Multicultural Education and Technology: Perfect Pair or Odd Couple? ERIC Digest.

Overview & Synopsis

This digest examines how technology can support multicultural education. Multicultural education represents an approach to education and the teaching-learning process that is grounded in the democratic ideals of justice and equality. Five critical dimensions of multicultural education are: content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and empowering school culture and social structure. Content integration is intended to expand the curriculum by incorporating contributions of diverse cultures into traditional disciplines of study. Knowledge construction promotes critical literacy by making explicit the manners in which scholars and scientists contribute to their respective fields of study. Prejudice reduction is about eliminating all forms of bigotry and involves promoting healthy personal identity devoid of the tendency to need to denigrate those who differ from oneself. Equity pedagogy is about equalizing opportunities to learn. It involves incorporating various strategies and techniques that attend to learning styles and intelligence types. Multicultural education proponents contend that in order to provide high quality experiences for all students, many traditional aspects of schools will need to be reconfigured. This is referred to as empowering school culture and social structures. The digest explains how technology can be used to support each of these five dimensions. (Contains 20 references.) (SM)