How teachers of an urban school corporation in the Midwest approach teaching multicultural democracy education in U.S. History classes

Abstract

Teaching history in the traditional way has always been criticized as making history boring and not challenging students’ critical thinking ability. Using the multicultural democracy model makes history more interesting to students. Students also graduate being more aware of their responsibilities in the society. Multicultural democracy is not the same thing as multicultural education. Multicultural education concerns itself with students knowing, appreciating and respecting the diverse cultures in our society, and their respective contributions to the society. Unlike multicultural education, multicultural democracy incorporates other forms of diversity in addition, including religious diversity, gender diversity, diversity in sexual orientation, and diversity in socioeconomic class. Available literatures indicate that teachers that use multicultural democracy model are motivated by personal interest in and history in activism. It is not common to see all the elements of multicultural democracy in a class. However, turning politically disengaged students into socially active citizens is an essential element that must be present in a multicultural democracy education. Qualitative methods were used to collect data separately from four (two male and two female) teachers using semi-structured interviews. Analysis of responses was done by coding the interview data. The following themes emerged during coding: there are time constraints in U.S. History classes therefore it is difficult to teach multicultural democracy education; multicultural democracy education is best taught in government classes and not in history classes; and when the school corporation does not dictate what is taught in the classroom, there is academic freedom. Even though some elements of multicultural democracy education takes place in all the four teachers’ classes, there was no indication of deliberative and critical pedagogies in the classrooms nor students’ social activism.