Overview | Articles | INSTRUCTIONAL IDEAS | Reviews of Resources

Overview

The 2004 Fall issue continues with the multicultural curriculum theme, focusing on math and science.  These two subjects are often perceived as either the most challenging or the least relevant areas of studies to integrate into multicultural education.  I propose that teachers consider at least three ways to infuse multicultural education into the math and science curriculum.  Firstly, they may adopt into their curriculum mathematical and scientific contributions that different societies have made to the advancement of human knowledge.   Secondly, they may undertake biographical studies of mathematicians and scientists from various cultural and gender backgrounds.  Thirdly, they may apply culturally relevant pedagogy to their math and science instruction so that all students, including students of color, students from low socio-economic status, and females, will receive quality education and an equal chance to perform to their maximum capacity.  Articles and reviews of resources published in this issue will help teachers infuse multicultural contents and pedagogy into their math and science curriculum.  Some readers may be surprised to discover that a significant amount of information is available to assist their instruction.

The Articles section includes two articles.  Daria's article is concerned with female students' achievement in math and science.  Readers may find her annotated bibliography of websites useful.  Mukhopadhyay and Henze's article, reprinted from Kappa Delta Pi with permission, thoroughly discusses the peculiar biological, but not scientific, concept of "race" and its social implication, using an anthropological perspective.  

The Instructional Ideas section presents two hands-on activity ideas that  incorporate Asian cultural content into math lessons.  Gaylor's idea of the math slat book from ancient China is reprinted from her website with the author's permission.  Illustrated with photographs, the idea may be easily implemented with younger-aged children.  Lee's essay introduces a Korean's traditional board game, called "Yut-nori," through which the mathematical concept of probability is taught.  Due to the level of this mathematical concept, this instructional idea may be more appropriate for upper elementary children.  

Three review sections review arts, books, and websites.  The Art Reviews, presented by Dr. John Caruso, one of our Art Review co-editors, features some Inca and Aztec artifacts representing their cultural and technological advancement.  The review is complemented by vivid photographs of 12 artifacts from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  The Book Reviews section reviews four juvenile and 10 professional books.  Among the professional books, readers will find practical and useful collections of  instructional activities for multicultural math and science.  The Multimedia Reviews section contains ten reviews of websites pertaining to multicultural math and science curriculum.  

In addition to the authors who contributed excellent pieces to this issue, I would like to thank  our editorial staff, Dr. Linda Stine for coming on board and jumping right into the tight copy-editing schedule, Dr. John Caruso for the enlightening arts review, and Leah Klerr for her technological knowledge and dedicated work as Assistant Editor.  I also acknowledge peer reviewers who provided invaluable assistance and three graduate and undergraduate students who contributed reviews of resources to this issue.

Abstracts of the articles and the instructional ideas are provided below.  Full texts are accessible from the abstracts.  Enjoy the issue of multicultural curriculum in math and science and send your comments to the editorial staff at emme@eastern.edu.

Heewon Chang, Ph. D.
Editor-in-Chief

Instructional Ideas

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTION FOR ALL: 
An Example of Using a Korean Traditional Game
by Ji-Eun Lee, Auburn University-Montgomery, U. S. A.