Multicultural education through social studies subjects for junior high school students in Maluku, Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to describe the multicultural education learning model in the subject of social studies at the First Middle School in Maluku, Indonesia. Multicultural education has a very important role in every learning process, because multicultural education is able to have a positive impact on futures for Indonesia as a multicultural country. Maluku is one of Indonesia's regions that is very distinctively multicultural, so research into the role of social studies subjects is important. This qualitative study engaged with students, teachers and principals from various junior high schools in Maluku. Findings show that teachers have a high level understanding of multicultural learning, which facilitates teaching in social studies, using a number of learning models. Although there are differences, in general, cross-cultural interaction is a learning model often used by teachers in teaching multicultural education.