The dimensions of multicultural education , James Banks

The dimensions of multicultural education and the levels of integration of ethnic content, Banks 2004

Multicultural education as per Banks has five dimensions: (1) content integration, (2) knowledge construction, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) equity pedagogy, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure.

The extent to which teachers use examples, data, and information from various cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area or discipline is referred to as content integration. The knowledge construction process describes how social, behavioral, and natural scientists create knowledge, as well as how implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases within a discipline influence how knowledge is constructed within it. The prejudice reduction dimension focuses on the characteristics of students’ racial attitudes and how they can be modified by teaching methods and materials. An equity pedagogy exists when teachers use responsive techniques and teaching methods that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. An empowering school culture and social structure describes the process of restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, language, and social-class groups experience educational equality and empowerment.

This multi-part framework employs examples from various cultures and ethnic groups to assist people in developing multi-cultural knowledge and reducing preconceived notions about others. Building on these five dimensions, Banks and Banks (2010) identified four levels of ethnic content integration that may be useful in integrating multi-cultural content into the school curriculum: (1) Contributions: characterized by a focus on heroes, holidays, and discrete cultural elements; (2) Additive: accomplished by the addition of a book, a unit, or a course to the curriculum without altering its overall structure; (3) Transformative: enables students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspectives of diverse ethnic and cultural groups by altering the curriculum's structure; and, (4) Social Action: encourages students to make decisions based on important social issues and to take action to discover solutions by themselves