Down-to-earth religious education.

Abstract

Although multicultural education is often misunderstood and feared, it has been embraced by many educators as a necessary approach to preparing the next generation for the complexities of life in the 21st Century. This study describes the work of three Catholic secondary religion teachers who inform their classes with multicultural strategies. Data come from classroom observations in metropolitan schools in the United States, interviews, and personal reflection using Van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological methodology. This study concludes that when teachers understand and embrace multicultural principles, student benefits increase, especially in terms of self-efficacy and a desire to participate in creating a more just society.

Introduction

Multicultural education is changing the way teachers approach today's diverse students. While secular education is being transformed through a student-centered approach, too many Christian religious educators continue to rely on a traditional didactic, teacher-centered, doctrinal approach. In contrast, multicultural education is an approach that moves the focus from teacher to students. It poses real world problems and asks students to respond in a personally meaningful manner. In a word, it is a new paradigm, a new lens through which to view, interpret, and act in life. Such an approach cannot be brought down from the heavens; it must be down-to-earth.

Purpose of Research

Enticed by the writing of the multiculturalists, Banks (1994), Bennett (2003), Diaz (2001), Nieto (2000), and others, I wanted to experience their theories in a faith formation setting. I searched out Catholic high school religion teachers who implemented multicultural principles in their teaching. Initially, I wrote letters to principals and department chairs of 48 Catholic high schools in a Midwestern metropolitan area, asking for names and contact information of teachers espousing multiculturalism. Receiving seven responses, I interviewed all seven teachers by telephone to learn more about their teaching responsibilities and their students. In phone interviews, two teachers said they were insufficiently familiar with multicultural principles to participate. When I learned that two of the teachers represented almost identical profiles, I chose the earlier dated response. I interviewed each of the remaining four candidates to determine their willingness to participate in my study. They represented each of the four levels of secondary education, two male and two female teachers, two urban and two suburban settings. However, three of the four were all-female schools. I observed each of the four teachers as often as 38 times but no less than 21 times throughout the duration of one course each taught. I also, interviewed each teacher and several students in each class who volunteered to interview with me. One teacher is not described, because his teaching strategies were not clearly representative of the instructional strategies that inform this article.

My guiding question throughout the research was, "What is the essence of multicultural education as it is practiced in these religion classes and what meaning does this experience hold for the teachers and students?" To pursue this question I used the methodological approach of van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenology (1990), which asked me "to construct a possible interpretation of the nature of a certain human experience" (p. 41) through observation and continual writing in order to distill and bring to expression my experience of each of these teachers. This article intends to describe, in part, the practices of these three teachers in order to give others a clearer view of the potential of multicultural education for addressing the needs of 21st Century students in Christian religious education settings.

Multicultural Teaching Strategies

Multicultural educators have proposed numerous instructional strategies. Of the many suggestions, I believe there are four particularly suited to religious education. One, Pang (2001) presents the formation of a caring community as the essential context for teaching and learning. Two, Banks (1994) proposes that "teaching with powerful ideas" (pp. 59-79) enables students to remember, organize, and retain knowledge. Three, Nieto, (2000) asserts that social analysis is necessary if students are to understand the socio-political reality in which they must function. Four, Bennet (2003) says that when students participate in social action, they experience their own ability to bring about social change. While these strategies are not exclusively multicultural, they are common across the spectrum of multicultural literature.

Gathering Data

In search of the essence of multicultural education as practiced by three Catholic secondary teachers of religion, I went to the classrooms of Sr. Bernice, Pat, and Mike. In this article, I describe Sr. Bernice's class as a community of care, Pat's classroom as illustrative of the powerful-ideas approach, and Mike's class as an experience of social analysis and social action.

Creation of Caring Communities

Humanist educators focus on caring as both the message and method of education. (Noddings, 1992; Rogers and Freiberg, 1994). Pang (2001) believes that caring learning communities serve as the only viable multicultural context in which to respect the cultural diversity of students while the students develop the necessary skills to participate in a democratic society.

