examples of multicultural education teaching in their own contexts.