Language Culture And Community In Teacher Education

Published by Routledge for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education This volume addresses the pressing reality in teacher education that all teachers need to be prepared to work effectively with linguistically and culturally diverse student populations. Every classroom in the country is already, or will soon be, deeply affected by the changing demographics of America’s students. Marilyn Cochran-Smith’s Foreword and Donaldo Macedo’s Introductory Essay set the context with respect to teacher education and student demographics, followed by a series of chapters presented in three sections: knowledge, practice, and policy. The literature on language education has typically been discussed in relation to preparing ESL or bilingual teachers. Typically, needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students, including immigrants, refugees, language minority populations, African Americans, and deaf students, have been addressed separately. This volume emphasizes that these children have both common educational needs and needs that are culturally and linguistically specific. It is directed to the preparation of ALL teachers who work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. It not only focuses on how teachers need to change but how faculty and curriculum need to be transformed, and how to better train teacher education candidates to understand and work efficaciously with the communities in which culturally and linguistically diverse students tend to be predominant. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is a national, voluntary association of higher education institutions and related organizations. Our mission is to promote the learning of all PK-12 students through high-quality, evidence-based preparation and continuing education for all school personnel. For more information on our publications, visit our website at: www.aacte.org.

Distinguished multiculturalist Sonia Nieto speaks directly to current and future teachers in this thoughtful integration of a selection of her key writings with creative pedagogical features. Offering information, insights, and motivation to teach students of diverse cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds, examples are included throughout to illustrate real-life dilemmas about diversity that teachers face in their own classrooms; ideas about how language, culture, and teaching are linked; and ways to engage with these ideas through reflection and collaborative inquiry. Designed for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level students and professional development courses, each chapter includes critical questions, classroom activities, and community activities suggesting projects beyond the classroom context. Language, Culture, and Teaching • explores how language and culture are connected to teaching and learning in educational settings; • examines the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of language and culture to understand how these contexts may affect student learning and achievement; • analyzes the implications of linguistic and cultural diversity for classroom practices, school reform, and educational equity; • encourages practicing and preservice teachers to reflect critically on their classroom practices, as well as on larger institutional policies related to linguistic and cultural diversity based on the above understandings; and • motivates teachers to understand their ethical and political responsibilities to work, together with their students, colleagues, and families, for more socially just classrooms, schools, and society. Changes in the Third Edition: This edition includes new and updated chapters, section introductions, critical questions, classroom and community activities, and resources, bringing it up-to-date in terms of recent educational policy issues and demographic changes in the U.S. and beyond. The new chapters reflect Nieto’s current thinking about the profession and society, especially about changes in the teaching profession, both positive and negative, since the publication of the second edition of this text.

This book will explore how language & culture are connected to teaching & learning, and examine the sociocultural & sociopolitical contexts of language & culture to understand how these contexts affect student learning & achievement.

A critical reality of contemporary education in a globalised world is the growing cultural, racial and linguistic diversity in schools and the issues involved in educating increasing numbers of students who are still learning the dominant language. This poses extraordinary challenges for second and foreign language teachers in many countries, where such students must engage with the mainstream curriculum in a new language. What do these increasingly plurilingual and multicultural classrooms look like? And how do language teachers address the challenges of such diverse classrooms? This book brings together a group of well-recognised language education scholars who present their research in a range of international settings. They focus on the key areas of pedagogy, language policy and curriculum and exemplify new research directions in the field.

This book explores the development of the first cohort of students to complete a new Bachelor of Education in English language teaching in the United Arab Emirates, theorizing the students' learning to teach in terms of the discursive construction of a teaching identity within an evolving community of practice.

Teaching language and teaching with languages is what is called for in contemporary classrooms, be they language classrooms or otherwise. When the learners' plurilingualism and societies' multilingualism have social, cultural or political implications, becoming aware of language matters is a necessity both for non-specialist teachers and language teachers alike. This book thus presents a variety of research-based perspectives on the cultural-political and social-educational domains of language awareness. Context, both historical, socio-economic, political and cultural has an undeniable impact on language attitudes and awareness, and the variety of different contexts contained in this volume - the Basque County, Catalonia (Spain), England (UK), Finland, Germany, Hong Kong (China), Japan, Portugal, Scotland (UK), and Turkey - testifies to this. As each chapter outlines the specificities and the impact of context upon language policies, attitudes and beliefs, the authors in this book focus on language awareness as a multi-faceted concept fit to play a major role in the reform processes of teacher education in the 21st century.

Topics in Language and Culture for Teachers is an introductory language and culture text designed for today's future teachers, anthropologists, and applied linguists. The book explores, from a variety of perspectives, the interrelationships between language and culture that have the most significant implications for the classroom and for the global community. Among the topics introduced are first language acquisition, dialects, sign language, non-verbal communication, and pragmatics. Each chapter is structured so that students will read about a topic, answer comprehension questions, consider relevant teaching scenarios, gather and analyze data in further reading, and pursue projects that require out-of-class research. The book also encourages the use of films to provide deeper cultural understanding and context for various issues. Three appendixes-the family tree of languages, language structure, resources for further research and professional development-and a glossary are included.