| Teachers incorporate relevant content from different cultures into their teaching, e.g. by selecting books and activities that celebrate holidays, heroes, and special events from various cultures. Culturally diverse books and issues are not generally a feature of the curriculum. Students' cultural literacy depends largely on their teachers' interests in intercultural understanding. | Teachers use resources by and about people from diverse cultures to add multicultural content, concepts, themes and perspectives to the curriculum. But because the basic structure of the curriculum has not been altered to promote critical and creative thinking about cultural differences, this approach, though knowledge building, does not necessarily transform thinking. | The structure of the curriculum is designed to encourage students to view common concepts, issues, themes, and problems from diverse cultural perspectives. This type of instruction involves critical thinking and the acknowledgment of diversity as a basic premise.
It allows students to appreciate multiple ways of seeing and understanding, develop empathy for various points of view, and learn how to manage difference in the process. | This approach combines the transformation approach with learning activities that advocate social change. Teachers help students not only to understand and question social issues, but to also do something important to address them. For example, after studying a unit about immigration, students could write opinion pieces to newspaper editors, letters to government officials, etc. |