Wednesday, April 28, 2010
THE TRAINING OF CULTURALLY SENSITIVE PROFESSIONALS
THE TRAINING OF CULTURALLY SENSITIVE PROFESSIONALS
Although there has clearly been a greater recognition of the need for training in multicultural competence across professions, many programs still conceptualize this training as more of an "add-on"; that is, programs require only one or two courses for their particular professional specialty. This is in contrast to a more comprehensive and integrated "paradigm shift" in the teaching of all helping professional courses (Nuttall, Sanchez, & Webber, in press).
The training of school staff and other related professionals can be conceptualized by using a model that emphasizes three major components: awareness, knowledge, and skills (Sue, Arredondo & McDavis, 1992; Sue et al., 1982). The awareness component involves professionals examining their own values, myths, stereotypes, and world view. Knowledge entails developing a non-stereotyping, flexible understanding of cultural, social, and family dynamics of diverse groups, along with a comprehension of the critical sociopolitical, historical, and economic contexts in which people from diverse multicultural groups are embedded. Skills require the development of culturally sensitive, flexible, and empowering treatment and assessment strategies that are accompanied by communication skills, the integration of multicultural and diversity issues in various treatment modalities, multicultural consultation, and advocacy skills.
Depending on the school, staff, and community context, flexible training can take place on many levels, such as formal multicultural issues course work, in-service training, long-term consultation and analysis, multicultural program development, and reciprocal relationships with the surrounding multicultural communities.
taken from: ERIC Identifier: ED390018
Publication Date: 1995-00-00
Author: Sanchez, William - And Others
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services Greensboro NC., American Psychological Association Washington DC.
Although there has clearly been a greater recognition of the need for training in multicultural competence across professions, many programs still conceptualize this training as more of an "add-on"; that is, programs require only one or two courses for their particular professional specialty. This is in contrast to a more comprehensive and integrated "paradigm shift" in the teaching of all helping professional courses (Nuttall, Sanchez, & Webber, in press).
The training of school staff and other related professionals can be conceptualized by using a model that emphasizes three major components: awareness, knowledge, and skills (Sue, Arredondo & McDavis, 1992; Sue et al., 1982). The awareness component involves professionals examining their own values, myths, stereotypes, and world view. Knowledge entails developing a non-stereotyping, flexible understanding of cultural, social, and family dynamics of diverse groups, along with a comprehension of the critical sociopolitical, historical, and economic contexts in which people from diverse multicultural groups are embedded. Skills require the development of culturally sensitive, flexible, and empowering treatment and assessment strategies that are accompanied by communication skills, the integration of multicultural and diversity issues in various treatment modalities, multicultural consultation, and advocacy skills.
Depending on the school, staff, and community context, flexible training can take place on many levels, such as formal multicultural issues course work, in-service training, long-term consultation and analysis, multicultural program development, and reciprocal relationships with the surrounding multicultural communities.
taken from: ERIC Identifier: ED390018
Publication Date: 1995-00-00
Author: Sanchez, William - And Others
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services Greensboro NC., American Psychological Association Washington DC.
Teaching with a Multicultural Perspective. ERIC Digest.
Teaching with a multicultural perspective encourages appreciation and understanding of other cultures as well as one's own. Teaching with this perspective promotes the child's sense of the uniqueness of his own culture as a positive characteristic and enables the child to accept the uniqueness of the cultures of others.
taken from: http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-5/perspective.htm
taken from: http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-5/perspective.htm
Varieties of Multicultural Education
An Introduction. ERIC Digest 98.
What we now call multicultural education originated in the 1960s in the wake of the civil rights movement as a corrective to the long-standing de facto policy of assimilating minority groups into the "melting pot" of dominant American culture (Sobol, 1990). Multicultural education has captured almost daily headlines in recent years, as it has become an ever more contentious and politicized battleground. To cite just two instances, attempts to establish multicultural curricula in New York City and California were the subject of considerable public attention. In the debate over New York's Children of the Rainbow curriculum, opponents such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1991) argued that multicultural education threatened to divide students along racial and cultural lines, rather than unite them as Americans. California's curriculum was met with strong attacks from both opponents and proponents of multicultural education; depending upon one's perspective, the curriculum either carried diversity too far, or merely bolstered the traditional curriculum's Eurocentric biases (Kirp, 1991; King, 1992).
