Multiculturalism and Economic Education

As economic educators part of our role is to communicate the importance of providing every student with a basic understanding of the principles of economics because economic fundamentals help students to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become productive citizens. However, despite the importance of understanding economics many students sly a way from the discipline because of the difficulty of the subject matter. Thus effectively communicating economic information to students is critically important and as demographic conditions continue to dramatically shift in the United States helping students to grasp economic concepts is becoming more of a challenge. Given a rapidly changing demographic environment this article provides economic educators with a series of recommendations for responding to the multicultural needs of their students. "Cultural values and beliefs are at the center of students' responses to teachers' strategies and of students' own attempts to engage in and influence interactions in the classroom" (Rothstein-Fisch & Trumbull, 2008, p. xiii). Recognizing the importance of multiculturalism and incorporating effective teaching methodologies in the classroom is a vital component of the learning process and in the final analysis, student achievement is what education should be all about.