This study examined the effects of multicultural education on K-12 students in urban settings. In order to place the conducted research into context, this chapter of the thesis examines the existing research on the effects of multicultural education in two broad categories: (1) the academic and psychosocial effects of multicultural education at the kindergarten and elementary school level; and (2) the academic and psychosocial effects of multicultural education at the middle school and secondary level. Based on the examined research, the review ends with a formulation of conclusions about the effects of multicultural education.
Effects of Multicultural Education at the Kindergarten
In the last two decades there has been a great deal of research on the academic effects of multicultural education. Mosely (1983), for example, conducted research using a sample of fourth and sixth grade classes of two elementary schools in Northeastern Ohio. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not Hispanic and non-Hispanic students attending the school with a bilingual-multicultural education program would demonstrate significantly greater academic growth in the basic skills of reading and mathematics than would their Hispanic and non-Hispanic counterparts who were instructed solely in English. The 71 fourth and 59 sixth grade multicultural education program group subjects had been involved in bilingual-multicultural education since kindergarten while the 78 fourth and 68 sixth grade students of the control group were instructed only in English for the same period of time. Both the program and control groups were pretested and posttested during the project year with the reading and mathematics achievement measures of the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (Level 1, Form S for the fourth grades and Level 2, Form S for the sixth grades).
The dependent measures in the study consisted of subjects' gain scores on reading voc...