James A. Banks

The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education

I review the debate over multicultural education in this article, state that all knowledge reflects the values and interests of its creators, and illustrate how the debate between the multiculturalists and the Western traditionalists is rooted in their conflicting conceptions about the nature of knowledge and their divergent political and social interests. I present a typology that describes five types of knowledge and contend that each type should be a part of the school, college, and university curriculum.

Citizenship education and diversity : Implications for teacher education

In the first part of this article, the author argues that teachers should help students to develop a delicate balance of cultural, national, and global identifications because of the rich diversity in the United States and throughout the world. To help students become effective citizens, teachers need to acquire reflective cultural, national, and global identifications. In the second part of this article, the author describes how he tries to help the students in one of his teacher education courses to challenge and critically examine their cultural and national identifications.

Teaching for Social Justice, Diversity, and Citizenship in a Global World

Abstract Racial, ethnic, cultural, and language diversity is increasing in nation-states throughout the world because of worldwide immigration. The deepening ethnic diversity within nation-states and the quest by different groups for cultural recognition and rights are challenging assimilationist notions of citizenship and forcing nation-states to construct new conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education. A delicate balance of unity and diversity should be an essential goal of citizenship education in multicultural nation-states. Citizenship education should help students to develop thoughtful and clarified identifications with their cultural communities, nation-states, and the global community. It also should enable them to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to act to make the nation and the world more democratic and just.

Diversity within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society

The authors offer these design principles in the hope that they will help education policy makers and practitioners realize the elusive but essential goal of a democratic and pluralistic society. WHAT DO WE know about education and diversity, and how do we know it? This two-part question guided the work of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel, sponsored by the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington and the Common Destiny Alliance at the University of Maryland. This article is the product of a four-year project during which the panel, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, reviewed and synthesized the research related to diversity. The panel members are an interdisciplinary group consisting of two psychologists, a political scientist, a sociologist, and four specialists in multicultural education. The panel was modeled after the consensus panels that develop and write reports for the National Academy of Sciences. In such panels, an expert group studies research and practice and arrives at a conclusion about what is known about a particular problem and the most effective actions that can be taken to solve it. The findings of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel, which we call essential principles in this article, describe ways in which education policy and practice related to diversity can be improved. These principles are derived from both research and practice. They are designed to help practitioners in all types of schools increase student academic achievement and improve intergroup skills. Another aim is to help schools successfully meet the challenges of and benefit from the diversity that characterizes the United States. Schools can make a significant difference in the lives of students, and they are a key to maintaining a free and democratic society. Democratic societies are fragile and are works in progress. Their existence depends on a thoughtful citizenry that believes in democratic ideals and is willing and able to participate in the civic life of the nation. We realize that the public schools are experiencing a great deal of criticism. However, we believe that they are essential to ensuring the survival of our democracy. We have organized the 12 essential principles into five categories: 1) teacher learning; 2) student learning; 3) intergroup relations; 4) school governance, organization, and equity; and 5) assessment. Although these categories overlap to some extent, we think readers will find this organization helpful. Teacher Learning Principle 1. Professional development programs should help teachers understand the complex characteristics of ethnic groups within U.S. society and the ways in which race, ethnicity, language, and social class interact to influence student behavior. Continuing education about diversity is especially important for teachers because of the increasing cultural and ethnic gap that exists between the nations teachers and students. Effective professional development programs should help educators to 1) uncover and identify their personal attitudes toward racial, ethnic, language, and cultural groups; 2) acquire knowledge about the histories and cultures of the diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups within the nation and within their schools; 3) become acquainted with the diverse perspectives that exist within different ethnic and cultural communities; 4) understand the ways in which institutionalized knowledge within schools, universities, and the popular culture can perpetuate stereotypes about racial and ethnic groups; and 5) acquire the knowledge and skills needed to develop and implement an equity pedagogy, defined by James Banks as instruction that provides all students with an equal opportunity to attain academic and social success in school.1 Professional development programs should help teachers understand the complex characteristics of ethnic groups and how such variables as social class, religion, region, generation, extent of urbanization, and gender strongly influence ethnic and cultural behavior. …

Multicultural education, transformative knowledge, and action : historical and contemporary perspectives

Essential to continued growth in the field of multicultural education is the documentation of its historical roots and its linkages to the current school reform movement. James Banks demonstrates the ways in which the current multicultural education movement is both connected to and a continuation of earlier movements, both scholarly and activist, designed to promote empowerment, knowledge transformation, liberation, and human freedom in US society. The books five parts: discuss the types of knowledge, the characteristics of transformative knowledge, the historical roots of multicultural education and its links to transformative teaching; document the historical development of transformative scholarship, surveyed through case studies of individual pioneer scholars and activists in race relations and multicultural education such as Carter G. Woodson, Allison Davis, George I. Sanchez, Franz Boas, Mourning Dove, Ella Deloria, and Robert E. Park; focus on the work of women scholars and activists, and particularly women of colour, who have faced the triple oppressions of race, gender and class; describe the rise and fall of the intergroup education movement and the emergence of research related to prejudice in the 1930s and 1940s; and highlight the school reforms currently needed to promote educational equity and accommodate a culturally diverse and democratic society.

