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The Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington convened—with support from the Spencer Foundation—a Diversity, Citizenship, and Global Education Consensus Panel. The Panel’s goal was to develop a set of principles, concepts, and guidelines that school practitioners can use to build or renew citizenship education programs that balance diversity and unity and prepare students to become effective citizens in a global context. An important resource for the Panel’s work was the book that resulted from an earlier conference sponsored by the Center, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives (Banks, 2004a).

The Consensus Panel developed four principles and identified ten concepts, which are detailed in this publication. The Panel also developed a checklist that is designed for use by educators who want to consider the extent to which the principles and concepts identified by the Panel are reflected in their classrooms and schools.

PRINCIPLES

Section I Diversity, Unity, Global Interconnectedness, and Human Rights
1. Students should learn about the complex relationships between unity and diversity in their local communities, the nation, and the world.
2. Students should learn about the ways in which people in their community, nation, and region are increasingly interdependent with other people around the world and are connected to the economic, political, cultural, environmental, and technological changes taking place across the planet.
3. The teaching of human rights should underpin citizenship education courses and programs in multicultural nation-states.

Section II Experience and Participation
4. Students should be taught knowledge about democracy and democratic institutions and provided opportunities to practice democracy.