Un-Standardizing Curriculum: Multicultural Teaching in the Standards-Based Classroom

by Christine Sleeter

How can teachers learn to teach rich, academically rigorous multicultural curricula under current standardization constraints? In her new book, Christine Sleeter offers a much-needed framework to help teachers take on this challenge. By contrasting key curricular assumptions with those of multicultural education, she reveals the aspects they share as well as the conceptual and political differences between them. Sleeter makes a strong case for what teachers can do to "un-standardize" knowledge in their own classrooms, while working toward high standards of academic achievement.
* Detailed portraits of activist teachers committed to multicultural education, including the constraints and challenges they face.
* Guidance for teachers who want to develop their classroom practice, illustrating the possibilities and spaces teachers have within a standardized curriculum.
* A field-tested conceptual framework that elaborates on the following elements of curriculum ideology, enduring ideas, democratized assessment, transformative intellectual knowledge, students and their communities, intellectual challenge, and curriculum resources.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2005

About the author

Christine E. Sleeter is a researcher, teacher, and writer who is best known for her work in critical multicultural education, and her insights into white people grappling with race. Author of about 20 academic books, she is also author of two novels. She holds the title of Professor Emerita in the College of Professional Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, where she was a founding faculty member. She is a sought-after speaker both in the U.S. and internationally. She has been honored with awards that include the American Educational Research Association Social Justice in Education Award, the Chapman University Paulo Freire Education Project Social Justice Award, the National Association for Multicultural Education Research Award, and membership in the National Academy of Education

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

👏🏾 visionary 👏🏾 pragmatism

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting ideas on how to make curriculum more authentic and expansive for students. I hope to use some of the strategies in my own classroom!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

School knowledge has been rooted in experiences, concerns, perspectives, and ways of knowing that emerged in European, economically privileged, white men. Schools have become factories of social efficiency, producing citizens for employment in an expanding capitalist economy. The standards – textbook – test trilogy frame students as information consumers rather than intellectual conductors who construct knowledge and curriculum largely as a commodity for individual consumption.

The quest for standardization and homogenization reduces what teachers know of students to curricular packages and makes culturally relevant teaching impossible. The more standardized we make curriculum to improve students’ achievement, the more we cut ourselves off from students, cultural, experiential, and personal resources, on which learning should be built. When learning is homogenized, diversity is nullified.

Sleeter proposes a shift between the landscape of standards driven education to the landscape of standards conscious education bridged by multicultural education. State curriculum standards are the soil for the seeds of multicultural curriculum. Multicultural education emphasizes culturally relevant teaching, using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, prior frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.

Education is empathy, and empathy is education. Differences equal problem; (lack of) dialogue + differences = problem. We need to get schools ‘right’ for students just as much as we need to get students ‘right’ for school. Education should be a road trip mentality: both a means/vehicle to an end and an end/destination itself. The best preparation for the employment of the future is to make education a way of life today.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good text that offers some supports for trying to incorporate multicultural education principles while still aligning with standards as required for most teachers. Much of it is not unique information but a review of established ideas such as Williams & McTighe's Backwards Design, Bloom's Taxonomy, and Bishop's concept of using windows and mirrors in materials. Overall I thought it demonstrated how difficult it is to teach well, or reach a wide variety of students, while still adapting to constantly changing standards and standardized testing requirements that are implemented by powerful people and groups who are not even involved in the day-to-day grind of education...only looking at numbers on paper.

[Valerie D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible resource that truly broadened my perspective on reimagining a standards-based curriculum and caused me to examine my own biases and shortcomings in the classroom. The one disappointing aspect was how rarely mathematics was brought up in comparison to the other core content areas. As a math teacher, a lot of great strategies here would be difficult to apply in my daily teaching practice.

[Rachel Smith]

I had to read this book for one of my classes. It was good but very dull. Not that mean pages to read but was hard to get into. One of things I enjoyed about this book was the backward lesson planning. This is when you take a textbook and you read it first then plan your lesson plan on it. Make it more enjoyable for your students to learn.

[Amanda Roche · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some gold nuggets that I learned and helped give me some ideas for teaching. I did feel like it was political and biased. In addition, almost all the examples were from states in the southwest border with high Latino populations. I would’ve appreciated a variety examples from different regions and cultural backgrounds.

[Victoria Chávez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great case studies and suggestions but can be a bit dry and repetitive at times.

[Si Squires-Kasten · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best! Connects broader historical/economic trends in public education with resources for individual teachers to integrate standards with culturally responsive pedagogy.

[Amie Murphy]

What can I say? It’s a textbook! Informative but not entertaining…

[Jessica López-Barkl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was a book assigned for my Curriculum and Assessment class that I took this semester. I finished it awhile ago, and I didn't really like it, so I thought I'd wait and give myself some time to have some perspective on it before I wrote a review.

Anyway, it is (almost) a dated book about multicultural teaching, and, yet, it is discussed using the standards-based system that we are all forced to teach within.

I did end up liking a suggested assignment, that I ended up giving myself on pg. 92. It is entitled "Guide for Research Into Transformative Intellectual Knowledge." I took this assignment and used it for the Curriculum and Assessment class' big final project: I decided to come up with a curriculum unit discussing each minority group in musical theater. I bought several books and worked on the project and will be implementing it next semester as the students' research project to find a solo or duet to perform for their final from the minority writers' inventory of work. I also fell in love with the research I did in the Chicano Theater Movement and will be using it as my circus concept for the coming semester's production of PIPPIN. So...I guess I should thank this book for helping me find a concept that I'm excited to research and work on.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this 3 stars, but it is really more like 3 1/2. This text provides some great suggestions for ways to create a curriculum. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of working backward from a big idea to create a unit plan. It also helped provide some ideas of how to remain within the common core standards while still creating interesting lesson plans that the students will gain much from. The one major flaw I had with this text is that even though it preaches a multicultural education it is very biased towards "minorities" forgetting that while the majority of students are "white" they too come varying cultures that could each bring something interesting to the class. While I love the idea of a multi-cultural classroom, I believe that every student should be considered equally important but this text makes it feel as though we should be more focused on the minorities. It is a bit hypocritical in that sense.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting ideas presenting in practical and yet not in steps, but in a more organic and natural way.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as educational theory books go, this is a better one. Sleeter is realistic and has obviously had actual experience in the classroom.