Are Disciplinary Distinctions Pertinent to Multicultural Education?: A View from Science

Overview & Synopsis

In this article I ask whether disciplinary distinctions are pertinent to multicultural education. Are pedagogical prescriptions aimed at providing access and success to students of diverse backgrounds equally applicable across domains? I review cross-cultural cognitive research to depict defunct deficit and extant pluralistic approaches to diversity. I present 2 predominant approaches to multicultural education in science and situate them within dimensions that characterize general multicultural education research. I argue that the nature of different disciplines--their position and status in the broader society--influences how comfortable we are with instructional versus epistemological pluralism in multicultural education. What appear to transcend disciplinary boundaries are central questions concerning the goals of education; mainly, whether education is conceived as a medium for social reproduction or as a vehicle for self-actualization.