Overview: Students, teachers, parents, administrators and communities with diverse cultural experiences interact daily around education needs and issues. In addition to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, physical or mental ability, and sexual orientation, each student, parent, teacher and administrator has his or her own unique set of experiences, views and identity. Identity involves personal choice together with issues related to life experience, economics, family and social roles, personality, temperament, and beliefs about school and the larger world.

How Cultural Competence in Education Works: Involves building knowledge, awareness, skills and action plans to address a range of learning styles and to appreciate and benefit from diversity:

• integrating content from different groups and cultures (content integration),
• using teaching methods that facilitate achievement for all (equity pedagogy),
• helping students develop democratic attitudes, values and behaviors to reduce prejudice, and
• helping students understand how knowledge is created and culturally influenced (knowledge construction).

Students and student leaders can develop awareness, knowledge, skills and action plans to strengthen cultural competency, too.

The Payoff: Culturally competent students, parents, teachers, schools, colleges and universities, education systems and, ultimately, employers and others who directly or indirectly rely on various kinds of educational success, are prepared to continually strengthen opportunities to interact in effective and productive ways.

How to Make It Happen: Educators join with skilled facilitator to develop awareness, knowledge, skills and action plans for on-going and useful development of frameworks for culturally responsive thought and action, using tools such as:

• electronic surveys and cultural audits,
• awareness, knowledge and skill building,
• dialog and future vision, and
• learning organization/community skills.

Senge, P.M. et al (1994), The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook Building a Learning Organization, NY, NY: Doubleday.

Banks, J.A. (1994), Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice (3rd ed.) Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Banks, J.A. & Banks, C.A.M. (eds.) (1993), Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (2nd ed.) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Banks, J.A. "Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice," Review of Research in Education, 1993 (19) 3-49. Washington, DC: American Educational Review Association.