Understanding Human Differences: Multicultural Education for a Diverse
America
| UW-L Author: |
Kent L. Koppelman, Ph.D.
Educational Studies |
| Copyright: |
2008 |
| Publisher: |
Pearson/Allyn and Bacon |
Koppelman, Kent L., with R. Lee Goodhart. Understanding
Human Differences: Multicultural Education for a Diverse America. Boston:
Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2005.
For multicultural education/diversity as well as general education
courses. Students develop conceptual understanding about complex and
emotionally-charged issues of diversity in today's world. The author uses
clear examples, lucid language, and engaging activities to involve students
in thinking through fundamental ideas that ground their understanding of
diversity. The author investigates three converging elements in his
examination of human differences: individual attitudes and behaviors,
cultural expectations, and institutional policies and practices. This
examination provides the basis for the conceptual organization of the text.
About the Author
Kent attended the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he earned a BA and MA in English. He
taught high school English for six years before receiving a teaching
assistantship at Iowa
State
University
in Ames
where he earned his doctorate in Education. Following his graduation in
1979, he accepted a position at UW-La Crosse and would spend the next 28
years there teaching courses primarily in diversity and multicultural
education. His first book, The Fall of a Sparrow: Of Death and Dreams
and Healing published in 1994, described his grief experience following
the death of his 19-year-old son in an auto accident. In 2000 a book of his
essays on a variety of diversity issues was published under the title
Values in the Key of Life: Creating Harmony in the Human Community.
In 2004, Allyn and Bacon published Kent’s textbook (with Lee Goodhart) entitled
Understanding Human Differences: Multicultural Education for a Diverse America. The second edition
of this textbook was published in 2007, and he is currently working on the
third edition, scheduled for publication in 2010. Since retiring in May of
2007, Kent
has written another book on his grief experience including essays, fiction,
and poetry entitled Wrestling with the Angel: A Literary Anthology and
Reflections on Death, Dying and Bereavement. He is currently working on
an anthology on diversity issues to be published by Allyn and Bacon in the
spring of 2010. Kent and his wife Jan live in La Crosse, but make frequent
visits to Kansas City to visit their daughter Tess, who is a television
reporter for Channel 4, WDAF.
