Lavinia Nădrag -
An Approach to Multicultural Education
(pag. 149-156)
This paper focuses on the concept of ‘multicultural education’, especially from a psycholinguistic perspective that emphasizes the roles of the participants in the complex process of education. Multicultural education incorporates concepts, theories, and pedagogy rooted in several interdisciplinary fields and applies them to practical educational settings (Banks). The ideal of equal opportunity, diversity, flexibility, freedom to experiment and innovate are some of the main characteristics of (higher) education in the U.S.A. However, there are some other factors that need to be taken into account in multicultural/multilingual education: educational contexts (e.g. segregation, mother tongue maintenance, submersion, immersion), the classroom learning situation, the relationships between teacher and student, social distance, psychological distance, motivation and language aptitude.