Sister Bernice's Caring Classroom

Every day, just before lunch, 28 young women walked through the doors of Sr. Bernice's classroom for 45 minutes of junior level "Peace and Justice." I saw the pained and silent faces of young women who have experienced too much of life too soon. They were among the 500+ students in an all-female, urban school, primarily Hispanic and African American, whose stories revealed the plight of young women trying to make sense of a fractured world in which they were often the wounded. In the flow of stories shared throughout the semester I recalled very few that were without pain, oppression, and struggle. Sr. Bernice responded to their pain by welcoming them into her classroom, a space she calls "a holy place." She believes her role in the classroom is that of "facilitator of cooperating and caring." She envisions her class as a community of young women who care about one another and who feel "free to talk about their beliefs, their dreams and their hopes." She says, "I like to have openness of mind and heart in my class." True to her desire, she frequently began class with a request to her students. "Today I want to ask all of you to open your hearts, open your ears, open your mind for what you might see, hear, and understand." In her classroom, she created a climate of openness by being open about herself. In sharing herself, she offered the students a model for classroom discussion, thus inviting them to respond in kind.

The circle of care she created in her classroom serves as the beginning point to take her students from an inner circle of care and concern about their own issues to the larger circle of care for the entire human family. On the topic of Third World Hunger, she began with a simple question, "Have you ever been hungry, really hungry?". Her next question asked, "Imagine a family in a developing country. Why do they have so little to eat?" She elicited responses from the students that filled all three panels of the chalkboard and more. Together they created a compelling picture of poverty and insight into global hunger. At the end of the semester, I asked the students if I might interview them about their experience in Sr. Bernice's class. Three students offered to share their impressions in a group interview during lunch. One student liked the class "because it brought us closer together and made us friends." Another appreciated Sister Bernice's encouragement to talk about "the things that are happening to us." A third student recognized a change in her attitude toward people who are different from her: "I stereotyped black people and other groups. Now I see how wrong that [was].... I want to go out and help the world. I want to be like superwoman."

Teaching With Powerful Ideas

While textbooks serve as the primary tool in classrooms, some educators criticize them for their banality failure to engage students in the necessary skills for acquiring knowledge (Sowell, 1996). While it is assumed that religious education textbooks present the doctrine and right practice of a particular faith expression, they also suffer from the same flaws. Banks (1994) asserts that a multicultural curriculum focused on powerful ideas enable students to understand more deeply and transfer knowledge gained to real world situations. I believe that the most powerful text available to Catholic religious educators is Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Pat Engages Students in Scripture

During the many months I spent in Pat's class, I never saw a textbook; but every day I saw a Catholic Bible, placed prominently in the front of the room and copies on almost every student's desk. She believes that the most powerful source material for Christians is Scripture. Actual instruction, for Pat, meant that the 17 ninth graders in this all-female, white, suburban school of 450 students "engage in the Scriptures." Her methodology was a dialectic process in which she and the students moved between their own stories and the stories of their ancestors in faith. In this process, she invited the students to imagine themselves within the context of the Biblical story, as though they witnessed the original event. Through questioning, she helped them analyze the event and the characters feelings and thoughts: What was God saying? Why did God say that? What meaning did it have for those people?

When she was satisfied that they had sufficiently understood the event from the inside, she turned the focus to their own stories. For example, in studying the healing stories of the Gospels, she asked them to share their own stories of healing. They shared the events and their feelings and interpretations of what happened. Back and forth, she guided them, between the powerful stories of Scripture and their own stories. Pat's desire to "engage the students in Scripture" was effective with the four students who volunteered to interview with me. One student appreciated her teacher's approach to Scripture: "She taught us how to get into the Scriptures and how to read it." Another student said, "She makes you think a lot more, go deeper. She'll be talking about a topic and relate it to something that happens in everyday life, so you can understand the topic more and say, 'Oh, she's right.' She relates it to things that happen to us." Another spoke to the helpfulness of the reflective questioning: "She gives us meditating questions and wants to know who you are as a person, where you stand spiritually and religiously."

Doing Social Analysis

In a complex world, social analysis enables learners to see themselves in a particular social situation and to think critically about it (Holland and Henriot, 1983). Talvacchia (1997) states that social analysis is necessary if religious education is to be faithful to the prophetic Christian imperative to promote just relationships. Social analysis invites learners to become aware of a particular situation in society, to look at it critically, asking such questions as: Who has the power and who does not? Who decides? Who benefits and who loses? In the context of faith formation, two additional questions must be asked (Center for Media Literacy, 2003): What do our scriptures and religious traditions have to say about situations like this? How might things be different and what action would be necessary to change the situation?

Mike's Critical Approach

Mike's senior level honors course in faith formation for 21 white young women in an all-female suburban school of 850 students was entitled "Church in the Americas." The curriculum focused on the stories of three groups of North and South American people who suffered at the hands of Whites. Mike used film (Mission, Eyes on the Prize, and Dances with Wolves) to tell the stories of their cultures and religious beliefs. He explains, "We have to come out of a story, because they are not going to remember concepts. The message is so, so different from what they [the students] are hearing [elsewhere].

