Chapter 10: Engaging Biracial Students in Holistic Learning Spaces With a Gendered Perspective

Scholars, thought leaders, and practitioners of multicultural education implore the American educational system to fulfill its responsibility of meeting the needs of all its students. Generally speaking, multicultural education offers a critical teaching framework for engaging and instructing diverse students who are often pushed to the margins by mainstream, negative classifications of race and racial identity. Across the nation, many cultural meanings exist in school systems, based on identify markers that often deny students access to “equal opportunities to learn” (Banks, 2010, p. 3). Students are “othered,” according to their socioeconomic status, language usage, abilities, gender, sexuality, citizenship status and their race,and as Banks (2010) explains, this othering is repeatedly a by-product of the oppressive characteristics of U.S. social institutions (e.g., schools) that are systematically retained for the advantage of some and disadvantage of others.