Multicultural Education Online

Course Description

Today's classroom teachers routinely face increased racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural/familial diversity within the educational structure. As a result, there is a growing need for teacher education to prepare teachers with methods of restructuring lessons that are not to be viewed as "add on's" to their content area. In Multicultural Education, you will discover instructional strategies that benefit ESL students and that are consistent with strategies that benefit all students.

All teachers teach students of varying cultures and diverse backgrounds, and some teachers specialize in the teaching of students who have English as their Second Language, (ESL). It is important for teachers to acquire specialized competencies and skills to effectively teach across the curriculum, i.e., knowledge of how language is structured, how first languages are acquired and developed, and how languages vary.

Objectives

• Examine Federal and State law as it pertains to the growing number of ESL/ELL (English Language Learners) students in your district.
• Define multicultural education and how it applies to the ESL student and the rest of the student population.
• Assess why multicultural education is a necessity in today's diverse classroom.
• Examine the roadblocks teachers encounter in teaching diverse populations.
• Investigate personal beliefs about teaching diverse populations and set personal and professional goals.
• Identify the major significant cultures represented by the ESL student.
• Locate and acquire relevant resources in ESL methodologies.
• Examine methods of teaching English pronunciation, structure, reading, and writing.
• Apply content-based ESL approaches to instruction and assessment.
• Identify and evaluate cultural stereotypes relating to ESL and non-ESL students.
• Explore current and effective teaching strategies linked to appropriate language acquisition stages.
• Create lessons that are infused with multicultural teaching strategies.
• Examine textbook diversity and controversy as it pertains to the ESL student and others.
• Learn ways of structuring groups to take advantage of individual differences and maximize strengths.
• Develop student activities to accompany revised lesson plans for the ESL student.
• Create a final integration project linking classroom and curriculum, community and/or school, teachers and parents.

Curriculum Design & Time Requirements

This course will consist of 10 reflective modules plus an introductory module covering a period of 13 weeks. This is an online sixty-hour, three credit graduate level course.

Hardware & Computer Skills Requirements

Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have internet access with an active e-mail account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.

Course Materials

The required textbook for this course is Multicultural Education: A Teacher's Guide to Linking Context, Process, and Content, 2nd edition by Hilda Hernandez, Merrill Prentice Hall, 2001. This text provides approaches to teach multicultural education from the perspective of linking content, process, and content-dimensions common to all classrooms. Teachers will discover a wealth of approaches, strategies, and techniques for effective teaching along with numerous Websites that will contribute a plethora of information to teach students whose first language is not English.

Session Outline

Session 1: Federal and State Law for whom English is a New Language
Contents:

1. Examine information regarding laws in your state/district and determine the impact on ESL students.
2. Increase awareness of the growing diverse populations in schools throughout your district and this country.
3. Assess best practices in ESL education as well as how to best infuse multicultural education into all areas of the curriculum.
4. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 2: Educating Teachers for Diversity – The Context of Teaching
Contents:

1. Analyze beliefs held about teaching diverse populations in today's classroom.
2. Examine/develop a multicultural perspective.
3. Employ strategies used to foster reflective teaching and ELL instruction.
4. Reflect on personal and professional knowledge and experiences to help define your professional development goals.
5. Examine the beginning stages of adjustment for the ELL student.
6. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 3: Characteristics of Cultural Identity and How it Relates to Specific Educational Settings
Contents:

1. Compare and contrast characteristics of a diverse society.
2. Reflect on personal transformation and its connection to fostering the development of a multicultural perspective.
3. Analyze the effects of culture shock and its subsequent stages on ELL students and how it transfers to the classroom.
4. Relate the different characteristics of culture to a specific learning environment.
5. Reflection Assignment and Sample Lesson

Session 4: Defining Multicultural Education
Contents:

1. Compare and contrast numerous definitions of multicultural education.
2. Create your own interpretation of multicultural education.
3. Examine how the definition of multicultural education can be put into action in your classroom.
4. Envision what a multicultural classroom can look like.
5. Demonstrate instructional considerations for the ESL/ELL student.
6. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 5: School and Classroom Context
Contents:

1. Demonstrate practical ways brain-based research applies to ELL learners
2. Analyze the ELL learning hierarchy of language development
3. Recognize beliefs held about teaching diverse populations in today’s classroom.
4. Define the definition of context and how it applies to teaching. 
5. Confront prejudicial beliefs about cultural groups and develop a multicultural perspective.
6. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 6: Strategies for Special Populations and Pros and Cons to Multicultural Teaching and Learning
Contents:

1. Analyze the ongoing controversy, pros and  cons, of multicultural education from an historical perspective.
2. Implement more strategies for ELL/ESOL students in order to improve the learning community.
3. Examine teacher behaviors that consistently promote student learning.
4. Investigate the myths about student retention.
5. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 7: Classroom Processes: Context, Cooperative Learning, Pre-Instructional Strategies
Contents:

1. Compare and contrast various contexts in which learning takes place.
2. Examine language attitudes and student status.
3. Examine the effects of cultural differences in the classroom and schools.
4. Explain how to use effective cooperative teaching and learning strategies with diverse populations.
5. Design improved pre-instructional strategies by studying the behaviors characteristic of differential treatment of high and low achieving students.
6. Forum and Reflection Assignment and Model Lesson Plan

Session 8: Text Books and other Instructional Materials and Effective Teaching Skills
Contents:

1. Explain the controversial impact the content of textbooks has on diversity
2. Compare and contrast the 4 common types of bias
3. Demonstrate teaching and learning styles and evaluate their importance in the multicultural classroom
4. Explain the instructional skills required for successful group work.
5. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 9: Second Language Teaching, Evaluation, and Assessment
Contents:

1. Examine methods of teaching English pronunciation, structure , reading and writing.
2. Assess student attitudes and perceptions as they relate to multicultural education.
3. Examine the changing assessment practices in our schools.
4. Discuss new assessment formats.
5. Determine various methods to evaluate academic efforts of ESL and other students
6. Forum and Reflection Assignments

Session 10: Final Integration Project
Contents:

1. Develop and integrate, implement multicultural lessons appropriate to classroom settings in a subject area of your choosing. This project must contain the principles of curriculum design learned in this course.

Grading

		Assignment	Points			Grading Scale
		Forum Participation	30			100 – 93	A
		Reading/Reflection Assignments	45			92 – 85	B
		Final Integration Project	25			84 – 77	C
		Total Points	100

Student Requirements

1. Forum Activities - Actively participate in all Forum activities. If you post your assignment early, you must go back to the Forum and comment to your colleagues' responses.
2. Reflections - Complete all reading assignments in the textbook, Websites, and information provided in each module. Write an informal reflection as outlined in the assignment and send it in the body of an e-mail message to your instructor. Do not send as an attachment.
3. Complete the final integration project.

Student Academic Integrity

Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Register

To register to take TEI's Multicultural Education Online course, go to the Course Registration page.