The Importance Of Cultural Diversity In Education

Despite previous educational reforms that addressed multicultural education and student diversity after the Civil Rights movement, educational statistics continue to illustrates that educational gaps, cultural diversity and equity issues still exist in today’s schools. There is a dramatic demographics shift in today’s schools. For vast numbers of schools, education has thus far not reflected the needs of the new diverse racial/ethnic majority in the student population; instead, the Eurocentric curriculum remains in varying degrees in the nation’s schools (Banks, 2013; Gay & Banks, 1975). The percentage of students of color in U.S. public schools has doubled in the 30 years between 1973 and 2004, growing from 22% to 43% of the school population.

(1989) originated the cultural competence continuum model in the healthcare industry. It described the attitudes and conducts of mental health care professionals and organizations. Cross (1989) highlighted three critical elements in this model of cultural competence: 1) self-awareness; 2) culture-specific knowledge; and 3) skills encouraging effective socio-cultural relations by an individual. His model has been widely cited and adapted as the conceptual framework for cultural competence Cross et al’s., model has six stages along the continuum: Cultural Destructiveness; Cultural Incapacity; Cultural Blindness; Cultural Pre-Competence; Cultural Competence; and Cultural Proficiency. Mason (2005) used the continuum approach that was used by Cross et al., and later modified by Lindsey et al., (2003) to fit educational leadership situations. Cultural destructiveness is the most negative descriptor on the continuum. It defines the organization or individual’s competence as viewing cultural difference as problem. Demonstrating inflexible behaviors. The culturally diverse individual or group is also considered genetically and culturally inferior. At the cultural incapacity stage, belief in the superiority of one’s culture and behavior that disempowers another’s culture. With cultural blindness, individuals act as if the cultural differences they see do not matter or that there are differences among and between cultures. The cultural pre-competence stage brings awareness of the limitations of one’s skills or an organization’s practices when interacting with other cultural groups. The last stage, cultural competence, individuals are interacting with other cultural groups using the five essential elements of cultural proficiency as the standard for individual behavior and school practices (Cross et al., 1989; Mason, 1993; Lindsey et al., 2009). The five necessary foundations that contribute to an individual’s, system’s, institution 's, or agency 's ability to