Designing Multicultural Lesson Plans

Abstract

The study examined contents, goals, and teaching approaches of multicultural lessons developed by pre-service teachers in a Midwest university. The contents of pre-service teachers' lesson plans included a broad range of multicultural topics such as Native American culture, African American culture, ethnic music, diversity (sameness and difference), and Internet search of cultural information. Regarding multicultural education goals, most lessons (99%) aimed to strengthen cultural consciousness. A large proportion of lessons (96%) emphasized the development of multiple historical perspectives. About 73% of lessons were planned to strengthen intercultural competence. Only small amount of lessons explicitly were related to the goal of combating racism, sexism, and all forms of prejudice (6%) or the goal of building social action skills (6%). To increase awareness of the state of the planet and global dynamics was the least considered goal (3%). In regard to teaching approaches, the "contribution" approach was extensively used (51%). The "additive" approach was also used frequently (49%). The transformation approach was embedded in some lessons (19%), and only a small amount of lessons applied the social action approach (6%). The final section discusses three areas of suggestions for implementing multicultural curriculum with professional sincerity.