The public debate continues. As recently as May 1994, a school board in Lake County, Florida, voted that its schools could teach children about other cultures, but only as a way of teaching them that American culture was inherently "superior," a decision much discussed around the country ("School Board," 1994).
In the midst of such controversy, there has been little agreement on a precise conceptualization of multicultural education; indeed, while some limit its applicability to curriculum, multicultural education has also been broadly defined to include "any set of processes by which schools work with rather than against oppressed groups" (Sleeter, 1992, p. 141). Even more sweeping, one scholar asserted that multicultural education can have an impact upon every aspect of a school's operation: staffing, curriculum, tracking, testing, pedagogy, disciplinary policies, student involvement, and parent and community involvement (Nieto, 1992). Clearly, multicultural education, as practiced in the United States, takes many varied forms.
TYPOLOGIES OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
Multicultural education, however, cannot be all things to all people. Several attempts have been made to detail the various educational strategies that fall under the broad umbrella of multicultural education--to develop a "typology." A typology can provide a useful framework for thinking about multicultural education, giving educators--and others--a clearer understanding of what people mean by the term. Two of the most useful typologies, albeit different from each other, were developed by Banks (1994), and by Sleeter and Grant (1993). Drawing upon both those typologies, this digest presents a third typology in order to offer a brief summary of how multicultural education is implemented in the United States. It is intended for educators, policy makers, and others who are just beginning to consider multicultural education options; future digests will address more advanced issues.
The multicultural education typology presented here is comprised of programs that can be broadly divided into three categories, according to their primary emphasis. Each is discussed below.
taken from : http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/multicultural.htm
What we now call multicultural education originated in the 1960s in the wake of the civil rights movement as a corrective to the long-standing de facto policy of assimilating minority groups into the "melting pot" of dominant American culture (Sobol, 1990). Multicultural education has captured almost daily headlines in recent years, as it has become an ever more contentious and politicized battleground. To cite just two instances, attempts to establish multicultural curricula in New York City and California were the subject of considerable public attention. In the debate over New York's Children of the Rainbow curriculum, opponents such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1991) argued that multicultural education threatened to divide students along racial and cultural lines, rather than unite them as Americans. California's curriculum was met with strong attacks from both opponents and proponents of multicultural education; depending upon one's perspective, the curriculum either carried diversity too far, or merely bolstered the traditional curriculum's Eurocentric biases (Kirp, 1991; King, 1992).
The public debate continues. As recently as May 1994, a school board in Lake County, Florida, voted that its schools could teach children about other cultures, but only as a way of teaching them that American culture was inherently "superior," a decision much discussed around the country ("School Board," 1994).
In the midst of such controversy, there has been little agreement on a precise conceptualization of multicultural education; indeed, while some limit its applicability to curriculum, multicultural education has also been broadly defined to include "any set of processes by which schools work with rather than against oppressed groups" (Sleeter, 1992, p. 141). Even more sweeping, one scholar asserted that multicultural education can have an impact upon every aspect of a school's operation: staffing, curriculum, tracking, testing, pedagogy, disciplinary policies, student involvement, and parent and community involvement (Nieto, 1992). Clearly, multicultural education, as practiced in the United States, takes many varied forms.
TYPOLOGIES OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
Multicultural education, however, cannot be all things to all people. Several attempts have been made to detail the various educational strategies that fall under the broad umbrella of multicultural education--to develop a "typology." A typology can provide a useful framework for thinking about multicultural education, giving educators--and others--a clearer understanding of what people mean by the term. Two of the most useful typologies, albeit different from each other, were developed by Banks (1994), and by Sleeter and Grant (1993). Drawing upon both those typologies, this digest presents a third typology in order to offer a brief summary of how multicultural education is implemented in the United States. It is intended for educators, policy makers, and others who are just beginning to consider multicultural education options; future digests will address more advanced issues.
The multicultural education typology presented here is comprised of programs that can be broadly divided into three categories, according to their primary emphasis. Each is discussed below.
taken from : http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/multicultural.htm
What is Multicultural Education?
"Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good."
taken from: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe3lk1.htm
taken from: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe3lk1.htm
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