THE EFFECT OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITHIN DIFFERENT SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENTS

Education is an important context of socialization in children and a place in which children typically are first exposed to peers coming from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In the United States, cultural diversity has been steadily increasing with immigrants bringing their cultural backgrounds and entrenching them within the today’s existing society. This has led students in primary schools to rapidly become exposed towards diversity in multiple ways. Many schools have begun to teach students about multiculturalism in an effort to normalize diversity. The present mixed-methods study sought to assess how multicultural education differs among different socioeconomic school districts. The goal was to determine how education could be improved as a result of these efforts. The results of the study point to multicultural education being highly beneficial for students across all ages and grades