International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
curriculum knowledge with the ethnic language, ethnic culture, folk religion, folk literature, ethnic history, and
so on, helping cultivate students' national self-confidence.
(2) Activity curriculum, which is also called experience course or children's center courses, is based on
students as the main body of the course. Through the activity curriculum, school let the students experience the
existence of multicultural, build their own culture, and cultivate the students' creativity in the practical activities.
Physical education and art course provided by the school, for example, let students to understand the ethnic
long-term development of national sports by physical education, like horseback riding, archery and other
activities. On art, through understanding of ethnic music, art, dance and sculpture art activities let the student
experience and really feel the existence of multicultural, then improve the students' aesthetic ability and cultural
accomplishment.
(3) Integrated curriculum is composed of two or more subject curriculum; its types mainly include the
subject standard, social standard course and children standard courses. Integrated curriculum is formed under the
multicultural development. Through the integrated curriculum study, student multiple intelligences and
comprehensive quality should be much improved.
(4) Optional course is set based on the characteristics of different students and interests, in order to adapt to
the students’individual differences. Therefore, implementing multicultural education concept in optional courses
is very necessary. In the setting of optional courses, the school can provide ethnic folk dance, folk history, folk
music, folk art, ethnic language and text, according to the different ethnic students, let the students free take the
course according to their own needs. For instance, the student of Han nationality or other nationalities can also
take Tibetan dance and music. Optional courses are helpful to cultivate students to adapt to the region or ethnic
regions, and to promote the development of bilingual teaching.
To develop new teaching and researching methods and assessment systems for multicultural education
Firstly, the teaching methods should be shifted from “discipline-centered” to “capacity- centered” to guide
teaching. To use critical pedagogy to help students become agents of their own learning so they can use what
they learn in productive and critical ways. The knowledge they learn can be used to explore the reasons for
certain conditions in their lives and to design strategies for changing them. Secondly, to strengthen digital and
internet techniques in modern multicultural education. While digital technique gradually increases the speed of
global cultural homogenization, modem distance education on the basis of digital technique is endowed with the
most effective function of carrying out multicultural education in contemporary society. Because of its different
history idiom and space time shackle on carrying out multicultural education, traditional education is always
unable to construct the deep curriculum exhibition model on the different national culture. But the various
dynamic digital text can invent quasi-real condition multidimensional educational environment which traditional
education can’t support on the aspects of multicultural education, such as equality of educational opportunity,
national identity and cultural understanding, making distance learners to be with critical media literacy on the
attitude and emotion in the field of their core value.
In addition, novel research methods, such as more completed mathematical models of multicultural education
in elementary and middle schools may be established, and tested with some practical education measures in a
long and exhaustive experiments.
CONCLUSION
The multicultural education has been closely linked to the societal development of humankind after
experiencing a long process of evolution, and it shows its significance of existing extensively. Multicultural
education serves a significant function undoubtedly in keeping peace of the world and stabilization of countries,
spreading and creating various cultures, dealing with ethnic problems and promoting the education of states.
Although China has made some progress in both multicultural education and its researches, there are many
problems, such as lack of multicultural education laws and regulations, weak curriculum construction, little fund
provided, and fewer qualified teachers in elementary and middle schools. So more countermeasures should be
investigated and completed. The present authors propose firstly the multicultural education theory should be
strengthened. From the methodology aspects, we point out that the ultimate goal of education is for everyone’s
happy life. From the practice aspects, we give schools two suggests: building multicultural education
environment, schools should construct campus culture that has the minority characteristics, and also can implant
multicultural into courses to achieve this goal; cultivating students a better sense of what their own national
mean, school should construct the mutual recognition mechanism between nations and foster the students’
intercultural communication ability.
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