Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education

Explore how personal, social, political, cultural, and educational factors affect the success or failure of students in today's classroom in this best-selling text by Sonia Nieto and Patty Bode. Expanding upon the popular case-study approach, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education examines the lives of real students who are affected by multicultural education, or the lack of it. This social justice view of multicultural education encourages teachers to work for social change in their classrooms, schools, and communities.

New to this Edition

• NEW! Chapter 7, Understanding Student Learning and School Achievement provides new research on caring, deficit perspectives, and theories on youth activism.
• NEW! Completely updated references and research supporting the relevance and application of chapter content to today's classrooms.
• NEW! A new case study of a Native American student that substitutes and updates the previous case study of a Native American student.
• NEW! A classroom example of how a teacher and her students tackled the issue of Native American mascots to provide students with a concrete case of how teachers and students put multicultural education in practice.
• NEW! An example of a teacher who exemplifies caring in her pedagogy and curriculum to show readers how caring can be manifested in ways that influence student learning.
• NEW! A Multicultural Teaching Story about a school organized by teachers that models what multicultural education looks like in an actual school.
• NEW! Student Self-portraits are displayed in the Part and chapter openers throughout the text.
• NEW! Multicultural Teaching Story based on an interview with a former high school math teacher who has helped implement a successful strategy for teaching high school math to all students
• NEW! About Terminology feature boxes takes former chapter 2, About Terminology and reworks each section to enhance discussion of terminology issues throughout all chapters.

This best-selling text explores the meaning, necessity, and benefits of multicultural education-in a sociopolitical context-for students of all backgrounds.

Sonia Nieto and Patty Bode look at how personal, social, political, cultural, and educational factors affect the success or failure of students in today's classroom. Expanding upon the popular case-study approach, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education examines the lives of real students who are affected by multicultural education, or the lack of it. This social justice view of multicultural education encourages teachers to work for social change in their classrooms, schools, and communities.

Sonia Nieto

Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has taught students at all levels from elementary through graduate school and she continues to speak and write on multicultural education, the education of Latinos, and other culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. Other books include The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities (2010, 2^nd ed), What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003), and two edited volumes, Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools (2000) and Why We Teach (2005). She has received many awards for her research, advocacy, and activism, including an Annenberg Institute Senior Fellowship (1998–2000), the Outstanding Language Arts Educator of the Year from the National Council of Teachers of English (2005), the Social Justice Education Award from the American Educational Research Association (2008), and honorary doctorates from Lesley University (1999), Bridgewater State University (2004), DePaul University (2007), and Manhattanville College (2009).

Patty Bode

Patty Bode is the Director of Art Education for Tufts University in affiliation with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her research interests include multicultural theory and practice in teacher preparation, the arts in urban education, and the role of visual culture in the expression of student knowledge. She has published and lectured on retheorizing identity and curriculum, redefining multicultural education, and critical art pedagogy. Years of experience as an activist public school teacher and teacher educator inform her art making, research, and teaching. She has received awards for efforts in anti-racist curriculum reform and bridging theory and practice in multicultural education, including the 2010 Art Educator of the Year for Higher Education of the Eastern USA Region by the National Art Education Association, the Massachusetts 2010 Art Educator of the Year for Higher Education by the Massachusetts Art Education Association, and 2005 Multicultural Educator of the Year Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education.