Title: Multicultural Education - Equity Pedagogy - Home
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Content: Multicultural Education - Equity Pedagogy - Home




Equity pedagogy has been defined as "teaching strategies and classroom environments that help students from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups attain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively within, and create and perpetuate, a just, humane, and democratic society" (Banks, Theory into Practice ). In other words, Equity Pedagogy intends to challenge fundamental societal structures of inequity by equipping students with basic skills which will help them be facilitators for social change. One of primary methods of teaching in equity pedagogy is fostering cooperative learning groups rather than having competition based learning. In fact Studies show that academic achievement of African American and Mexican American students is increased when cooperative teaching activities and strategies, rather than competitive ones, are used in instruction (Banks, Center for Multicultural Education ). Equity pedagogy uses these cooperative methods that ensure students from diverse races and cultures have equal opportunity to achieve. However, cooperative learning and culturally relevant instruction cannot function if basic school structures embrace the same inequalities which are present in society. Assumptions about equity at the school, community, and national level should be reconstructed in order for this type of instruction to succeed (Banks, Theory into Practice ). Equity Pedagogy could prove to be an important for teachers to achieve equity in their classrooms. This approach would ultimately prepare students to participate and change societal structures which have embraced for so long regarding inequity
References: Banks, James A. "Multicultural Education: