Mathematics, Multicultural Education, and Professional Development

Multicultural education grew out of the civil rights movement and, as such, is grounded in a vision of democracy, social justice, pluralism, and equality--ideals that have yet to be realized in U.S. society and its schools. For the past 25 years, multicultural education has served as a mobilizing focus for struggles to articulate visions of schooling that are consistent with the ideals of the U.S. and for the development of theory and research that offer a countervision to the way that schooling is usually conducted, particularly for children from historically marginalized groups. As this body of theory and research has grown so also have the implications for restructuring various dimensions of the education enterprise. Mathematics is one such dimension and is the focus of this article. First, however, I contextualize the discussion that follows within a vision of what multicultural education means.