**Abstract**

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development holds that education is essential to achieving a sustainable future. Thus, many countries around the world have made multicultural education imperative. However, a pertinent question is how multicultural education should be understood and how inclusive teaching and learning approaches should be initiated and integrated within educational systems. In this chapter, I critically discuss the concept of multicultural education and explore how it may contribute to realising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. First, I give an overview of the main characteristics and goals of multicultural education. Second, I discuss what I see as two major hindrances to realising a sustainable multicultural education: the lack of integrating issues of diversity into everyday school practices and the deficit discourse that still characterises contemporary educational debates on diversity.

**Keywords:** social sustainability, multicultural education, cultural diversity, multiculturalism, critical multiculturalism, deficit discourse

### **1. Introduction**

In recent decades, there has been worldwide interest in how education can optimise social and academic outcomes for all students, regardless of gender, class, and ethnic and cultural backgrounds [1, 2]. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, holds education to be essential to achieving a sustainable future and realising all 17 sustainable development goals. Goal 4 of the agenda is focused on education, aiming to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" [1]. Against this background, many countries around the world have made multicultural education imperative. However, a pertinent question is *how* multicultural education should be understood and *how* teaching and learning approach that foster diversity should be initiated and integrated within educational systems.

The attention to multicultural education resembles that of the social dimension of sustainability, asking what type of society we want to sustain. As emphasised by Wolff and Ehrström [3], many of the contemporary challenges regarding

sustainability relate to the social dimension: "Risks and vulnerability arise from social polarisation, urban poverty, conflict, terrorism, and natural disasters. Moreover, climate change and its effects have a strong connection to social life". All these challenges call for a rethinking of education. In particular, the UN agenda challenges schools to find ways of enhancing positive interpersonal relationships between students and to create an inclusive school community that expands opportunities for all students to succeed, both socially and academically.

In this chapter, I critically discuss the concept of multicultural education and explore how it may contribute to realising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In the first section, I provide an overview of the main characteristics and goals of multicultural education as outlined by leading scholars in the field. In the remainder, I discuss what I see as two major hindrances to realising a sustainable multicultural education. When practices of multicultural education are treated separately without truly permeating everyday school activities, they may function counterproductively to their aim of inclusion and, paradoxically, reinforce the boundaries they were meant to dissolve. Furthermore, drawing attention to the challenges that emerge from the deficit discourse that still characterises contemporary educational debates on diversity, I argue that well-meaning school personnel may often unintentionally reinforce a deficit discourse, even when applying practices of multicultural education.

### **2. Multicultural education: main characteristics and goals**

Multicultural education is a term that refers to a conglomerate of educational practices used by a variety of educators, researchers, and policymakers in a variety of ways [4, 5]. Therefore, multicultural education as a concept could not be reduced to a single approach or one identifiable course or educational programme. Nevertheless, this does not prevent us from agreeing on some main characteristics and goals of multicultural education. Although the concept encompasses a variety of practices, theories, and understandings and captures multiple definitions and explanations, sufficient similarities in definitions exist.

According to Nieto [5], multicultural education emerged as part of a social movement for equity and social justice and has been a significant part of the strive for equal opportunities in general. Thus, multicultural education started as an attempt to develop an educational system that holds the potential of improving education for all students. In this way, multicultural education represents an idea, an educational reform, and a process [6]. As an idea, multicultural education acknowledges that "all students, regardless of the groups to which they belong, such as those related to gender, ethnicity, race, culture, language, social class, religion, or exceptionality, should experience educational equality in the schools" [7]. Furthermore, understood as a reform movement, multicultural education is a direct challenge to the Eurocentric focus and curriculum that creates uneven outcomes for students whose culture, language, ethnicity, and social class differ from the majority group [5]. Instead of overlooking dominant paradigms and practices, multicultural education should encourage critical thinking and enhance the transformation of schools so that all children and youth have the same opportunities in terms of access and outcome throughout all aspects of school. Lastly, multicultural education should be considered a continuing process, which indicates that the idealised goals, it aims to realise must always be addressed in human society [8]. Hence, as an idea and reform movement,

multicultural education always expands traditional approaches to teaching and learning and is never a completed or concluded project. Rather, it continues as a process, always struggling for equal opportunities in schools.
