multicultural

Research on what students learn has demonstrated that students in classes dealing with social issues learn and retain more understanding about identities and power relations when they engage with one another, and when they are given the opportunity to connect discussion to their own experiences, identities, and their perception of identities.  That is, students in social science classes learn and retain less than student in dialogue classes.

Moreover, research on learning also demonstrates the value of students' engaging “desirable difficulties.”  That is, students in all classes have higher achievement levels, developing stronger cognitive skills, when the course material attaches to their prior knowledge and when they have to grapple with material that is difficult (but within their reach).  They also do better when their assignments have them apply key concepts in varying contexts and conditions.  Engaging students with one another, using carefully designed short discussion questions, produces this result.  The discussion pushes them to apply their knowledge, to reconcile different perspectives, and thus to hone their abilities to analyze more complex problems. Read more »

“Multicultural teaching” means different things according to one’s course goals and one’s discipline. The following links provide useful information for a wide range of college teaching contexts. If you want to suggest other web-based sources for this page, please email crlt@umich.edu and put “Multicultural Teaching” in the subject line.

Key teaching strategies that help engage students from a range of academic or social backgrounds

• Interactive lecturing
• Active learning
• Using cases
• Sustained small group work and team research
• Rapport on the first day of class

Information on course planning

• Recommendations
• Key principles

For specific contexts Read more »