My topic
I’m interested in studying a topic about multiculturalism with my students. However, multiculturalism is an abstract concept for students to comprehend. To help students better understand it, three traditions of indigenous people will be focused on: hand drum, pine needle basket and traditional plants. Certainly, other general concepts of multiculturalism will be presented as well. The final goal is to guide students to have fair, positive, respectful attitudes towards social diversity, and then to accept the multiculturalism. The learning contents are not for one lesson. It will take several lessons or workshop activities to complete them. Hence, this is a unit plan about a study in social studies curriculum. It is designed for students in Grade 3 in Canada, following the principles of BC curriculum.
Introduction
Social diversity is a wide variety of characteristics amongst people such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion, physical abilities, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, cultural backgrounds and so on (Nedha, 2016). The problem is that in the diversity of society, when people coming from various backgrounds get together, conflicts might happen if they have different or even opposite values, beliefs and so on. Some people even probably have discrimination against others such as different religions and sexual orientations. As the development of society, more and more people pay attention to the social diversity. To maintain a harmonious social environment, social diversity that acknowledges differences, prevents prejudice, stereotypes and discriminations, and provides opportunities for different experiences ought to be understood.
However, social diversity is just the concept which is the acknowledgement of different existences. To help the social diversity peacefully exist, multiculturalism appears. It generously reflects the diversity of cultures, giving equal opportunities to people to show their own identities, values, beliefs and traditions; it supplies a platform for people to interact, relate and engage in civic talk and action (Watters, Ward & Stuart, 2020).
In the world full of social diversity, education should keep up with times to promote multiculturalism, helping students learn knowledge, values, cultures from different social communities and strengthen cosmopolitan perspectives working for equality and social justice (Nussbaum, 2002). Students should be allowed to interpret their own perspectives based on their personal experiences in their homes and their own cultures. Students are encouraged to have interactions with their peers from diverse racial and ethnic groups, assisting them to build good relationships.
Main teaching contents
Indigenous people are the citizens who live on the land before colonization. There are many indigenous people around the world. In Canada, due to the residential school and colonization of the land, the language and cultures of indigenous people are minimized or even tending to be lost (Wikipedia, 2020). Some indigenous cultures, destroyed by colonists, are strongly appealed to be healed and recovered, in order to confront with the oppression of western culture assimilation (Absolon, 2019). Hence, keeping traditions is the significant way for them to protect and inherit their own cultures. Keeping balance and harmony is what indigenous people immensely expect in terms of social relations; sharing traditions with peers and teaching generations to do them in person is beneficial to build intimate and positive relationships amongst indigenous groups. In terms of multiculturalism, indigenous cultures should be equally treated and known.
Hand drum is the representative of their tradition. They sing and dance with hand drumming to have stories telling, showing their values, believe, life experiences and respects for their mother land (Martin, 2011). Doing the hand drum, as a cultural practice, is a way of protection of indigenous culture. It is the truth that residential school negatively influenced indigenous culture, such as imposing the assimilation on knowledge and identities (Wikipedia, 2020); thus doing hand drum with storytelling is significant to honor their ancestors’ knowledge and perspectives about the world.
Pine needle basket is a handmade artwork that indigenous people usually make and use. This tradition is the continuance and inheritance of indigenous civilization. It is preserved and passed on by their ancestors, which represent their cultural histories (Martin, 2020). Indigenous people respect the traditional heritage and they keep it for better survival and civilized development.
Indigenous people would like to use the traditional plants to make medicine, food and juice to sustain their connections to the land (Corntassel & Bryce, 2012). Through the use of traditional plants, they advocate sustainable development of environment to maintain a harmonious relationship with the nature (Magni, 2017).
My current understanding of inquiry-based pedagogy
Based on the class learning, readings supplied in the moodle, and some resources outside classroom, my current understanding of inquiry-based pedagogy means that students are guided to have critical thinking, problem-solving strategies, interactions with peers like questions discussion or argument, and knowledge building relevant to real life through digital technologies, multiple media and activities, to produce sophisticated and deeper understanding of knowledge that they acquire and to create a more engagement learning environment; besides, some experts need to be invited to help students better involve in the learning process; assessment from teachers and students will be carried out eventually to evaluate the learning outcomes; rewards are suggested instead of punishments.
According to inquiry-based pedagogy, I have some inspirations and ideas about my teaching practices. These teaching practices can be flexibly changed. I’m going to show some possible measures that I might adopt relying on inquiry-based pedagogy. Some essential questions about topic will be presented for students to discuss with each other. Students can be divided into different groups with diversity. The group chooses one theme from the class examples or chooses one other example they are interested in related to multiculturalism in the real life. Everyone shares their understandings of example they select with group members. Every group needs to show their opinions by drawing on the poster or to present their interpretations by video making or to have role-playing to perform their comprehension. Some experts like indigenous people guide students to know about their traditions. Storytelling and debate assist students have a deeper understanding of multiculturalism.
Besides, some other after-class activities based on inquiry can also be adopted to enhance students’ comprehension through immersed learning. For instance, students coming from different countries demonstrate their own traditions, customs, cultures and histories through theme activities such as Kimono show (Japan), Kimchi making (Korea), Dumpling making (China), etc.
Technology devices and multiple media like computers, projectors, videos, are encouraged to be applied in these in-class and after-class activities.
Some gifts like toys and stationery can be delivered to those students who do a wonderful job as rewards.
Key questions for inquiry
1.What is social diversity?
2.What is multiculturalism?
3.What’s differences between social diversity and multiculturalism?
4.If multiculturalism was abandoned in the world, what might happen?
5.Did you ever encounter prejudice or discrimination due to identity or religion?
6.Why do indigenous people have cultural practices such as hand drumming and pine needle basket making?
7.After seeing hand drum performance, how do you feel?
8.Do you enjoy making pine needle basket with peers? Why?
9. What’s the meaning of traditional plants to indigenous people?
10. Do you have any cultures, traditions or customs from your backgrounds you would like to share?
11.Why do we need to keep a harmonious social environment?
12.Do you like learning cultures from other social backgrounds? Why?
13.What do you think of holding multicultural activities or performances at school?
14.How can we protect the losing culture?
15. How can we protect the living environment?
We have to admit that we live in a world filled with social diversity. To know social diversity and accept multiculturalism is beneficial to humans’ well-being. Oppression might arise if assimilation of cultures and prejudice against identities is common to be seen, resulting in social riots. Understanding multiculturalism is a positive way to deal with these potential issues. Students in this project will understand the significance of multiculturalism mainly through learning the indigenous traditions. This is just a start for students to understand multiculturalism. In the future, there will be more examples for students to learn multiculturalism, but my project design only demonstrates part of multiculturalism teaching.