Volume 2, 2006
Integrating diversity and cultural education into literacy
Pan, P. (2006).
Most educators understand that our students come from diverse
backgrounds. Yet what to do with this diversity remains a key
issue. Traditional teaching approaches and curriculum
disservice both the mainstream and minority students by
focusing mainly on European American perspectives,
marginalizing minority students, and depriving all students of
opportunities to learn from other experiences. This paper
examines a teacher’s role in turning diversity into powerful
tools of transformation. When teachers integrate diversity and
cultural education into literacy instruction, the classroom
becomes a space of exploration, in reading and writing, and in
cultural knowledge and cross-cultural communication. To do
this, teachers need to become familiar with students’
cultures, revise curriculum, infuse diverse texts, become
facilitator of inter-group dialogue (Clark, 2002), unmark
whiteness, and understand how being white shapes people’s
lives (McIntosh,1988). Such integration empowers students to
use literacy as a tool of transformation.
T.A. as Text
McLean, C. (2006)
This article examines the conceptions of the role of the teaching assistant in a college class of preservice teachers. I apply the concept of myself as a text to engage in a critical reading of how the ascribed roles of the label of teaching assistant inform teaching and learning. Using narratives from my reflexive journal, I explore the tensions of negotiating implied roles and the inherent ideologies. The concept of the “implied teacher” (Lewis and Finders, 2002) provided the lens to look at how inscribed and ascribed labels inform identities and subjectivities. I contend that the notions of our roles and labels can be so inscribed that despite resistance, individuals generally think and operate within assumed definitions and expectations. These inscriptions ultimately perpetuate prescribed practices and experiences of what it means to be a learner, a student and a teacher, and in so doing, limit opportunities for any experiences that do not meet the expectations of these norms.
Book Review
Estes, M.D. (2006)
The author reviews Rose, Meyer, and Hitchcock's The
Universally Designed Classroom: Accessible Curriculum and
Digital Technologies
Book Review 2
Hobson, S. (2006).
The author reviews Ginwright's Black in School:
Afrocentric Reform, Urban Youth, and the Promise of Hip-Hop
Culture
