Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 3

Education - Essay Example However, there exist a degree of consensus in the field of education regarding its goals, concepts, and principles. The main goal of teaching multicultural education is to restructure the schools in order for students to acquire skills, attitudes and knowledge that are needed to function in a racial and ethnically diverse world. Additionally, it also seeks to ensure education equity for students with diverse cultural, racial, socioeconomic groups and ethnics. It also provides students with educational experiences which enable them to maintain their commitment to their cultures, in addition to acquiring skills, cultural capital and knowledge that is needed to function in the community. In this regard, this paper aims at expounding on the challenge of teachers in recognizing the multiple identities of students, and making their teaching responsive to students’ diverse identity in their work. The essay will also incorporate the definition of identity by Vygotsky and Erickson, as well as give examples of different identities through discourse, community, multiculturalism among others and lastly, explain some of the problems teachers face and their solutions. Some of the challenges the teachers face in recognizing the multiple identities of their students, in terms of making their teaching responsive to their student’s diverse identity in their work is the ability to incorporate knowledge and skills that will be of use to the multiple identities of the students. Coleman (1999) regards skills as democratic ability and living in order to function effectively within diverse groups as important goals of schooling. Student’s diversity in today’s classrooms underscores the importance of developing teaching strategies, policies and curricula in order to help every student in succeeding in school. However, an effort to affirm, welcome and understand all students as well as treat their linguistic and cultural background as equally important and va lid is one of the problem teacher’s faces. This kind of approach is important when it comes to addressing literacy for a diverse student population. Effective instruction literacy is built upon the linguistic and cultural background, ways of building meaning and prior knowledge that all students bring in classrooms. Broder & Chism (2002) claims that such instructions helps acknowledge the importance of the role of every culture in literacy and language learning. Therefore, when teachers respect and understand the array of different languages and cultures represented in their classrooms it helps them adopt or come up with strategies for teaching, which will support and encourage their student’s achievement. There is rapid shifting demographics of school-aged children, as well as other projects for enrolling students who are linguistically and culturally different from what is referred to as the mainstream in United States culture continues to increase. Such students dif fer from the mainstream in terms of primary language, social class and ethnicity. Teachers, will help improve the academic achievement of diverse students who come from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds by responding and being sensitive to the wide cultures in their classrooms. This is because; children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds do not experience high levels of academic success because their literacy is often unaddressed because such students were only encouraged to assimilate into the mainstream (Broder & Chism, 2002). Identity