Diversity & Inclusion Update - Fall 2016

This Fall 2016 newsletter discusses ongoing campus initiatives to facilitate diversity and inclusion efforts on campus. Topics discussed include continued changes inspired by the January 2016 Town Hall meeting, such as the restructuring of the Office of Multicultural Engagement, and other changes made to make college resources more accessible and promote educational opportunities on multicultural viewpoints

Poetry, Gender and Teaching: Building Students’ Character through Multicultural Literature

This paper is aimed to explore the concern of gender in teaching poetry as an effort to build student’s character through multicultural literature. The students’ success in life is based on 80% of their soft skill. This is in line with the objective of teaching literature that focuses on developing the affective side of the students. Gender problem is one of the crucial and complicated issues in contemporary multicultural society. Gender issues cover various disciplines; literature and education are among them. These multicultural circumstances, including gender, are portrayed in poetry of multicultural poet’s background. This can be used as rich and inspiring resources for teaching poetry and is valuable for developing students’ character that gets weak from time to time. This weakening condition is caused by the teaching method focusing on developing more and more the cognitive side of the students. Poetry and literature in general, bears human soul that touches four elements of human being: intellectual, sense, imagination and emotion. Thus, teaching poetry can develop gender awareness of the students to prepare themselves be persons with strong character to live in contemporary life which are full of gender problems

Community-based multicultural counselor preparation as a site of Praxis and social justice

Recent calls in counseling psychology to embrace social justice work and mandates in the field to operationalize multicultural competencies have offered few mature examples of how this work actually looks. This article describes a 35-year-old program in a community-based urban setting which has successfully prepared over 800 counselors while integrating social justice and multicultural competencies into its core curriculum. The authors discuss the impact of the program in terms of multicultural competence, praxis, and social justice agency. The article includes recommendations about challenges that professionals and programs of this nature must negotiate in order to implement a program of this nature effectively

Multicultural Curriculum in Rural Early Childhood Programs

This study investigated the use of multicultural curricula in early childhood programs (licensed and licensed-exempt) in rural communities in Wyoming. In previous studies, little attention has focused on the nature of multicultural education in rural schools. This study specifically explored the ways in which existing instructional strategies and curricula were utilized to address the diverse learning needs of young children, and the ways in which culture and race are embraced and celebrated in early childhood programs in rural communities. Data showed a positive correlation (r= .45 p = \u3c .01) between national accreditation of early childhood programs and the availability and use of multicultural curricula

THE ROLE OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN MULTICULTURAL INTERACTIONS

In this boundless era, people cannot avoid the interactions since they yearn for the interactions to fulfill their needs. Hence, it is becoming more and more impossible for people to live exclusively without having interactions with others from different culture. These kinds of interactions create multiculturalism. The multiculturalism is a given nature for many nations in the world. Hence, they need language to help them to share their mind. In multicultural interactions, people use languages not only to communicate with others but also to symbolize themselves. People learn to enrich their understanding of how language itself works and their ability to manipulate language in the service of thinking and problem solving. To some extent, people concern with how others perceive them. This is how people want to construct their identity. Javanese language, as one of the indigenous languages in Indonesia, helps Javanese people in constructing their identity when they have interactions with others, especially in multicultural interactions. The local wisdom preserve in this language gives the people value in constructing identity to interact with others in the multicultural interactions. Yet, some people have not seen the role of the importance of the indigenous language to create identity in multicultural interactions. As part of the world community, people need to be introduced to values and ideology which will be useful in their future life. Because living in the middle of complicated diversity is an unavoidable fact for future generation, constructing identity in multicultural interactions becomes indispensible. This paper explores the power and role of the indigenous language, especially Javanese, as a medium to construct identity in multicultural interactions

“No More Strangers and Foreigners, but Fellowcitizens:” Multicultural Education and Conflict

This paper argues that prevalent forms of multicultural education are separatist and divisive in nature, irrational, inequitable, and can cause conflict. A unifying brand of multicultural education is offered as an alternative which builds on commonalities, can alleviate conflict, fosters academic achievement for all students, and is built on Christian principles

Poetry, Gender and Teaching: Building Students’ Character through Multicultural Literature

This paper is aimed to explore the concern of gender in teaching poetry as an effort to build student’s character through multicultural literature. The students’ success in life is based on 80% of their soft skill. This is in line with the objective of teaching literature that focuses on developing the affective side of the students. Gender problem is one of the crucial and complicated issues in contemporary multicultural society. Gender issues cover various disciplines; literature and education are among them. These multicultural circumstances, including gender, are portrayed in poetry of multicultural poet’s background. This can be used as rich and inspiring resources for teaching poetry and is valuable for developing students’ character that gets weak from time to time. This weakening condition is caused by the teaching method focusing on developing more and more the cognitive side of the students. Poetry and literature in general, bears human soul that touches four elements of human being: intellectual, sense, imagination and emotion. Thus, teaching poetry can develop gender awareness of the students to prepare themselves be persons with strong character to live in contemporary life which are full of gender problems

African-Born Immigrants in U.S. Schools: An Intercultural Perspective on Schooling and Diversity

Despite the significant increase of African-born immigrants in the United States of America, the education system does not recognize their presence and does little to facilitate their integration through the implementation of necessary curricular adjustments. The purpose of this article is to call on multicultural education advocates to endorse the argument for the distinctness of African-born immigrants as a complex cultural group with unique vulnerabilities requiring sensitivity. Organizationally, the paper develops four key points: the current demographic representation of the African population; the absence of African voices in multicultural education scholarship; the salience of multicultural education advocacy in recognizing the essence of African cultures in the western world; and the minimal coverage of African topics in the U.S. curriculum. Two sets of recommendations, curricular and culture-oriented, conclude the argument

Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 1

This report provides insights into the current practices of multicultural education and the opinions and understandings of New South Wales (NSW) public school teachers around increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in schools and the broader Australian community. The report is the outcome of the first stage of the Rethinking Multiculturalism/ Reassessing Multicultural Education (RMRME) Project, a three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project between the University of Western Sydney, the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) and the NSW Institute of Teachers. Surveying teachers about these and related matters seemed a useful first step in considering the state of multicultural education some forty years after its inception (Inglis, 2009). The project as a whole involved a state-wide survey – the focus of this report – as well as focus groups with teachers, parents and students in 14 schools in urban and regional NSW, and a professional learning program informing the implementation of action research projects in each school. Read also: Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 2: http://apo.org.au/node/42670 Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 3: http://apo.org.au/node/42671 &nbsp