Teaching in a bubble: How social studies teachers include multicultural content in a school with a student body that is predominately affluent and European -American

This qualitative study explores the schooling of students in an affluent and homogeneously European American middle school to assess how and what these students learn about people of different ethnicities and social classes. The site selected for this study was a middle school located in an affluent suburb of a large metropolitan midwestern city. This suburb has a European American population of approximately 97.8%. To investigate this problem, I narrowed my scope to four social studies seventh- and eighth-grade level classrooms. The study addressed the following two questions: (1) To what extent do social studies teachers in an affluent and predominately European American middle school include multicultural and social class issues in their curriculum? (2) What are teachers' beliefs about the role and place of multicultural and social class content in the social studies curriculum? A fundamental premise that undergirds this study is that multicultural education is necessary for all students, not just minority students. In-depth interviews, observations, and an analysis of the textbooks, state standards, and the school's scope and sequence were the main sources of data collection. To maintain authenticity the participants were informed that social studies curriculum, and not multicultural education was the focus of the study.;The findings suggest: (1) a discrepancy existed between the teachers' perceptions and their practices; (2) the teachers' preparation for teaching multicultural education was limited; (3) teachers believed that because their students were European American and middle class, multicultural education was not relevant to their students.