The Historical Reconstruction of Knowledge About Race: Implications for Transformative Teaching:

I contend that knowledge reflects both the reality observed as well as the subjectivity of the knower. The attempt to clearly distinguish the objective and subjective elements of knowledge, a key feature of mainstream Anglo-American epistemology, is inconsistent with the ways that human beings know. I use a historical case study of the construction and reconstruction of race between the late 19th century and the 1940s to document the ways in which the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts in which knowers are embedded influence the knowledge they construct and reconstruct. The final part of this article discusses the implications of the historical construction of race for transformative classroom teaching.

Chapter 1: Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice:

The heated discourse on multicultural education, especially in the popular press and among nonspecialists (Gray, 1991; Leo, 1990; Schlesinger, 1991), often obscures the theory, research, and developing consensus among multicultural education specialists about the nature, aims, and scope of the field. Gay (1992), as well as Banks (1989a), has noted the high level of consensus about aims and scope in the literature written by multicultural education theorists. Gay, however, points out that there is a tremendous gap between theory and practice in the field. In her view, theory development has outpaced development in practice, and a wide gap exists between the two. Gibson (1976) reviewed the multicultural education literature and identified five approaches. She noted how the approaches differ and how they overlap and interrelate. In their review of the literature published 11 years later, Sleeter and Grant (1987) also identified five approaches to multicultural education, four of which differ from Gibsons categories. Sleeter and Grant noted the lack of consensus in the field and concluded that a focus on the education of people of color is the only common element among the many different definitions of multicultural education. Although there are many different approaches, statements of aims, and definitions of multicultural education, an examination of the recent literature written by specialists in the field indicates that there is a high level of consensus about its aims and goals (Banks, 1989a; Bennett, 1990; Nieto, 1992; Parekh, 1986; Sleeter & Grant, 1988; Suzuki, 1984). A major goal of multicultural education, as stated by specialists in the field, is to reform the school and other educational institutions so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social-class groups will experience educational equality. Another important goal of multicultural education—revealed in this literature—is to give both male and female students an equal chance to experience educational success and mobility

Race, Knowledge Construction, and Education in the USA: Lessons from history

The article uses examples of research, books and reports on race and ethnic groups published between 1911 and 2000 to document how the knowledge created by social scientists, historians and public intellectuals reflects their social and cultural contexts as well as their political and economic interests. Because of variations in their socialization and epistemological communities, researchers develop competing paradigms and explanations in each historical period. Most of those that become institutionalized reinforce a societys prevailing ideologies and social arrangements. Transformative knowledge usually originates within racial and cultural communities outside the mainstream. Although it is often marginalized and made invisible within the dominant society, transformative knowledge--when combined with action--helps to democratize society and its institutions. Consequently, it is an essential part of the curriculum in the schools, colleges, and universities in democratic, pluralistic nation states.

Black Youths in Predominantly White Suburbs: An Exploratory Study of Their Attitudes and Self-Concepts.

As the income gap between Blacks and Whites narrowed during the 1960s and 70s,1 and with the enactment of fair housing legislation, the number of Black Americans living in suburban communities increased significantly. By 1977 the increase reached 71.8 percent2 and by 1980 one in every five Blacks was a suburban resident.3 This Black suburbanization is not a monolithic movement. Although many Black suburbanites live in predominantly Black spillover communities, a significant number of Black suburban residents live in predominantly White communities where they are a small but increasingly significant minority. There is a dearth of research that describes and interprets the social, psychological, and educational experiences of Black suburbanites. The present study is part of a larger study of Black families who live in selected, predominantly White suburban communities

African American Scholarship and the Evolution of Multicultural Education.

Consensus among scholars within multicultural education about its aims and boundaries is emerging. Most multicultural education specialists believe that a major aim of the field is to restructure schools, colleges, and universities so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, and socialclass groups will experience an equal opportunity to learn (Banks, 1988; Banks & Banks, 1989; Gay, in press; Grant, 1977). As schools, colleges, and universities are currently structured, some groups of students, such as middle-class White males, have a better chance for academic success than have others, such as African American males, especially those who live in low-income, inner-city communities (Gibbs, 1988). Although there is a high level of consensus among multicultural education theorists and specialists about the broad aims of the field, there is less agreement among them about its exact boundaries, dimensions, and specifics. Some theorists focus their work primarily on ethnic groups of color (i.e., African Americans and Latinos) (Baker, 1983; Bennett, 1990). Other theorists conceptualize multicultural education more broadly and include race, class, gender, and exceptionality-and the interaction of these variables-as important components of the field (Banks & Banks, 1989; Garcia, 1991; Gollnick & Chin, 1990). Banks (1988) makes an important distinction between multiethnic education, which focuses on ethnic and racial groups, and multicultural education, which deals with race, class, gender, and exceptionality and their interaction. However, this distinction is rarely made by other theorists and investigators.