With partners:
Transformative Model of Multicultural Education
The transformative model of multicultural education advocated here seeks to move away from a model of education that positions students as passive receivers of information delivered by neutrally-positioned teachers. This is an approach that believes in both recognizing and understanding cultural difference, and also in challenging the barriers that prevent minority groups from accessing particular social goods. It therefore seeks to develop students’ sense of their various cultural identities, while also giving students the skills and knowledge necessary to access the mainstream culture, as well as other cultures. The transformative model, therefore, promotes the change in those arenas and factors that contribute to the systemic disadvantages often found alongside cultural difference.
If the entire school is engaged in a process of transformation, then students are likely to find school changes more meaningful, rich and consistent. Moreover, the transformative model recognizes the skills and intelligences students bring to a transformative educational dialogue.
This model suggests that such transformative multicultural education is of benefit to all involved in the educational process, not only CALD and minority students. While there may be an emphasis on promoting improved learning outcomes for those students who often experience educational disadvantage, there are concrete ways to establish the argument that the benefits of an inclusive multicultural education extend beyond these students and their immediate schools.
In sum, the core objectives of this project in general, and this resource in particular, are to offer schools and teachers support in dealing with cultural diversity and inter-cultural relationships. This support is intended to be interactive and reflexive rather than rigid and prescriptive.
The student-based cultural snapshots and related multicultural perspectives provided in this resource do not form a discrete learning area, nor are they meant to be taught in isolation. Rather, they are intended to inform a constructive reflection on the role of diversity at a range of levels, for example, at the level of administrative structures, or teaching resources and practice, or the school’s connectedness to parents and community organizations.