Mike believes that social analysis is a necessary skill for all Christians in United States culture today if there is to be any hope of transformation for society as a whole and for its individual members. In an effort to help his students analyze the film stories, Mike led the students through social analysis with a series of questions, which he articulated during one interview with me.

1. What are your experiences? How does your story relate to the larger human story, particularly [to] those that are suffering in a variety of ways?

2. Do you see yourself as being oppressed in different ways?

3. Can you connect that in some way to the oppression of others?

4. Where does the Gospel speak to [your experience of oppression]?

5. How can [the Gospel] transform lives and situations?

6. Then it means that you and I have to put [the Gospel] into action so that it transforms our lives.

Four students offered to discuss their impressions of Mike's course with me in separate interviews during a study period or lunchtime. Their responses showed that they understood social analysis. Each of the students spoke about Mike's class as an experience of insight in phrases like "new experience, different from other classes," "informative," "opens our minds," "stuff we don't hear anywhere else." One student spoke of a growing awareness for the need to look more critically at events, people, and their stories: "The whole way the system actually works. It's phoney. We only get one story, and the rest of the stories are left out. Now when I see stories, I ask myself, 'Is that the true story? Or, it there something else behind it?'" Another student stated that Mike had taught her "to continually ask questions."

Social Action Follows Analysis

Social action is a natural outgrowth of critical reflection. For Bennett (2003), social action skills are one of the six goals of multicultural education. These skills include "the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to help resolve major problems that threaten the future of the planet and the well-being of humanity" (p. 34). Nieto's (2000) model of multicultural education includes "decision-making and social actions skills as the basis of the curriculum" (p.343). Wink (2000) says that Freire's three-step process--to name, to reflect critically, and to act--is straightforward enough for the youngest children.

Mike's Approach to Social Action

Mike contends that social action must be an integral part of his course for two reasons: The integrity of the discipline [religion] requires that students be given many opportunities to care for others since "every world religion has at its core the care for the community." He also believes that "action projects give caring and compassionate students a chance to participate in the struggle to transform society." Mike offers the students many opportunities for action throughout the semester. During the one semester I attended his class, I noted the Crop Walk in October, the Oxfam Banquet in November, and the Cross Cultural Crafts sale in December. Mike coordinates the events with the school's administration while his students carry out these school wide projects. In interviews with the four young women mentioned earlier, each one spoke about self-insight and empowerment. One student said that the class had given her the ability to respond to global issues with greater confidence. Another student reported, "If I want the world to change, I have to take responsibility to make those changes." A third student said that "people of other cultures are like us: we want to care, to be friends.... They are just like us but they lack the advantages we have, so we want to help them."

Conclusion

The required brevity of this article does not permit a full presentation of all the data that support my conclusions. While my experience revealed three distinct educators at work, several common themes emerged. First, for each of them multiculturalism is a preferred personal perspective through which to view the world. Second, theirs is a worldview strongly colored by oppression and discrimination. Third, each believes that a multicultural approach is an effective way to enable students to realize their potential as contributing members to society. Fourth, these teachers create their day-to-day curriculum from the personal experiences of people--their own, those of their students, and stories from literature and scripture. Fifth, each of the teachers incorporates some kind of social analysis and social action into the curriculum. Finally, these teachers share the same goal for all their students: building a multicultural society based on respect and compassion for others and encouraging students to participate in creating a more holy and just society for all in the human family.

Cited Literature

Banks, J. (1994). An introduction to multicultural education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Bennett, C. (2003). Comprehensive multicultural education (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Center for Media Literacy (2003). Framework for Social Analysis. Retrieved March 16, 2003 from http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article186.html.

Diaz, C. (Ed.). (2001). Multicultural education in the 21st century. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Holland, J. & Henriot, P. (1983). Social analysis: Linking Faith and Justice. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Nieto, S. (2000). Affirming Diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman.

Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. NY: Teachers College Press.

Pang, V. (2001). Multicultural education: a caring-centered, reflective approach. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Rogers, C. R., Freiberg, H. J. (1994). Freedom to learn for the 80's (3rd ed.). NY: Merrill.

Sowell, E. J. (1996). Curriculum: An integrative introduction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Talvacchia, K. T. (1997). A theological framework for multicultural religious education. Horizons, 24(2) 215-229.

Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York.

Wink, J. (2000). Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the real world (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Mary E. Kremer, Dominican University, IL

Sr. Mary Kremer, O.P., Ph.D., is an assistant professor of education whose research interests include multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and religious education.