Integrating Multicultural Education Into English Language Teaching

Abstract

Multicultural education is an educational approach that focuses on accepting diversity in society, offers equal opportunities for students, and requires a transformation in the process of teaching. Foreign language teaching seems to be an appropriate field to utilize multiculturalism in the curriculum due to its relationship with culture and the flexibility of the content. Despite the existence of different approaches for the integration of multicultural content into the curriculum, there is little research explaining how to realize it in practice, especially in the field of foreign language teaching. Dealing with this problem, this chapter introduces the five dimensions of multicultural education and four levels of the content integration model, both designed by James A. Banks, to show how the English language curriculum could be restructured through the infusion of multicultural themes. This chapter appeals to the English teachers desiring to practice multicultural education in their teaching, and curriculum experts and decision-makers aiming to prepare a multicultural curriculum.