Are Disciplinary Distinctions Pertinent to Multicultural Education? A View From Science

In this article I ask whether disciplinary distinctions are pertinent to multicultural education. Are pedagogical prescriptions aimed at providing access and success to students of diverse backgrounds equally applicable across domains? I review cross-cultural cognitive research to depict defunct deficit and extant pluralistic approaches to diversity. I present 2 predominant approaches to multicultural education in science and situate them within dimensions that characterize general multicultural education research. I argue that the nature of different disciplines—their position and status in the broader society—influences how comfortable we are with instructional versus epistemological pluralism in multicultural education. What appear to transcend disciplinary boundaries are central questions concerning the goals of education; mainly, whether education is conceived as a medium for social reproduction or as a vehicle for self-actualization.