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Abstract
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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.
Available (open access):
http://www.coe.uga.edu/jolle/2006_1/integrating.pdf |