On September 20, James A. Banks, the former chairman of AERA (American Education Research Association), was invited by ICI to make a report on “Multicultural Education and Reform in a Diverse Society: Failed Citizenship and Transformative Civic Education” in ECNU.

The report was hosted by Dr. Wang Tao, with Prof. Cherry M. Banks from Washington University, and other professors and scholars from all over the world attended, the conference hall was crowded with many people. At the end of the report, Prof. Cui Yunhuo, who is the director of ICI, made a comment on the report.

During the report, Prof. James A. Banks proposed that the global migration and the Multiethnicity is now asking for fairness, with the rising of Populism, the situation of civil education is becoming more and more complex in the whole world. Prof. James A. Banks constructed a theoretical framework about citizens, in his framework, citizens are divided into four types, which are invalidation citizenship, approval citizenship, participation citizenship and transformational citizenship. Among all the four types, he mainly introduced invalidation citizenship, and analyzed it in several aspects. He believes that a country is diverse in its ethnic, cultural, linguistic, gender and religious dimensions, and also includes its own group culture. When a country cannot accept and accommodate those groups systematically in the process of instructing, these groups cannot fully internalize and recognize the values of the country and gain a sense of political efficacy. What’s more, he introduced the function of school education in detail, and explained the fact that how curriculum and instruction responded and changed invalidate citizenship.

At the end of the report, Prof. Cui Yunhuo made an important comment on this report. Firstly, Prof. Cui Yunhuo extended the heart-felt thanks to Prof. James A. Banks, for he just gave us an international and cutting-edge report. Secondly, Prof. Cui Yunhuo made a summary about the fundamental task of cultivating students with morality, the common challenge that civil education facing with, and curriculum and instruction reform measures. Finally, after the comments, many listeners interacted with Prof. James A. Banks actively, and the professor made respond to them patiently.